The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 53 No 2 July 2014

Of Layer Cakes and Hokey-Pokey­
It's all in the Cooking
by Moyra Elliott
Do I smell an adjustment around ceramic process and its place in communicating ideas? This
particular component of the transaction is heat - that necessary constituent that actually turns clay
into ceramic, while taking the process right to the margins of viability.
Speculating upon this shift, one answer might be that with increasing interest by artists with other
backgrounds and training, it's the passion and drama of fire and heat that engages. Generally
outside the realm of 'the visitor', it requires technical knowledge, kiln understanding and control.
It's opposite to simply requiring the kiln to 'fix' the elaborated surface and runs contrary to the
coolly conceptual. It also demands a measure of fire in the belly.
Work evidencing this shift is clearly made in such a way that preliminary processes, meaning and
thinking are both revealed and enhanced by that final firing. It's deliberate, but utterly reliant upon the
transformational forces of heat, yet looks cavalier and nonchalant, with results serendipitous. Far from it.
I recently encountered work from Spain's Gregorio Peno, presenting masterly control in the face
of extreme kiln conditions. His stylishly simple, elongated porcelain boxes were packed with
earthenware clay, sealed, then fired to blazes resulting in the volcanically bubbling dark earthenware
expanding and wreaking pressure from within to its container. The result offered a distorted, yet still
elegant, smoky brown container spilling with what looked like chocolate hokey pokey ... a simple
but effective idea that flawlessly manifests and communicates only on ceramic process.
Another Spaniard who combines clays and allows movement and response under extreme heat
conditions is Rafa Perez. like Peno he plays with different clays' characteristics by cutting, slicing
and layering white porcelain and black earthenware to make simply configured but manifestly
complex works that clarify, under heat stress, ceramic processes. As it is for Peno, it's the
earthenware that effervesces and erupts while the porcelain resists, and through this tension the
clay layers shift and open - some expand, and the work twists and transfigures.
Again, while the final appearance of each work cannot be predicted, or closely repeated, experiment
and experience offer loose boundaries with which to proceed before committing a work to the
unpredictable transformational forces applied through firing. Occasionally Perez will colour some
intermediary layer with stain or emphasise a melt with gold lustre, but his palette stays restricted and results
resemble, at most, volcanic landscapes, but more simply and usually, abstractions around ceramic process.
While both artists manipulate the potential, when the kiln is opened results differ and surprise,
but it is clay and what can happen with heat that is the central, material component.
Looking around there is ample evidence, beyond my offered examples, that a shift in interest is
being engaged, away from the cerebral and the conceptual towards highly tuned processes that can
only be learned over time, building on understanding clay's unique properties, probably with many
failures on the way. Or maybe it's just being Spanish?