clean slate

When I went to Melbourne a couple of years back, I picked up this surface from the PanelPop shop. It's beautiful stuff, and notebook-sized. This year I'm going to use it instead of a visual diary, and take photos between sketches. It's good to have a solid, reusable object to project thoughts onto, and the surface is a little like dry clay. Plus it saves paper and is made from reclaimed materials. I think when you use clay and kilns it's pretty important to try to save resources wherever you can...ceramics is not exactly a green artform, sadly.

I will post my preliminary sketches up here from time to time.

I Had Heart Surgery And All They Gave Me Was This Orange Lustre Stump.

Recently I've found it difficult to read about art.
It'd be nice to call it a hangover from the dizzying art-party of '10, and the competetively theoretical nature of BArts(Art)(Hons). It might be. But general mental fatigue results from a bunch of things, including endless late nights and computer-screen staring, oppressive weather, and getting too easily sidetracked by the obligations and anxiety of general life.

The thing is, whenever I open a book or magazine or catalogue and begin to read some person's thoughts about contemporary art, I become physically tense. Frustrated, my eyes flit distractedly over the columns of text, and I realise that I'm simply overwhelmed by total disinterest. I can't help but assume that it's going to be five pages of jargon that will either be a convoluted statement of the obvious, or that the writer's speck of insight will be disproportionate to the length of the article, such that the time required to read it would be better spent, say, enjoying a macchiato from the gallery cafe, or a quick nap in the car.

A lot of artwork has this effect on me too. If it looks like it's going to be too much work, I dismiss it almost immediately. I don't think this is shameful. I won't necessarily always think this way. Maybe that art is just not appropriate for my particular situation right now. I need something that has the power to make my vague, elsewhere mind think that it is in my best interest to return to the present, and exert a bit of energy in actually thinking about the thing in front of me. It's an annoying cliche to say that ceramics has this right-here-right-now capacity, but I guess that actually is why I like it. It suits my frame of mind.

It's probably fair to say that I'm more comfortable making art than looking at it. For me the actions involved in doing art stuff are more valuable than observing the finished product. Maybe that's because the objects I make are mostly acts of research, or ways of thinking about things I've seen. I prefer studios to exhibition spaces. Though ideally the two are the same.

Clearly I'm feeling a bit pent-up from a lack of activity, and rather than make art I've been reduced to blogging. I have also been riding my bike to interesting coastal locations and taking crummy photos of things that I like, but until I get sorted with a studio space and a kiln they are going to remain as crummy photos of things that i like. Such as this.

I Had Heart Surgery And All They Gave Me Was This Orange Lustre Stump

End of Hons

I've found this project fiendishly difficult to photograph. Thankfully, for my final exam there were others to do it for me. Thankyou to Jessie Mitchell and Casey Ayres for these shots.

Some illustration photographs to come soonish.

Dark Room

Still no photography skills. And I try so hard. Well, the work is progressing.

Star Of The Sea

Some better photos of what's cooking. Actually I tried to do some cooking the other day thanks to Jamie Oliver-inspired lunacy, and it really is better for everyone if I stick with making intentionally non-edible creations. My artwork right now mostly involves constant re-arranging, which is great if you have knees of steel. I don't. The mid-semester holidays offer me a chance to really get this project completed before having to write arduous assignments and such. But this week I have been mostly doing nothing. All that is about to change, however. What you see here is half of what you will see at the end of the year, and that's a (rashly proclaimed) promise.

Maritime Mysteries

Semester 1 of my Honours year draws to a close. I hope to exhibit the work from this year in an actual gallery at some point. In the mean time though, I will be joining Kate-Anna Williams in a collaborative exhibition entitled Flight & Light at the Pigeonhole Bon Marche Arcade space. Probably in August. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here is just some of many things i have been working on:



Southern Ice porcelain, inlaid cobalt/black iron oxide.

A Story About A Far-Off Land

Long time. Life gets in the way of formal activities such as this blog.

Something I did many months ago now - I took a 5 week trip to the Netherlands, during which I visited some stunning galleries and was just so impressed by the work there. I visited the Princessehof Ceramic Museum in Leeuwaarden, which has a wonderfully diverse collection of ancient, antique, modern and contemporary ceramic artwork and functional wares. And the shop, oh, the shop.

Fancy a romantic dinnertable setting? This one comes with over 20 small bird craniums.

Bronze lustre torture items are a must for your tool shed tidy.

I also took a guided tour of the Royal Goedewaagen ceramic factory- all giant kilns, 10-piece moulds and wacky machines - which is also has a nice gallery, particularly featuring Gouda design, other art deco stuff and lovely Dutch pieces. This photo does great injustice to what was actually a large and inspired portrait of Rembrandt. The depth of the blue paintwork was breathtaking.


I spent a fair amount of time in Groningen, the main city in the northernmost province of the Netherlands. It's a great city - nowhere near the size of Amsterdam, but more laid-back and still lots to explore. A bit like the Perth of the Netherlands, maybe. What they do have is an absolutely brilliant piece of architecture by Italian architect Alessandro Mendini, the Groninger Museum. To be honest I loved the museum more than the art within it. It looks pretty good in photos but you need to walk through it and touch it to really get it. I was wandering around with a smile on my face the whole time. I think I left a bit of my soul clinging lovingly to its wonderfully kitsch mosaic walls and gloriously inconvenient walkways. The Groninger Museum also has a dreamy floor devoted to Chinese and Japanese ceramics, a disorienting labyrinth of floating curtain curves and glistening glass cabinets.


I took a lot of photos. If you would like to know the artists or details, leave a message. Also, if you're interested in photos of Chinese ceramic ware en masse, art nouveau functional ware, or more of that delicious modern design from the Princesshof museum, send me a line and I'll make more of an effort to upload. Once again, apologies for poor quality.

Oh, so many wonderful things to see in the Netherlands, and I would love to show you all my photos but I'd just get off topic. If you visit Amsterdam I strongly suggest you go to the Van Gogh museum. It's perfectly sized so that you can see everything without getting art fatigue, everything is intelligently and educationally arranged. And the work is so beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes.

If you visit the Netherlands for MORE than just Amsterdam, which i believe is not a very accurate representation of the country as a whole, I suggest you visit Dordrecht in South Holland, and take the scenic ferry ride, preferably late in the day. Dordrecht will capture your heart. Definitely my city of choice, were i to move there tomorrow. Dreamy, arty and cosy.
If you want more action, more student life and more Miffy, go to Utrecht. Utrecht has an enjoyably two-tiered kind of city layout, with a below-street-level section along the main canal, lined with architects'/designers'/artists' studios - many of them have a commercial entries or galleries up on the main street level. Also, Utrecht boasts the Dick Bruna House where you can take a trip into Miffy-land. Miffy is known as "Nijntje" in Dutch, meaning 'bunny'. Sadly it was closed when I was there...

I'm getting all nostalgic thinking about it now. The Dutch really know how to incorporate the arts into their cities - but to be fair, I thought that the actual quality of much of the contemporary art I saw there was not much better than that of the art in Perth. There was just more of it, and more cultural support of it.