2017 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award Catalogue

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mayor’s welcome.

sponsor’s foreword.

Greater Shepparton City Council is delighted to present the 2017 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award (SMFACA) in partnership with the Sidney Myer Fund. This year’s award comes at a pivotal time for the Shepparton Art Museum (SAM). Now in its 80th year, the Museum has shown its standing as a leading art museum not only in the Greater Shepparton region, but nationally and internationally.

The Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award (SMFACA) is one of the most prestigious awards in the visual arts in Australia. It allows some of our finest contemporary ceramic artists to develop new work, and it enhances SAM’s Collection, widely regarded as one of the most important ceramic collections in the nation. Every two years this acquisitive prize, valued at $50,000, sees innovative new work in the ceramics field enter the SAM Collection.

Beginning in 1991 as the Sidney Myer Fund Australia Day Ceramic Award, both SAM (then the Shepparton Art Gallery) and the Sidney Myer Fund have tenaciously fostered the development of this renowned ceramic collection. The Sidney Myer Fund’s support of this Award has given the career of many artists a real boost with its substantial prize money.

Just a few of the better known winning artists who have had very distinguished careers include Deborah Halpern, Gwyn Hansson-Piggott and Stephen Benwell. As a direct outcome of the relationship between the Sidney Myer Fund and SAM through 26 years, over 175 works have been acquired, creating a diverse and dynamic collection of works by both Australian and international artists.

I would like to acknowledge the generosity of Carrillo Gantner and the Sidney Myer Fund in the delivery of this award. It is through the vision and involvement of organisations like the Sidney Myer Fund and people like Carrillo Gantner that SAM continues to grow. This generosity is expressed not only through fiscal gifts, but through the continued gift of time, energy and donations to the SAM Collection.

This generosity, of course, is also expressed in our community. No matter how large or small, SAM is built on stories of Shepparton and beyond, and SAM is only as strong as the stories that it is built on. From the original purchase of John Rowell’s A Wet Day at Tallarook (n.d.) by Sir John Longstaff in 1936, SAM has developed one of, if not the most significant collections of ceramics in regional Australia. More recently, it has also been developing a collection of contemporary art and has just begun developing its collection of Australian Indigenous art from the region.

It is a rich collection, with a focus on ceramics that is only bolstered by the acquisitive Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramics Award.

Greater Shepparton City Council recognises the importance of culture within our local and national fabric, and the stories that a museum like SAM can keep. Until the new SAM opens, it’s business as usual, so we hope to see visitors from Shepparton and beyond appreciate and think about these stories. I would like to thank the artists: Glenn Barkley, Karen Black, Laith McGregor, Jenny Orchard and Yasmin Smith for being part of this story. We also encourage you to participate and be part of SAM. A place that recognises the immense role that arts and culture plays in the wider fabric of society is a place that can look at itself truthfully and move forward into a bright future.

Dinny Adem Mayor Greater Shepparton City Council

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Melbourne in 1899 at the age of 21, he wanted to give back to the Australian community in which he himself had prospered. We are proud to be associated with an exhibition that understands, explores and challenges the possibilities of ceramics and art making in our contemporary world.

Shepparton is soon to make an even bigger national impact through the new SAM and we are delighted to be linked with an art institution that fosters such innovation in practice and with artists of such wonderful ability and curiosity. In partnership with SAM and the people of the Goulburn Valley, the Sidney Myer Fund is very proud to present the 2017 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award.

Carrillo Gantner AO Chairman, Sidney Myer Fund

In 2015, after many transitions, the Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award was reconfigured to take entries from Australian citizens or permanent residents only. The focus on Australian artists has allowed SAM to collect what is important to the culture both of Shepparton and of Australia.

This year’s exhibition features the work of five artists. Each has their own unique approach to the ceramic medium, pushing (and pulling) it in new directions, which makes the exhibition all the more exciting. Glenn Barkley, Karen Black, Jenny Orchard, Laith McGregor and Yasmin Smith have each produced outstanding new bodies of work for this exhibition, and the trustees of the Sidney Myer Fund congratulate them on developing such astute and adventurous new artworks.

