The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 50 no 1 April 2011

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Francisca Tyssen, Ochre Point, pinched and
hand-built porcelain, local ochres and oxides
h. llern, w.13em
and welcoming Inlaid Bowl. Helen Taylor's standalone
centrepiece, Radiolarian, attracted interest with
its coolly Nilotic azure-green depths, as well as for
being named after amoeboid protozoa that produce
intricate mineral skeletons.
it was in Kirsten Coelho's superb Ginger Jar
however, that ideas of functional form and the
complexities of its abstraction reached their reductive
and balanced apogee. This remote, meditative-yetinviting
piece received the respectful accolade of a
thoughtful judge's commendation. Also commended
was Hope, a hand-built porcelain vase, freely painted
in cobalt blue by Silvia Stansfield.
John Ferguson's Poise was a totemic composition of thrown forms (an ice cream cone and a
doughnut?) that offered the kind of assemblage that could be deeply symbolic, yet might also be simply
about a technical love of stacking up and balancing those saggar-fired forms.
Maria Parmenter's graceful entry, Telling Tales, continued her method of positing soft groupings of
hieratic sculptural forms in pastel shades that, though as mute as sarsen stones, cleverly mime a dumb
show of functionality, the forms suggestively hinting at handles, knobs, bellies and spouts, implying
possible domestic purpose and conjuring up to-be-imagined stories and meanings.
Using clay and glaze to mimic or evoke aspects of the environment occupied a number of entrants.
Landscape Inspired in The Country by Chris Guthleben was a generously bellied stoneware vase form
dusted in dry glaze with a misty composition suggestive of horizon lines and a vaporous sky sprayed
over what could be vacant and distant hilly territory. Ochre Point by Francisca Tyssen, a hand-built pair
1 Silvia Stansfield, Hope, hand-built porcelain, blue pigment brushwork. h.37em, w.16em
2 Stephanie James-Manttan. Impression Vessel, porcelain, wheel-thrown, h.31cm, w.24cm
3 Maria Chatzinikolaki, Alga, slip-cast limoge porcelain, hand-painted decoration, 13000C reduction, tallest, h.9.Scm
4 Maria Parmenter, Telling Tales, hand-bullt stoneware paperday, glaze, various dimensions; photos: Michal Kluvanek
64 THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS APRil 2011