Reminiscence - A Tribute to Judith Wright

FRANCES SMITH Recent work from Reminiscence at The Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts Brisbane Australia 2015

FRANCES SMITH 2015 Illustrations: Frances Smith Photography: Peter Smith

Frances Smith Frances Smith is a Sydney-based ceramic artist who who has just completed an Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts (Ceramics) at the Northern Beaches Institute of TAFE, Sydney. Her work is a reflection on the experiences of her surrounding environment. Before pursing her passion for ceramics Frances worked as a graphic designer and illustrator for TV studios, print, film and websites.

Reminiscence “I spent several months last year reading and re-reading Judith Wright’s poetry and letters and reviewing books about her life. From this research, I have distilled one way of looking back on her life, work and times. A purely chronological structure might have worked. As would a view on her external activities or simply examining the various themes within her published works.

In the end, I had to look at Judith’s life and make my response to her legacy in a series of ceramic forms. The result of this exploration is Reminiscence , an exhibition at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts in Brisbane, Queensland.”

A very special thanks to my friend and co-exibiting artist, Fiona Rafferty whose tireless work and dedication made this exhibition possible.

The Exhibition The exhibition takes one of Wright’s poems Reminiscence, first published in 1973, as its title. It is a poem that does what much of Wright’s writing is able to do, and that is link and wrap one present moment – in this case seeing a “babbling, shrieking … skiesful, treesful” gaggle of parrots – with her own past – a tale told by her father of an old neighbour, “the kind of reminiscence one inherits” – and also, reaches wider and deeper into social histories and cultural histories of place, nature and habitation.

Perhaps this is what Gary Clark refers to in Wright’s poetry as “the convergence of nature and culture”.

Susan Ostling Senior Lecturer, Griffith University November 2015

ENDANGERED 2015, Southern Ice Porcelain, black illustrations, glazed interior, polished exterior, H 35cm.

Nests In Nest Vessel 1 (2015) the appearance of the vessel’s form is perforated, there are open areas of carved ceramic allowing a glimpse of the interior.

Here the delicacy of the porcelain and the nest’s structure are interwoven, reminding us of the enormity of the nest’s task, as protector of both eggs and hatchlings.

Kerry Turnbull Curator, Reminiscence

NEST 1 2015, Southern Ice Porcelain, thrown and carved, glazed interior, polished exterior, W 35cm.

Woven Shelters Smith has discovered much through detailed observation of the nest’s structure. Having found a small bird’s nest she began making detailed illustrations and creating forms in clay inspired by the nest. Smith has recreated these organic structures in Southern Ice Porcelain using ceramic forming techniques of carved and applied slip. The surface has been crafted to mimic the textures of the nest and shows the materials of nest – twigs, leaves and feathers. The vessels echo the bird’s woven shelters carefully prepared from materials found on the forest floor.

Kerry Turnbull Curator, Reminiscence

NEST 2 2015, Southern Ice Porcelain, thrown,slip decoration, glazed interior, polished exterior, W 34cm.

Birds Birds are a recurring motif in Wright’s poetry and are used as a metaphor to express her deep sensitivity to nature; with its abundance of life, beauty, and converse cruelty and fragility. Smith expresses these themes in her work Nest Vessels (2015).

Kerry Turnbull Curator, Reminiscence

NEST 3 2015, Southern Ice Porcelain, thrown and deep etched, glazed interior, polished exterior, W 36cm.

Conservation and the Reef One of the major pursuits in Judith Wright’s public life was the Great Barrier Reef. She saw it as a natural marvel of huge importance. She also saw the danger it was in from European farming, development and tourist development.

In many ways, this became her lifelong cause – to have the value of this natural wonder both recognised and valued in its own right.

THE REEF SERIES 2015, Southern Ice Porcelain, thrown and carved, glazed interior, polished exterior, H 40cm.

A microcosm of the fate of the planet Conservation and the Great Barrier Reef acknowledges the extraordinary role played

by Wright in voicing concerns that have managed to hold back in the intervening years some of the destructive impact of coastal development on the Reef. As Smith points out here, Wright had the foresight to see the destruction of reef as “a microcosm of the fate of the planet”, which in turn Wright saw as “a microcosm of the new battle within ourselves”

THE REEF 2015, Porcelain bowl, thrown, underglaze, overglaze and gold lustre decoration, H 50 cm.