We also join you all in congratulating the winner of this year’s Award, Jenny Orchard, whose years of work in the medium have culminated in an artwork titled The Imagined Possibility of Unity (2017). The work uses experimental glazes, totemic forms and high-frequency colours to examine both the medium, and the intersections of science, the natural world and mythology to speak to both ethical and ecological concerns.

The Sidney Myer Fund was established by the will of Sidney Myer when he died in 1934. Having arrived penniless in

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director’s foreword.

SAM is delighted to present the 2017 Sidney Myer Australian Ceramic Award, now widely recognized as Australia’s most significant ceramic Award. Since becoming the Sidney Myer Fund Award in 1991, it has consistently attracted outstanding artists working in ceramics. Because the winning entry is acquired, the Award has substantially added to the Collection of the Shepparton Art Museum (SAM). And so the Collection continues to grow, maintaining its reputation as the definitive collection of Australian ceramics in regional Australia, from first European settlement to contemporary day.

This edition of the Sidney Myer Australian Ceramic Award features five new projects by leading contemporary artists: Glenn Barkley, Karen Black, Laith McGregor, Jenny Orchard and Yasmin Smith. Each of these artists has expanded our understanding of the ceramics medium, to incorporate painting, installation, scent, and more. They reflect an eclectic array of art historic references. They create transcendent immersive experiences that also engage directly with the times in which we live. I thank each and every one of these outstanding artists for their extraordinary work, their generosity, and the enthusiasm and engagement with which they have embraced this opportunity.

Each of the five shortlisted artists was selected by the judges for the ambition and scope of their proposed projects, that engage with themes and ideas central to our contemporary world. They also all have sustained a contemporary engagement with the ceramics medium. Their work extends our understanding of the possibilities and sheer technical marvelousness that artists can find in the ceramics medium.

Though all have created wonderful new works, the downside of an award is that it can only be given to one winner. Our task of selecting a winner was not easy, and took hours of robust discussion, which are testament to the quality of the work. Our final decision was unanimous, and I would particularly like to thank my fellow Judges, Jason Smith, Director of Geelong Art Gallery; and Jacqueline Doughty, Curatorial Manager, The Ian Potter Museum of Art. In judging the award, they drew on their extensive knowledge of artists, art history, and the medium of ceramics –both past and present. I could not have wished for better colleagues.

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The Sidney Myer Fund has lent its name to the Award since 1991. As the Award has grown, over 26 years, so too has the support of the Sidney Myer Fund. I once again express my deepest gratitude to The Sidney Myer Fund as the Principal Sponsor and Major Partner of the award.

Enormous thanks as well to the Fund’s Chair Carrillo Gantner, its Board, its CEO Leonard Vary, and staff for their unswerving commitment to the support of exciting and sometimes risk-taking artistic endeavours.

This year King & Wilson Essential Art Services became SAM’s Transport Partner for this major exhibition. We thank them for their support, and look forward to working together in the future.

One of the great joys as a Director is sharing the work that we do with visiting artists and colleagues. It allows me to shamelessly show off our marvelous Collection, our exhibitions and programs, and our staff who work towards all of these activities. I congratulate and thank SAM Senior Curator, Anna Briers, for her masterful co-ordination of this year’s Award and subsequent exhibition. Thanks also go to Janet Burchill and Tamas Malya, for their meticulous installation, and the way they work with and support the artists. And Lilian Yong, SAM Registrar/Collections Manager was tireless in coordinating a not inconsiderable amount of artwork. All of SAM’s staff are involved in each of our exhibitions, whether more visibly or behind the scenes.

I thank each and every one of them for their enthusiasm, professionalism, and shared vision.

a new innovation, which supports local VCE art students to work with artists, and to be supported by SAM staff to extend their own work in the environment of an art museum.

SAM is proudly supported by Greater Shepparton City Council. We acknowledge and thank our government partners, Creative Victoria, for their support of SAM’s exhibitions and programs, along with all our sponsors, media partners, donors and patrons. Without them, we could not achieve the bold and ambitious exhibitions and programs for communities and artists that are SAM’s potter’s mark.

