The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 53 No 2 July 2014

Focus: Emerging
PROFILE: Leah Fraser
My current practice is a combination of painting and ceramics, and depicts spirits and shamans,
ancestors or gods who are in communication with other worlds. Imagery from dreams and my own
imagination are interwoven with ideas from many different religions and philosophies.
My ceramic objects are part of expanding the sense of the world that this tribe inhabits, and often the
objects find their way into my paintings. Inspiration comes from the totems and icons found in many
religions (especially those that uphold animist beliefs) such as indigenous artefacts and objects made to
venerate ancestral deities and spirits of nature and to accompany ritual practices.
My work also includes votive figures with wide-open eyes, such as were used in many cultures to
represent gods or people in shrines of worship, and highly decorated 'magic bottles', which can be
understood as being the kinds of objects that might fill a magician's apothecary or be the property of a
medicine man or perhaps a part of a shrine. Each bottle represents a piece of nature in some way. Their
shapes are organic and they are decorated with shells and crystals or combined with found objects to
create a feeling of handmade crudeness, as though they are artefacts dug out of the ground.
leah Fraser, Shaman O re/e, 2014, earthenware
with assorted shells and crystals, each approx.
h.2Ocm, w.12cm, d.18cm; photo; courtesy artist