The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 53 No 2 July 2014

CATERINA LEONE
If I had one word, instead of three hundred, to describe Pippin Drysdale's latest exhibition Tanami
Mapping III, it would be 'overwhelming'. The technical brilliance of the work overwhelms; the vibrancy
of colour overwhelms; the dynamism of the surface decoration overwhelms; and the artist herself
overwhelms. Inspired by the desert landscape of Tanami in the Northern Territory, the works are more
than a reference to that land - they visually, energetically and emotionally encapsulate it.
The vessels surge upward exuberantly from tiny bases, before drawing the eye down into the endless
womb of colour wit hin - a funnel to capture the world. This single colour is the inner intensity of the
world when peeled back, layer by layer. The exteriors too, are expressions of the landscape, reduced to
the essence, the essential. The lines dancing across the exterior are scratches by the artist-as-shaman: in
Penumbra , the usually crisp lines are wounds whose bleeding edges allow us a glimpse into a further
layer of the earth, its blood and muscle, usually hidden. Yet the obviously hand-drawn quality of the
lines, in contrast to the airbrush smooth perfection of the glazes, cements the works in human reality
and makes Tanami Mapping III a celebration of creative accomplishment and vision as well as of the
land that is their inspiration.
Startling contrasts of colour are typical of the body of work as a whole; Drysdale is as unafraid of bold
contrasts and colours as is the Australian landscape. Walking through the exhibition is to see the Tanami
landscape from ground and air at once, to simultaneously see sunrise and sunset, w ith eyes that have
escaped a physical body. The works speak to that part of us that knows itself to be one with nature,
not above or apart from it, and because they are ceramic - a composition of the elements - they are
all the more powerful at their evocation of the land. Their very material assists the subject matter, and
their form - circular, unending - evokes both the spatial endlessness and symbolic timelessness of the
Australian landscape. In a time of increasing risk to our natural environment, Drysdale's vision of the
landscape is a celebration and a defence of nature.
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THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS JULY 2014 43