We look forward to seeing you at SAM again soon.

Dr Rebecca Coates Director Shepparton Art Museum

Another of a Director’s joys is to welcome visitors to SAM from near and far, to involve and inspire them, and to help them share their experiences with others. This publication is one opportunity for visitors to extend their knowledge and understanding of ceramics and the Award. It features essays by writer and curator, Julie Ewington and Anna Briers, seductive installation images, and details of each artist and their work.

SAM also involves visitors through an exciting range of educational activities and public programs developed around each exhibition. Our SAM Scholars Program is

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the apotheosis of dirt.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…the earth under our feet is the stuff from which we come and to which we return. It covers our planet and sustains us. (Common as dirt, as they say…)

As it happens, earth, in the form of clay, is among the most ancient of all materials used for making objects, whether vessels or bricks, or religious offerings, or art. Only shells, it seems, given the most recent archaeological discoveries, are older in human usage.1 How curious, then, that in the early twenty-first century a specialised branch of the culture (turf) wars has erupted over this ancient and ubiquitous material. All because clay has come back into favour again with contemporary artists, and in the contemporary art world.2 The last decade has seen a resurgence of ceramic sculpture in art exhibitions across the world, including in Australia: SAM’s 2015 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award was awarded to Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s exuberant provocative figures. Nithiyendran’s deliberate naughtiness took two forms: sexual assertion embodied in the phallic forms of the figures, but also the pretence of care-lessness in making, with roughly shaped forms, sliding glazes, clashing colour combinations. It was a virtuoso turn, successfully presented as de-skilling. Some took that particular bait. Nithiyendran notes that ‘I’ve gotten flack from potters — who are unsurprisingly older, white men — who think I’m shitting on ‘their’ medium… But that’s kind of thrilling.’3 Indeed: it proves Nithiyendran’s proposition.

Muddy stuff, clay. Or is it? This supposed opposition between studio pottery and ceramic sculpture is, in reality, beside the point. It is founded on a conflation between a raw material, clay, and the artistic practices that employ it.

And given the ubiquity of clay in contemporary practice — in pottery, sculpture, jewellery, installation — no one field, or practitioner, holds the mandate to authorize its correct use. Neither advocates of sculptural ceramics, enjoying once again a moment of international art world currency, nor defenders of the studio pottery tradition, who today are rightly concerned for the future of their discipline at a time of contracting craft education, are in a position to be authoritative on this score. The uses to which clay has been put run the gamut from eighteenth-century Meissen figurines to Bauhaus experimentation; from the magnificent terracotta sculptural suites by Renaissance sculptors Niccolò dell’Arca and Alfonso Lombardi, in the church of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna in Italy, to tiny terracotta yoghourt pots used at Indian feasts, made only to be smashed and recycled. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

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Thinking about the wider world, clay appears in fields as various as architecture, landscape design (and gardening), occupational therapy, dentistry, plumbing, and electrical technologies. And, importantly, in Aboriginal culture, on ceremonially painted bodies, tools, bark paintings, and contemporary canvases from remote Western Australia, and now, since Thancoupie, and the Hermannsburg Potters, in the form of pots. All these uses signal the extraordinary versatility of the material, and honour the human ingenuity that breathes so many different forms of life into it. I use that metaphor advisedly: for clay is only dirt, an inert material, and has no life in art or craft without human intervention.

Ceramics, on the other hand, (or pottery, if you prefer the unpretentious English word, as Kirsten Coelho does)4 and sculpture made with ceramics, are long-lived and extraordinarily rich practices in making, with numerous histories, skills and protocols in cultures across the world.

Which brings me to Shepparton. SAM’s history of ceramics collecting, and its Award exhibitions ongoing since 1991, amounts to the most consistent (and considerable) record of the development of contemporary ceramics, both functional and sculptural, in this country. It is a proud achievement.

