The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 53 No 2 July 2014

Focus: Emerging
original object. With a painting, quite often what happens is it takes so many different directions, and
often the ones that work the best - the image that you have in your head in the beginning - is how it
finishes. The ones that go off in different directions usually don't work, but are still really important to
making a good painting, whereas with the ceramics, I knew exactly what I was making. I knew what I
wanted, and what the final product would be like.
Cl: What are the works about?
BQ: They were inspired by Leonardo da Vinci drawings of these grotesque, over-the-top historical
figures. The subjects of these drawings almost seem more than human, characterisations of humanity, of
human traits. I wanted to play with that, with the fact that they were based on drawings of very absurd
looking real people, and therefore, I don't know, explore our humanity, explore the crazy boundaries of
what humans are, what appearances can convey.
That is how the portrait of Phi l Butler fits into the body of work. He is a da Vinci subject. He 's such an
extraordinary figure; he's got a huge block of a head and he has a lifestyle and life story like none I've
ever heard before. He served in Vietnam, conscripted as a 20-year-old kid. He was basically threatened
that if he didn't go to war he would spend the rest of the war period in Long Bay prison. He lost so
many of his mates in the war. I was born the year after the Vietnam War finished so I'm interested in
that history, in his story. As well as that, he's this really extraordinarily out-there-Iooking human being;
he's a big, solid, very friendly, softly spoken human being.
Cl: Did you know that you were going to use him as a subject when you started?
BQ: Yes, that's actually where it started. I made the painting, the portrait of Phil, and the first jug came
directly from that, and really the painting just acted as a vehicle to explore the ideas that I then wanted
to turn into clay. And then, it went from there, and I started finding more and more images, and when
I'm looking for things like that, they just seem to come up before me. My seven-year-old son opened a
da Vinci book and said, " Dad, turn that - this incredible drawing - into porcelain ." I said, "Joe, you're a
genius!" So the collaboration's just getting broader and broader! The da Vinci drawings crystallised the
ideas we've already discussed, that began with Phil Butler.
Cl: Will the painting be exhibited alongside his porcelain jug7
BQ: It will eventually, but not in Hong Kong.
Cl: Has working with clay taught you anything?
BQ: Look, it's about form, real form; you're dealing with a 3D object. Part of my practice as a painter
is being influenced by visual things, but then making up a lot of the material so that it becomes, in a
way, a collaboration between imagination and truth. And with ceramics, with what I've done with these
works, it's a 2D image and I'm giving it 3D form, so I've had to make up more than half of the object,
so it's now an even greater collaboration, between imagination, truth, sculpture, form. And then there's
the magic of actually using your hands to create an object, that immediacy and physicality, leaving your
fingerprints!
Cl: Do you think there is a connection between what these works look like and your paintings?
BQ: I don't know, you'll have to tell me that l Look, they're a beautiful, shiny, smooth, blended form
of what my paintings are. And if you look at that one of Phil Butler, it's directly from the original idea
explored in the painting, and I just gave that form. I gave the idea form, so in a way the painting is just
a work in progress, and the final ceramic object is the artwork.
THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS JULY 2014 61