The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 52 No 2 July 2013

View III
The Art of Small Things
Jasmin Dessmann discusses collective identity in the work of Sarah O'Sullivan
Anyone who has ever begun life freshly in a foreign land w ill understand the general alien sensibility
and prickle of possibility that comes from unfamiliar beginnings. The differences between the familiar
and the foreign become distindive. It is often the small inconsequent things in these instances which
have the greatest impad; that remind us that we are not home, intrigue imagination and trigger fond
memory. Small things, both objeds and symbols, are inherent in our understanding of our past and our
selves.
This notion is explored in the work of Sydney ceramicist Sarah O'Sullivan. For O'Sullivan the power
and sentiment recall that objeds, textures, and symbols can inspire in the human imagination are linked
to an incarnate ability for us to recognise place and home. O'Sull ivan's practice begins as a colledor,
scouring detritus in native landscapes, street refuse, field trips, or the second-hand clutter of charity
stores.
In her collection of sticks, bones, teaspoons, glass vessels, nests, key racks and silver trinkets - objeds
whose purpose or socia l interest is obsolete - are gathered as scrutineered findings of a persistent
surveyor. Each different and unrelated, the objeds O'Sullivan collects have presented themselves with
the possibility of being a vessel for concealed memory. Noted as a human imperative by the artist,
the act of collecting in O'Sullivan's work, however, seems embedded more fervently in instindive
and animalistic tendencies, like the resourceful and intrepid undertakings of the bowerbird enading
habitudinal behaviour of seeking, gleaning and adorning.
In her appropriated work, such as Jam and Cream , O'Sullivan reconstructs lost parts in a metal
holder of an old tea set. A single item, removed from its original set, the objed is renewed yet remains
dislocated from fundion by the lacerated patterning added by the artist. Instead we are asked to regard
Sarah O'Sullivan, Jam and Cream, 2010, slipcast and handcut porcela in with found metal stand, h.24cm. w. 17cm, d.12cm
Photo: Maree Alexander
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