Close scrutiny of the collection and the acquisitions made from the prize exhibitions reveals the complex changes in emphasis and interest over the years on the part of Australia’s ceramic artists (and international artists, too, when the prize was open to artists from other countries). A compelling instance of SAM’s productively agnostic attitude to clay sits at the heart of the collection. John Perceval’s Delinquent Angel (1961) is something of a SAM mascot. It’s a little ripper. But when I made my first pilgrimage to Shepparton, decades ago, my heart was won by his ravishing sunset-hued Teaset circa 1955: it’s on the cover of Shepparton’s 1987 publication Australian Ceramics. But sculptural ceramics are not recent arrivals in Shepparton, nor is this debate about the direction and future of ceramics a new one: ‘Funk art’ became important in Australian ceramics in the early 1970s, and to underline the point, practitioners like Joan Grounds or Margaret Dodd, who trained as artists, have worked with many media, but first became known for working with clay. (‘Ashes to ashes, funk to funky’, David Bowie sang in 1980.)5

wider context: the current passion for clay signals a hunger for living with objects that are immediate, palpable, sensual and, most importantly, are experienced in the actual rather than the digital world. This desire supports and makes sense of, SAM’s vigourous turn in recent years to engaging with contemporary art in its broadest manifestations, which includes what Rebecca Coates has dubbed ‘the expanded field of ceramics’.6 Given SAM’s history, and its outstanding collection, this expansive view not only encompasses ceramics but privileges it.

In 2008 the distinguished artist Ah Xian wrote in his essay for the SMFACA catalogue that ‘earth, water, fire’ are the three elements that together constitute the miracle of ceramics.7 (He might also have included air, the oxygen that fans the fire.) Of these perhaps fire is definitive: it’s the essential transformative power, which must be harnessed by human ingenuity in order to turn the raw into the cooked, to borrow Claude Levi-Strauss’s famous phrase. With every kiln firing, for whatever purpose, heat and smoke rise, like sacred offerings once did, to the heavens above. That seems a mundane conclusion to what is, every time, a technological miracle. For me, though, what is truly wonderful is the human passion for making with clay. In all its forms. All of which are to be revered.

Notes 1. Recent finds in sites from Tanzania to Israel suggest using shells for jewellery can be dated at between 70,000 to 100,000 years ago. See http: news. nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060622-jewelry_2.html.

2. See Camille Morineau and Lucia Pesapane( curators), Céramix: Art and ceramics from Rodin to Schütte, Bonnefantenmuseum (Maastricht), Cité de la céramique (Sèvres ) and la Maison Rouge (Paris), 2016, for an authoritative account of modern and contemporary artists working with ceramics; the neologistic title indicates the exhibition’s breadth. Glenn Barkley, included in the current exhibition, has been a notable recent Australian advocate for contemporary artists using clay; see ‘So Hot Right Now? Contemporary Ceramics and Contemporary Art’, Artand, Issue No. 51.4, 2014, and his guest edited The Journal of Australian Ceramics, Vol. 55, No 1, April 2016.

3. See http://www.buro247.com.au/culture-lifestyle/arts/meet-ramesh-the-badboy-of-australian-ceramics.html 4. Australian winner of the 2012 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award.

5. Previous SMFACA catalogues bear witness to the longevity of this debate: see John Chalke, the Canadian-based judge, in the 2000 catalogue; Ah Xian, the judge of the 2008 award, rapped fellow ceramicists over the knuckles for their narrow vision and ‘self-satisfied state’; in the 2012 SMFACA catalogue, Julian Bowron referred to debates within the ceramics community about current directions.

6. Rebecca Coates, ‘Ceramics in the Expanded Field’, 2015 SMFACA exhibition catalogue, Shepparton Art Museum, 2015, p.6. See also Peter Timms about this realignment of the SAM collection, in (edited Rebecca Coates & Sarah Gory) 80/80: Eighty Years of SAM. The Collection. Shepparton: SAM, 2017, p.12.

7. See Ah Xian, ‘Cerartmix: Judge’s Statement’, Shepparton Art Gallery: SMFACA, 2008, p.5.

Julie Ewington Independent writer, curator and broadcaster

I welcome clay’s many purposes, particularly today, when the resurgence in all its uses — from commissioned tableware for stylish restaurants to the recent popularity with artists — suggests a renewed drive to explore the immediacy and malleability that is clay’s special gift. This must be set in a 11

beyond materiality: histories re-thought and re-imagined.

