The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 52 No 3 November 2013

Focus: Ecology and Ceram ics
Barbara Campbell-Allen, Overland, detail, 2013
stoneware paperclay, natural ash glaze. h.21 em
w.31cm, d.l6cm; photo: Alex Kershaw
Overland:
From the Cradle to the Lake
Margaret Farmer profiles the work of Barbara Campbell-Allen
Born from endurance and subsequent respite, Barbara Campbell-Allen's latest installation, Overland:
From the Cradle to the Lake comprises two contrasting groups of forms - one of rugged vestigial
seismic shifts, the other of dapple-surfaced amphora. 1 The work evokes two lan dscapes of the
internationally renowned Overland Track in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area - a landscape
of endurance and a landscape of support - and Campbell-Allen's experience of moving through and
between them. After traversing a threatening, fractured environment of dolerite cliffs, rolling moors
and stunted heath for some days, utterly exposed in unrelentingly wet and windy conditions, Campbell­
Allen and her companions followed the trail's descent into a forest, which offered relief and a sense of
tranquillity, safety and shelter.
Expressi ng the first part of this journey is a group of dramatic, compressed, geographic forms
or 'constructs', whose eroded geometries glow with dark scoured striations and the effects of
the punishing weather. Each construct's attributes deliberately and directly reference the physical
characteristics of the landscape. Rolled edges give expression to the rolling moors, striations to the
dolerite cliffs, stiffness to jutting mesas. Enclosed spaces recall darker, broken rocks and fractured
dolerite. Encrustations recall the stoic canny flora. The effect is menacing, lyrical, forbearing, like the
landscape itself.
Campbell-Allen shifts register to create less literal and more symbolic forms for the second grouping
that represents the forest and the sense of respite and shelter it provides. The amphora shape symbolises
old growth. Its narrow bottomed, full-bodied form is the most domestic and original for ceramic
storage. In Overland: From the Cradle to the Lake, it promises a homecoming that is yet to be
realised . Each amphora's domesticity is denied by its scale, its rim broken to recollect the broken and
58 THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS NOVEMBER 2013