The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 50 no 1 April 2011

Focus: Ceramics + Body
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Left: Conceived by Jan Guy and
Oee Taylor-Graham and enacted by
a contingent of artists from Sydney
College of the Arts, including Jan
Guy, Dee Taylor-Graham, Jacqui
Spedding, Trevor Fry, Clarissa
Regan and Allana McAfee, How to
Flog Pots to a Dead Horse: Shit
Up a Hill (after Joseph 8euys)
Gulgong, April 2010
Photo: Esther Shilling
Now logic tells one that this seems like a purposeless, waste of time and energy; Beuys could have
easily set a stuffed hare in front of a painting with the same conclusion or taken a posed photograph
and written a narrative for the photograph, but he didn't. He introduced the physical body, in this case
his own, as a counterweight to what he saw as the over-intellectualisation of art. Without the duration
of the performance it would be hard to argue such a position, Driving 100 kilograms of recycled clay
from Sydney to Gulgong to roll and push it down the main street and up a hill to the central marquee
of the conference may also seem like a futile act, However, like Albert Camus's answer to the hopeless
absurdity of a quest for meaning in the Myth of Sisyphus, the Gulgong action was one of revolt
and, similarly to Beuys's performance, without its physical duration and materiality it would have been
a hollow slogan, FLOG was born from simmering dissatisfactions with the discipline's ad nauseum
positioning of itself within a discou rse that encourages sycophantic genuflection to a mythic master
potter and a frozen tradition, and the blind ignorance of some quarters of the art world to the scope
of ceramics, Th is discourse can be a great burden for the young or open-minded ceramicist and FLOG
managed to take this weight and through collaborative, physical struggle and much good humour
and sweat, engage the local community and reach its destination, No intentionally aesthetised object
was produced, but there was a real sense of achievement resulting from the action, We can only hope
that whoever took the bindi- and gravel-ridden abject lump from the marquee didn't turn it into poor
replicas of Asian pots (but then again this would give credence to our reasoning for it),
There is much still to be said and done with ceramics and while the art and cratt debate is a tired
old nag that everyone 's sick of flogging, its carcass has resulted in fresh terrain for some practitioners
to stamp, The performative has become part of an alternative trajectory - one that still acknowledges
the value ot the handmade and its processes yet questions notions of tradition and critically engages
contemporary social and cultural issues.
Dee Taylor-Graham is a peripatetic potter (travelling pain in the arse) recently returned from
a year as resident at Sturt Pottery. She is currently a casual lecturer at Sydney College of the
Arts, University of Sydney.
E: dee@futch.com.au
Jan Guy is an artist and writer. She is the Subject Chair of Ceramics at Sydney College of the
Arts. University of Sydney.
E: jan.guy@sydney.edu.au
)0 THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS APR IL 2011