Pottery In Australia Vol 35 No 1 Autumn 1996

Neville French
Neville French's first solo exhibition at Distelfink Gallery, in December 1995
affirms the timeless strength and beauty of the purity of form.
Review by KIM HORNBY.
The exhibition at Distelfink Gallery in December 1995
exudes the confidence of technical perfection, much
of it with an inherent tension due to a pared down
simplification of form.
The thirty-three porcelain bowl forms exhibited vary
in scale and technique but not in quality. Many are
serene and contemplative and confirm French's
continual striving for clarity of form through the
repetition of a traditional shape. His work shows an
influence of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott but also pays homage
to the sculpture of Brancusi with its uncluttered and
streamlined form and the constant play of light and
shadow on surfaces. His bowls also make use of light to
enhance their form which results in changing colour
variations in many of the bowls which take on a
restrained life force of their own. These wheelformed
and technically difficult irregular shapes are redefined as
quiet, perfect, seductive forms which exude confidence
and lack nothing.
The groupings of bowls in twos and threes have an
affinity with the work of Hanssen Pigott, but in French's
combinations, the work has a tension between the similar
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38 POTTERY IN AUSTRALIA + ISSUE 35/ I AUTUMN 1996