Pottery In Australia Vol 35 No 1 Autumn 1996

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In the catalogue essay I have quoted from Michel de
Certeau's book, 'The Practices of Everyday Life' in which
he describes this action as "the artisan-like inventiveness of
the user, sometimes called consumer", in the way that
products, time, space and so on are used by ordinary
people in their everyday lives.
I see this independent functioning of the individual within
a totalising system of mass produced forms and technologies,
being akin to a ghetto street cunning
undermining the power of high tech
or, in some ways, applying high tech
against the system - keeping the
system pure.
The other imperative that wraps
itself around this exhibition is a
concern for the environment and
environmental sustainability - we
can't keep producing and
reproducing at the same rate with the
same waste - we are all aware of this.
So from this develops the idea of
taking care.
To summarise the exhibition's
rationale: it is an attempt to reveal the
considerable human value,
intelligence, activity and
inventiveness that is evident in the
relationship that we have with
domestic objects of utility.
Also , the project's aim, which
finally relies on the evidence of the
work presented by each of the artists,
was to encourage a critical appraisal of the functional
object within a theoretical framework which we might call
the autonomy of activity within the domestic space, but
which I think spills out into a whole lot of other issues and
ideas.
As I wrote in the introduction for the catalogue - we are,
each in our own way, attempting to examine ideas that are
not fully worked over in contemporary craft practice, ideas
that involve theatre, performance, ritual, ordinariness,
being and taking care.
Diana Wood-Conroy: I am interested in looking at the
resonances objects have with their viewers over time,
particularly functional objects. These platters and bowls of
Susan Ostling's are like sheets of white paper waiting to be
inscribed with image and narrative. From my training as an
archaeologist looking at great numbers of potsherds,
objects only make sense if they are discovered in a
particular context. Without a provenance, without knowing
which place, their meaning can only be diffuse and
uncertain. It is the links with other facets of a culture that
give meaning.
These sets of objects remind me of a small chipped
white basin I own, with fluted sides, part of a set that
nested together once, but as Patsy Hely reminds us - the
others in this particular nest are gone. It's a rather ordinary,
1950's functional item. But it came from my grandmother's
rambling old house, a place of overflowing family, cousins,
dogs, cats and a chaotic kitchen with
a large white marble slab for
chopping meat. It came into my
possession with a Christmas
pudding tied up in an old bit of
white linen, made by my mother.
Looked at alone, my basin is
unremarkable and anonymous, but
in its context can evoke a whole
history of domestic ware, and of
family custom. To me these works
have a sophistication, a pared-back
quality which demonstrates the
energy and momentum of Australian
ceramics since the craft revival of the
late 60's. Since the making-do
depression years Australian potters
have engaged in a profound
dialogue with Japanese traditions,
with English medieval traditions,
with Italian earthenware, with pop
and funk, to name only a few
influences. In Japan the 'tea
Patsy Hely, coffee pot
ceremony' of Buddhism included tea
bowls that had to have exactly the right aura of 'no-mind',
a certain roughness and artlessness had to be exquisitely
inscribed as the desired spiritual state of the tea drinkers -
not unlike Patsy Hely's gently awkward set of cups.
The great decorated earthenware traditions of the
Mediterranean celebrated the eating and preparation of
food. Susan Ostling's platters and bowls seem to wait for
some great feast, a marriage or a funeral. Then for a while
their nuanced quietness will become part of pivotal human
emotions, which will fix them in individual and public
memory.
Domestic objects used for food preparation have an
anonymity (pointed out by Norman Bryson in his 'Looking
at the Overlooked') because, set apart from style and
fashion, if their shapes are satisfactory, they hardly change
over hundreds of years. Patsy Hely can mix and match past
and present over generations because of this continuity. In
a sequence of pottery in an archaeological excavation, the
storage jars and cooking vessels hardly change. Sappho and
Sophocles - separated by hundreds of years - could have
ISSUE 35/1 AUTUMN 1996 + POTTERY IN A USTRALIA 21