The arts and crafts movement in the early twentieth century was a vital moment in the education and uptake of ceramics in Aotearoa New Zealand. Though most histories of New Zealand studio pottery begin with the Anglo-Oriental movement in the mid-twentieth century — which features the emergence of key ceramic figures — the earlier arts and crafts movement holds many examples of sophisticated and serious pottery, often made by women.
Louise Menzies, an Auckland-based artist, offers us objects, images and situations that explore the past and present through attention to the way they are already represented. For this exhibition, Menzies delves into feminist histories, via the Germaine Greer Archive held at the University of Melbourne.
This collection presents Wallace Crossman's work from the One Tree Hill College art collection alongside distinctive examples from Sandy Adsett, Robin White and Haare Williams, four artists significant for their contributions to both art and education in Aotearoa.
The terms outsider, insider and mainstream art are not in the vocabulary of the group of art makers with intellectual disabilities from A Supported Life’s ‘two4nine’ creative space in West Auckland. Their art is direct, delightful and provocative visual expression in paint, thread and clay of their unique view of the world they inhabitant.
As an annual update on the state of ceramic practices in Aotearoa, the Portage Ceramic Awards provides insights on current directions and future possibilities. Established in 2001, the awards are a hallmark event for the New Zealand ceramics community, showcasing some of the best contemporary work, and serving as a platform for dialogue about developments in the ceramics field.
The Burning Hours focuses on works made between 2014-2016, showing audiences what happens when Bush pushes her compositional limits and uses the entire surface of the paper. This recent body of work is rich with detail – each surface, of gouache and gold, is filled with references to illuminated manuscripts, Persian miniatures, European art history and modern life.
Ornamental Residue originates from a study into the typology of brooches. For this series, Melbourne-based jeweller Manon van Kouswijk creates and extends iconic brooch forms and motifs from the history of jewellery.
Using only wood and paint, artist Glen Hayward constructs a wall of concrete blocks to sit a series of pre-existing objects for Te Uru’s front Window Space. These recognisable builder’s objects – including a beer bottle, lunchbox, cigarettes and hard hat – point to the mode of their own construction and labour intensive origins.
In this exhibition Fickling presents a display of carefully sculpted paper creatures - part animal, part machine - of a fictional era inspired by industrial design. The still and stark white paper gives way to imagined colours, movements and interactions between the underwater beings swimming through the exhibition space.