The 2017 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award (SMFACA) showcases five ambitious, newly commissioned bodies of work in the ceramic medium by five shortlisted finalists. As a biennial prize, the SMFACA enables us to reflect on the state of ceramics in a contemporary context.

The artists in this exhibition employ a diverse array of methodologies, where the clay medium is harnessed to explore a variety of artistic and conceptual ideas. Yasmin Smith uses a cross-disciplinary approach - her investigations around clay and glaze reveal the social histories and biochemistries of place. By contrast, Glenn Barkley and Karen Black look to the lineages of the ceramic form and its museological traditions of display. While Barkley references botanical motifs, literature and the Internet, Black creates symbols of endurance and survival that speak about female experience and the global refugee crisis. Looking inwards, Jenny Orchard and Laith McGregor tap into their imaginations for source material. For Orchard, fantastical hybrid creatures explore environmental concerns around genetic modification gone awry, while McGregor draws on personal nostalgia as a means of excavating subconscious memory.

Yasmin Smith works primarily in ceramics. She is known for her large-scale site referential installations that often involve laborious production processes and locally sourced materials. Her research-based approach centres on scientific experiments with clay and glaze. Through these methodologies, she uncovers both physical and chemical compositions and examines the social histories of place.

Smith’s major installation Open Vase Central Leader Widow Maker (2017) consists of over 150 slip cast ceramic tree branches that emulate the forms of three species sourced from Shepparton. Forming an apex that resembles a humpy or domestic lean-to, the branches fit within the oscillating grooves of the corrugated iron clad walls. In the centre of the room, an additional heap of gnarled branches rests on a crumpled canvas tarpaulin.

Using labor-intensive production processes, Smith gathered and transported over a tonne of tree branches from Shepparton to her studio in regional NSW. This haul included two species of commercial fruit trees - Sundowner apple and Beurré Bosc pear gifted from local orchards, plus the native River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) sourced from beside the Goulburn River, where the artist camped for a 12

time. The title of this work denotes pruning techniques used by local orchardists: the pear branches have been trimmed in Open Vase style to enable the maximum filtration of sunlight; Central Leader refers to the conical shape of apple tree pruning; and Widow Maker to the often unexpected natural shedding of branches by the native eucalypt. The project involved extensive research as well as community and indigenous consultation, an undertaking that significantly informed and enriched the resulting installation.

Smith’s practice-led research pivots around the unveiling of social histories by revealing the chemical makeup of place.

Through scientific experimentation using a triaxial blend, each of these branches are glazed with wood ash derived from the same trees. The resulting glazes reveal the unique chemical makeup of each tree, a product of its own environmental system. Smith observes that the ‘Sundowner apple reflected a light iron soil content giving it its yellow colour. The 100 year old Beurré Bosc pears revealed copper oxide through its green hue, evidence of the fungicidal copper spray in the wood. While the River Red Gum held a mix of manganese dioxide and iron oxide, giving it a much deeper brown…this was intensified by the inclusion of water from the Goulburn River’.1 Chemical soil composition, irrigation or flooding, pruning techniques, exposure to sunlight and the age of the tree are all vital factors that result in different glazes.

Glaze in ceramic traditions is usually employed for functional or decorative purposes. In Open Vase Central Leader Widow Maker Smith subverts this approach, and glaze is harnessed for more investigative means that evidence the biochemical traces of the natural world and the residue of human cultivation of the land. Moreover, her purist approach of minimal intervention celebrates the natural attributes of her materials.

Smith’s lightness of touch and formalist approach recalls the legacies of Minimalism, an American art movement (1960s-1970s) characterised by repetitive seriality, structural refinement and highly reductive methodology. This is evidenced by the restrained constituent parts of this work: its repetitive linear branches, geometric tarpaulin and corrugated iron panelling which follows the gallery architecture.

