Divergence: ceramics by Elaine Bradley, Verney Burness, Richilde Flavell, Isabelle Mackay-Sim, Fran Romano, Lia Tajcnar. Form Studio and Gallery, Queanbeyan. Until May 22.
Reviewer: Kerry-Anne Cousins.
Divergence, the title of this exhibition at Form Studio and Gallery, can mean a deviation or a departure from a central track or point of view. It can aptly describe this group of artists, each pursuing their own individual creativity but brought together in this exhibition by their use of clay as their chosen medium.
The word divergence can also be applied to the process of creativity, as Lia Tajcnar writes in her artist statement. Her practice involves pursuing many divergent ideas that eventually come together or "converge" to create the final object. I think most artists would be familiar with this process.
Behind the work of these artists are ideas informed by childhood memories, interaction between cultures, social stereotyping and psychological insights. The result is a very varied exhibition by artists Verney Burness, Richilde Flavell, Isabella Mackay-Sim, Fran Romano and Lia Tajcnar.
Burness, Flavelle, Mackay-Sim and Romano are all recent graduates from the ceramics workshop at the ANU School of Art.
Lia Tajcnar graduated from the University of Calgary and the Alberta College of Art and Design in Canada. She now lives and works in Canberra where she completed her Master of Philosophy in ceramics from the ANU School of Art.
Richilde and Romano have also been regular exhibitors with Claybodies, an informal group of ceramic artists in the Canberra region. At the time of writing, Elaine Bradley's work had not arrived from Western Australia.
Verney Burness' practice is characterised by a focus on clay sculptures in stoneware and porcelain. They are based on natural formations of rocks and cliffs. Burness has the ability to distil the essence of the formidable qualities of these natural rock formations and the forces of nature which created them and translate them into small, hand-sized sculptures. There is something fascinating about these forms of nature being able to be reproduced in miniature to reflect the grandeur of a much larger landscape.
Burness shares this interest in shifts of scale with the traditional creators of Japanese and Chinese gardens who revered the small outcrops of rocks introduced into their orchestrated landscapes to symbolise a more extensive mountain terrain. As in Japanese raked temple gardens, the placement of the rock sculptures is important. Burness uses glass panels so that the shadows cast by the rock sculptures reinforce their interdependent relationship with one another.
This is not always successful.
In the assemblage work Pressure and Movement no.49, the white top of the plinths on which the levels of glass are placed is very intrusive and I thought affected the relationship of the objects.
A large photograph by Caitlin Kozman called Moving Mountains depicts the artist's rock sculptures against a soft, inky-black background. It demonstrates the potential for experimenting further with this work.
Richilde Flavell's wall assemblage This time is a convergence of very small stoneware sculptural forms tied to one another through repetition of shape and surface glaze. Each form, with its cut faceted sides, symbolically represents for the artist the process of apportioning time that in our busy lives is devolving into ever diminishing segments.
This is a very successful work, with the small sculptural forms creating nice shadows and rhythms. The grey and white stoneware glazes also give a pleasant unity to the work, and the rubbed faceted edge of each object softens it and imparts a sense of the artist's hand.
Lia Tajcnar's two beautifully constructed ceramic wall sculptures, Rorschach #1 and #2, are composed of small, flat ceramic shapes. These are arranged together in irregular layers to make two complex forms.
The work is based on the concept of the Rorschach inkblot, an abstract image used in psychological practice to prompt clients to make representational connections which are recorded and analysed. These shapes are decorated with a variety of textural and linear patterns in a restricted palette of blue and white and, although non-representational (at least to me), evoke the spread of butterfly wings.
Isabelle Mackay-Sim has already created a distinctive body of work since graduating from the ANU School of Art in 2014. Her highly original fecund and organic ceramic sculptures are derived from human genitalia and plant forms.
In making the links between plant and human sexuality, Mackay-Sim's work resonates with Australian artist Fiona Hall's remarkable series Paradisus Terrestris 1990, in which human genitalia is paired with plant forms within the format of a sardine tin.
Mackay-Sim, however, creates a new hybrid organism in clay that brings together the soft, fleshy parts of both humans and plants. Each part of the sculptural form nestles within another, creating a symbiotic relationship. She wishes us to consider the strange and diverse ways plants reproduce and asks us to consider atypical sexual relationships and social coexistence that pay no heed to gender roles.
These are remarkable works, both exotic and erotic, confident, convincing and almost pulsing with life.
Fran Romano's work has a strong graphic and narrative element which can sometimes overpower the work itself. The body of work in this exhibition is inspired by traditional Christian shrines. Small, beautifully glazed stoneware jars referencing ritual are half enclosed in open ceramic arches patterned with the images of saints (the decals are made from the artist's own photographs).
The ideas behind this work are rich with cultural significance and have the potential to be explored much further. I feel, however, the inclusion of these ceramic arches is rather too literal an interpretation of her ideas, as some of the works lack an artistic and organic unity.
The concept is treated in a more abstract and successful way in the two stand-alone pots (for example, vessel/urn no.45) with their evocative tracery of imagery. The pot then becomes the enclosing symbolic shrine for the relic and as the artist herself quotes, "Shrines are like little houses for lost souls" (from the film Spirited Away).
