Now showing at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Clay Dynasty is an extensive exhibition featuring a range of studio ceramic works in Australia from the last 50 years. The exhibition charts the work of Australian ceramicists over three generations and includes over 400 works from 160 Australian artists. Displayed across one vast exhibition floor, it’s an impressive project that appeals both to the old school of Australian ceramics while also offering a fascinating glimpse into ceramics as contemporary art today.
The exhibition explores three key themes: 1) Function and Beauty, 2) Form and Image and 3) Funk and Postmodern Ceramics. “The museum is revitalising its approach to ceramics and other traditional craft areas,” says Curator Eva Czernis-Ryl. “We are trying to show this incredible potential that clay has as a medium of artistic expression.”
I was most excited to see the contemporary works, which include over 70 individual objects acquired and commissioned by the Museum. This review will focus on a selection of these.
Of the contemporary works on display, several are about the artists’ experiences of COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. Thai-born Melbourne-based artist Vipoo Srivilasa’s work, Self Portrait with Cats (during lockdown) incorporates the artist’s signature surface decoration inspired by his Thai heritage and his colour palette of white, blue and gold. Made during the long months of Melbourne’s lockdown when Srivilasa says he was entertained by his cats, the work is also inspired by the Powerhouse Museum’s collection of English figurines.
“The symbolic elements on the figure allude to Srivilasa’s Buddhist practice including a golden bird and deity, representing himself and the desire for freedom and travel and three wise monkey statues: ‘I relate really well to the monkey who speaks no evil.’ The golden amulets refer to the objects he enjoyed during the lockdown including his smartphone, nature documentaries, computer games, ceramic making and redecorating his house” (Srivilasa, 2021, Powerhouse Museum).
Adelaide-based ceramicist Honor Freeman’s work is also about the pandemic. The work features her soaps, lovingly hand-made ceramic replicas of used bars of soap, complete with grooves worn into the surface. This time, however, the soaps in Sunlight for a Pandemic are made in shades of yellow with gold detailing. For Freeman, the project involved an embrace of the colour yellow as well as period of research into the history and symbolism of the colour.
“Emotive and joyous, it is the colour of sunshine, enlightenment and hope, used by ancient cultures to embody and harness the divine power of the sun… Yet yellow has a conflicted past as a duplicitous colour associated with cowardice, jealousy, dishonour and greed. I encountered a more sinister side as I leant into the pandemic, researching archives from the 1918 Spanish flu and exploring the history of soap, hand washing and quarantine. Historically, yellow was used internationally on maritime signal flags to symbolise quarantine in a port, on the flags flown on ships to signal a diseased vessel, and the colour of SOS cards and cloth used to mark homes of infection. Curiously, when the yellow flag is flown today, it signals the opposite – a ship free from disease and requesting pratique. A fitting colour palette for a pandemic. I’m taking the sunny side. A ray of sunlight to illuminate the gloom” (Freeman, 2021, Powerhouse Museum)
Another new work by Japanese-Australian artist Kenji Uranishi, Walking in the Forest, is also about the pandemic. Working with translucent white porcelain, Uranishi’s works are precise and delicate structures, with repeating forms inspired by architecture and nature. This work is inspired by the artist’s walks during lockdown and the pattern of dappled light that filters through the trees onto the forest floor.
“This installation is about connection, memory and time. The circular formation represents a period of time, like a ribbon of film cut from a reel, showing only a portion of the story. The individual porcelain pieces are organic yet still architectural when presented together, connected in a spine-like circular formation… The past year has reinforced how changeable life is, and by reflecting on moments of beauty in our minds and creating connections and memories, even the challenging times can become meaningful” (Uranishi, 2021, Powerhouse Museum).
In an exhibition that shows the work of ceramicists across generations, there are clear links to be seen, such as the influence of Gwyn Hanssen Piggot’s work on the work of Prue Venables and Kirsten Coelho – all three create collections of precisely made vessels with smooth surfaces in calm, neutral colours. Curator Eva Czernis calls this the Clay Dynasty “big brain”. “There are so many connections,” she says. “To me, I see certain connections, but there are other potters and artists who come and see other synergies or contradictions of what clay can do. By having such a large exhibition, you find missing links that you never knew existed.”
The exhibition features many works by Indigenous artists, including some of the earliest pottery made by Australian Indigenous makers from 1968 to 1974 at the Bagot pottery in Darwin, Northern Territory. More recent works by Indigenous artists include three platters painted by artist and Pitjantjatjara woman Yaritji Heffernan at the APY Art Centre Collective, a social enterprise made up of 11 Aboriginal owned and governed arts and culture organisations from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in remote north-west South Australia. Mud Australia provided blank platters as ‘canvas’ for the artists.
“In these designs, Heffernan depicts rock holes (kapi tjukula) which collect water and are thus of vital importance during the dry season when most desert water holes and creeks dry up. Knowledge of rock hole sites is passed on from generation to generation and revered by all Anangu (people) Pitjantjatjara, whose lands are located in the far north west of South Australia” (Heffernan, 2020, Powerhouse Museum).
Another contemporary work that resonated with me is a pair of figures Bellarmine Holding Bellarmine II and 21st Century Woman by Hong Kong-Australian artist Renee So. As well as being charming plump people with tripod legs, these are also vessels. The male figure is inspired by the Bellermine jug, a type of German stoneware jug from the 16th and 17th Centuries that takes the shape of a grotesque bearded man, named for Catholic cardinal Roberto Bellarmino who wanted to ban the sale of alcohol and was disliked by the Protestant Germans. While the Bellarmine man is about poking fun at male authority, So’s 21st Century Woman is all about the power of the feminine, drawing inspiration from three-dimensional figures of women from history.
“So seeks inspiration in prehistoric statuettes and anthropomorphic vessels created at the dawn of earliest civilizations of China, Japan and Mesoamerica, particularly representations of goddesses and deities depicted in nude with voluptuous female bodies suggestive of female power which were often worshiped as fertility symbols or used as religious objects during rituals” (So, 2021, Powerhouse Museum).
While I have chosen to highlight some of the contemporary works in Clay Dynasty, there is so much in this exhibition to discover and delight in: for art and craft historians, for lovers of Indigenous art, for contemporary art fans and for practitioners interested in the technical side of making. The sheer number of works demonstrates just how much diversity there is in Australian studio ceramics practice, and in the Powerhouse’s collection – of the works shown approximately 90% are from the collection, while the rest are loaned.
More on Clay Dynasty at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Barry Willoughby Bequest Commission, 2020
