The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 49 No 3 November 2010

Focus : Architectural Cera mics
techniques much earlier than would be the norm. Rather than being relegated to basic duties, Yonetani
was taught traditional throwing, hand-building and press-molding techniques, making the base forms
of many of his Master's range of pieces. The pieces then went to his Master for trademark motifs, and
onto another worker for glazing, Yonetani speaks of the meditative nature of the repetitive process,
turning out identical item after identical item as part of a hand-made assembly line of work. He says
it enabled him to form a 'friendship' with the clay - a local red clay with additional grog, which was a
difficult clay body to work with and prone to cracking and considerable shrinkage.
While under his apprenticeship - although he was learning construction techniques earlier than
he could have anticipated - he was not permitted to make any of his own work. However, the local
environmental issues were beginning to inspire Yonetani. Okinawa is one of the region's premier dive
sites, and Yonetani took advantage of living by one of the best local reefs. But he discovered that the
reef was victim, as are many of the world's reef systems, of chemical and climatic assaults. The annual
rainy season, which washes topsoil with its loading of agricultural chemicals from the sugar cane fields
into the ocean, has had a devastating effect, killing off significant areas of the reef resulting in what we
know as coral bleaching.
Back in Canberra, at the end of three years in Okinawa, Yonetani enrolled in the Masters Degree at
the School of Art. Inspired by his investigations into environmental issues and the need to find a motif
for his body of work, he worked with CSIRO scientists who were located next to the art school campus.
He met with an entomologist Kim Pullen, learning about Australian butterflies and moths. His major
work was a collection of slip-cast tiles featuring local butterflies and moths which he installed in the
foyer and the main gallery of CSIRO Discovery, covering the entire floor area, forcing people to walk
over the tiles, breaking them. This was filmed, and he noted different behaviours, that he based on age
and gender, of the people navigating his temporary floor - women largely trying to conseNe the tiles,
men walking across them, and children often relishing the opportunity to jump and shatter the tiles. He
later gathered the shards and created mandalas of the fragments in different places, creating new works
from the pieces.
His investigations into humanity's effects on the natural landscape continued, and his initial interest
in the devastation caused to the coral reef in Okinawa by the local sugar industry was transplanted to
Australia, with its significant industry in Queensland and potential for damage to the Great Barrier Reef.
The initial works were created out of sugar -large-scale sculptures made of a sugar compound that
set hard and had the appearance of fired porcelain. These were first exhibited at Artspace in Sydney,
where viewer participation w as via the seNing of coral shaped cakes at the opening. The success of this
installation led to an invitation to repeat it at the Venice Biennale in 2009.
Bendigo Art Gallery's commission for their exhibition Your Move: Australian artists p lay chess
offered Yonetani the opportunity to meld together the different aspects of his work to date, and bring
to a point of culmination his work on coral bleaching. His life-sized work (part of his Dead Sea series)
of a chess table and stools, brings together ceramic traditions of mold-making and hand-building from
his traditional training, his environmental concerns, and his strong desire (that had been unexpressed
in Japan) to create contemporary work of beauty that carries a message. His vision of sea creatures
relates to a sense of the erotic, their forms being, to him, highly evocative of genitalia. Each of the
Left Ken Yonetani, Dead Sea , detail; photo: Ian Hill
THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS NOVEMBER 2010 31