The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 52 No 1 April 2013

Profile
In a foray away from Tasmania he spent time in and around another mining area, Broken Hill,
producing a large body of work, Heartlands. This was his first extended encounter with the arid
interiors of Australia that had so taxed the early explorers. Vincent conducted an intense dialogue
with, and an artistic post-mortem of. the very body of the terrain. At a sweeping glance, his clay forms
appear like a trove of large shards literally sliced from rock faces or scooped from the desert's surface. A
crusty thick impasto spread with gusto, alongside sumptuous textural segments with sliced and gouged
linear passages create a rich palette out of the seemingly sterile monochromatic spaces of the region.
Here the ruggedly cleaved shards with their fissured and cracked surfaces echo the processes that
formed the outback eons ago. This inland region saw the artist's meanderings lead to a kind of ultimate
confrontation with the very heart of the matter. His next project led him further into the parched stony
wilderness. There resulted a large installation work, Interior, which was Vincent's personal interpretation
of some of the sites that Charles Sturt recorded on his final epic, but ultimately disillusioned, journey.
These bodies of work coaxed and manipulated by the artist from base clay, made the ordinary
extraordinary and were the apogee of his explorations. Like a biblical character, Vincent was looking to
find redemption from the failings of the past to resurrect a new Australian post-colonial identity and
attitude towards the landscape.
Vincent's poetic dialogue with the landscape as an explorer, recorder and cartographer produced a
vast amount of reference points, grid maps and snapshots on ceramics for the viewer to contemplate.
Vincent McGrath, The Blister, earthenware
h.SOcm, w.2Scm, d.SOcm
Vincent McGrath. Queenstown Legacy
h.81cm, w.31cm, d.23cm
20 THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS APRIL 2013