The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 52 No 1 April 2013

Focus: New Zealand Cerami cs
Mother Matrix
David Eggleton considers the works of Christine Boswijk
Christine Boswijk's ceramic works are at once so earthy and energetic, so visceral and larval, that they
almost seem to bristle under your gaze, as if they have only paused here on their way to another state
of being. It's as if she is a sorcerer of shape and form, combining metaphors for organic cycles of life
with grand myths of the self, of the human.
Currently one of New Zealand's most significant workers in clay, Boswijk lives with her family in the
province of Nelson (at the top of the South Island) on a peninsula of land that overlooks the Mapua
Estuary. Here, she is inspired by tidal movements across the sheen of the mudflats - the passivity of the
water as it slithers in and out, the mountain ranges nearby, her garden, the native bush, and the climate
- Nelson's sunshine makes it a horticultural paradise similar to Tasmania.
Deriving a potent iconography of the earth from her location, Boswijk has moved over the past
decade or so from being known for her brightly glazed domestic ware, big handbuilt spherical pots and
biomorphic vessels (ultra-wide shallow dishes, very deep bowls, conical vases wit h buckled, wrinkled
and scarified surfaces) to resonant sculptures - ritualistic objects summoning up fears, dreams, awe, the
collective unconscious.
Philosophically, Boswijk's work offers a collage of ideas that have remained constant since she first
came to notice as an important potter in the mid-'80s. She's an eco-feminist, representative of the
greenie tradition of sustainable living, who, using clay as mother matrix, a 'first material' from which
all else springs, has sculpted objects that are fertility objects in shape - seed, pod, husk, bud, womb,
Christine Boswijk, Fact, (detail), Fact Faith and Fiction exhibition, 2003, timber posts, black paint, h.12Ocm
Suter Art Gallery, Nelson