A conversation with ceramic artists

Three artists conversed with Karen O’Clery at the Drill Hall Gallery of the Australian National University in Canberra on Friday April 5, 2013, a day after the official opening of their collective ceramic exhibition. The exhibition, entitled Vessel as Metaphor, continues until May 5.

Australian artists Elizabeth Charles, Simone Fraser, and Gail Nichols discussed their works to an audience of about 30 guests.

Elizabeth Charles exhibited slip castings, a significant shift from her hand thrown works. Her piece, such as Shrine 1 (2013)—photographed—is an example of her slip casting with dry glaze on porcelain. All her works feature a layered appearance, with objects on top of each other, but evenly balanced. For her, the vessel as metaphor represents the “ubiquitous nature of the vessel” that everyone can relate to, rather like a “time capsule of mankind.”

Simone Fraser’s works are all wheel thrown and textured as she works, starting upside down, and breaking boundaries, although she regards her works as “evolutionary, rather than revolutionary.” Photographed is Contained Impressions (2012/2013) which is representative of her tall, textured vessels, somewhat similar to the seeds of Australian banksia trees (masses of little cup-like vessels). She expressed the “duality of ceramic vessels” from the useful and practical, to the religious and ritual, and from “humble forms” to the abstract.

Gail Nichols’s works are more like the conventional vases and bowls, but with intriguing textures. Her pieces are wheel-thrown and manipulated, texturing the surface as part of the firing process. She also begins “upside down” using clay and soda. She takes her titles from the weather and geography on and near her property, such as fog, mist, and rain. Her piece (photographed) is and then the rain came (2012) which is soda vapour glazed stoneware. She expressed the tactile nature of her pieces in which spectators are comfortable touching and picking up, rather than viewing them as untouchable works of art.

For all artists, the vessel is all encompassing, from time immemorial to the present. The process of creating ceramics—moulding the clay, firing it, and treating it post-firing, often firing a piece two or three times—is a transformative, evolving, hand-mind experience.  Nichols described ceramics as the “art of uncertainty” which combines the control of the artist, but also “giving up control to the process and the kiln.”

Gail Nichols

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).