The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 52 No 1 April 2013

Focus: New Zealand Ceramics
Christine Boswijk. Series I, 2010, triptych. polystyrene. fibreglass, oil stid:, wax, various dimensions
Before Words exhibition; photo: Elspeth Collier, courtesy RH Gallery
of Perspex, the middle of which has been filled with 22 bottles of vodka to create the illusion that the
ceramic pods are floating inside the jar.
The arc of Boswijk's practice, then, establishes an unbroken continuity of thematic concerns or
obsessions, but she is always challenging herself to find fresh and innovative ways to present or
investigate them, not programmatically but intuitively. At the centre is always clay as an articulate plastic
substance, but frequently amalgamated with or contrasted against other metaphor-inducing materials.
A five-part 2010 installation, Before Words, at the RH Gallery, offered an extraordinary set of
sculptures whose roots were in Boswijk's beginnings in Nelson (then possibly New Zealand's potting
capital) in the '70s as a potter drawn to t raditional European craftwork - to old French and Dutch
ceramics and to artisan pottery that valued functional expressiveness. Before Words though, marked
a new departure in its emphasis on scraping back to minimalist geometries, to a clarity of profile and
tonality, with the chosen motifs or glyphs softened by the incorporation of bulging rounded contours or
intense, dynamic colours.
Before Words was an heraldic ode to European medieval emblems, to early Russian Modernism
and also to the continuity of ancient relics, which, in a way, are still being worn and used vitally in the
form of jewellery - necklaces and earrings as well as gilded religious medals and amulets. The risendough
effect of these cross-shapes or circle-shapes made them intensely haptic, especially when waxed
48 THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS APRIL 2013