Endangered Judith Wright’s interest in native plants develops in her early days at Mt Tamborine, inspired by her friend Kathleen McArthur, native plant gardener, educationist and wildflower illustrator, with whom in 1962 Wright formed the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland.

This society rapidly becomes an activist group that campaigns to save regions increasingly under sand mining or development threat from Cooloola to the Great Barrier Reef, including Fraser Island and the Daintree.

ENDANGERED FLORA 2015, Porcelain bowl, thrown, underglaze, overglaze and gold lustre decoration, H 60 cm.

Birds Judith Wright’s poetry is full of her observations of birds. She used birds as an emotional marker – the birds reflected her own emotional response to the world. Things she might not choose to say directly, she was able to express through her observations and thoughts about the world of birds.

The beauty in the world was reflected in bird song and the exotic feather colours and the encroaching of humans on their territory and the deep sense of loss and sorry as the songs were silenced by their death and removal.

They represented the richness of the world outside. They asked nothing of her. In one piece of writing she talked of flocks of birds that come and eat all of the ripe fruit from her orchard . . . and she said the loss of the fruit was a small price to pay for the wonder of and joy to be had from experiencing the beauty of the birds who visited her.

BIRDS 2015, Porcelain bowl, thrown, underglaze, overglaze and gold lustre decoration, H 60 cm.

Song Birds of Tamborine Mountain Judith Wright’s daughter Meredith writes that the bird poems were written at “a precious and dearlywon time of warmth and bounty to counterbalance at last what felt, in contrast, the chilly dearth and difficulty of her earlier years”.

McKinney goes on to say that “many of these poems have a newly relaxed, almost conversational tone and rhythm, an often humorous ease and an intimacy of voice that surely reflects the new intimacies and joys of her life”.

BIRDS 2015, Porcelain slipcast, black underglaze illustrations, glazed interior and polished exterior, H 60 cm.

Fragility Wright’s poems on birds highlight her concerns regarding the many threats posed to environmental conservation and the inherent fragility of the natural world.

Kerry Turnbull Curator Reminiscence

FEATHER SERIES 2015, Porcelain bowl, thrown and altered, neriage technique, polished exterior, decal feather decoration, W 25 cm.

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Aboriginal Heritage

Judith Wright saw aboriginal stockman as a young girl on her parent’s property in the New England highlands. She became aware that they were treated as “other than us” and were in some way outsiders (perhaps as she felt she was).

This was not an obvious thing while was a child – it was just something that stayed with her. In “South of My Days” Wright calls New England her “blood’s country . . . full of old stories that still go walking in my sleep”.

When as an adult, she came to thinking about society, she directly engaged with aboriginal communities to understand their culture and the issues that affected them. This fuelled a growing sense of injustice in the way Europeans were treating the aboriginal cultures and people.

ORIGINAL CULTURE 2015, Porcelain bowl, thrown, black underglaze, terrisigillata and gold lustre decoration, H 62 cm.

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Reminiscence

I was born into a coloured country; spider-webs in dew on feathered grass, mountains blue as wrens, valleys cupping sky in like a cradle, christmas-beetles winged with buzzing opal; finches, robins, gang-gangs, pardalotes tossed the blossom in its red-streaked trees.

My father had a tale of an old neighbour, the kind of reminiscence one inherits.

Asked for difficult detail in stories at those bygone ample crowded teas, (cup and saucer balanced on his knees): “Madam, you might as well ask me to enumerate the parrots.”

Hundreds, thousands, birds uncountable babbling, shrieking, swirling all around – skiesful, treesful: lorikeets, rosellas, lorilets and cockatiels and lowries, Red-backed, Ring-necked, Orange-breasted, Turquoise, Purple-crowned, Red-collared, Rainbow, Varied, Scarlet-chested, Blue-browned, Scalybreasted, Swift and Night and Paradise and Crimson, Twenty-eight and Red-capped, Musk and Elegant I give up. But see him sitting stiffly in a basket-chair circled by their millions, formally stirring three of sugar in his tea in an afternoon I never knew making conversation with the ladies.

Not a flock of parrots left to number.

Just a picture, fifty years behind, left embroidered on my childish mind.

Parrots! They were something to remember.

Reminiscence, A Tribute to Judith Wright was a collaboration of the work of two artists, Fiona Rafferty and Frances Smith.