Open Vase Central Leader Widow Maker is a site-referential installation that responds to the context of Shepparton and its identity as the ‘fruit bowl’ of Victoria. Known for its 13

plentiful orchards and rich, well-irrigated soil, Shepparton is a diverse multicultural community of First Nations people, early settlers, migrants and itinerant fruit pickers. Reasons for resettlement are varied: some came to escape persecution or oppressive conditions in their place of origin, and many travelled to seek employment, find shelter and create a new home. Stories of displacement and resettlement are central to the histories of the region, and inexorably bound up in a relationship with the land.

Smith’s provisional arrangement seems to imply some future utilitarian function as wood, ceramics, corrugated iron and canvas are materials that might be employed to construct a home or temporary shelter. Their use spans cultures, continents and eras. The history of European ceramic production in Australia dates back to the First Fleet, who landed at Botany Bay in 1788 with brick moulds to build houses for colonial settlers. Corrugated iron is a quintessentially Australian material, and Smith’s use of it also recalls the residences that Yorta Yorta people constructed on local riverbanks after the Cummeragunja walkoff in 19392. The Flats between Shepparton and Mooroopna are still a place where campers, itinerant fruit pickers and homeless people find shelter and reside.

Glenn Barkley has also produced a work that is sitereferential, pointing back in part to Shepparton’s Australian Botanic Gardens and SAM’s Ceramics Collection. Barkley is a gardener, curator and artist with a research interest in the histories of ceramics and their traditions of making. It follows then that his reference points would be an amalgam of horticulture, popular culture, literary sources and art history.

In Garden Garniture (2017), Barkley mines the histories of the ceramic form and its traditions of museological display.

Two formal arrangements of pots and vases rest on plinths in a linear fashion. Barkley co-opts 17th to 19th century display conventions of the garniture: an assembly of similar decorative objects intended to be displayed together, that might be found in either a museum vitrine or on a domestic mantelpiece. A monumental circular wall work comprised of a dense matrix of ceramic text and small circular tokens is installed on a neon yellow wall. Opposite, a series of framed collages read as preliminary sketches that have informed his ideas.

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Barkley is an artistic bowerbird who entangles ceramic histories with personal narratives. Conflating time and place, this body of work displays a distinctive mash-up of influences.

The collages reveal scrawled lyrics from 90s grunge band Pearl Jam, juxtaposed with vessels and busts from classical antiquity. By contrast, the pots and tokens include stamped heart-shaped indentations from a ceremonial wedding pot made by the artist’s mother-in-law; chrysanthemum patterns borrowed from Korean slipware; and rope designs from Jōmon Pottery, an ancient Japanese tradition characterised by the rope-patterned impressions on the vessel’s surface.

Reoccurring seashell motifs recall wood-firing techniques where shells are used as a barrier to stop the pot from adhering to the kiln. Shells are also evocative of midcentury modern Lustreware by commercial potteries such as Darbyshire in Perth, examples of which are held in SAM’s Ceramics Collection. Barkley cannibalises these traditions, harnessing them for their conceptual and expressive potential.

His self-consciously naive art style embraces irregularity, imperfection and the emotive qualities this can infer.

Barkley has a maximalist aesthetic with a healthy dose of horror vacui. These effervescent pots and wall works reveal intensely patterned surfaces through applied text and jewellike tokens rendered using coloured glazes. As messages on bottles, his encoded pots explore the possibilities and limitations of language and semiotics, sometimes citing pop song lyrics or literary quotations. Spelt out in hand rolled clay letters on the wall, Barkley has reworked a protest slogan from the Situationist International, a revolutionary movement that reached its pinnacle in May 1968 in Paris, France; ‘Under the cobble stones – the beach,’3 becomes ‘Under the dump a garden’. This phrase can be read as a rethinking of the historic statement that points back to Shepparton’s Australian Botanic Gardens, a recently developed site established on previous land-fill. Another quotation from a pot in the centre of the garniture has been borrowed from 20th century poet T.S Eliot’s Burnt Norton (1935) which is set in a rose garden.

‘Words strain, crack and sometimes break,4 speaks about humanity’s relationship with time, the universe and the divine.

Barkley’s use of these texts hints at utopian ideas as well as the ephemerality of the natural world– Garden Garniture suggests fertile possibilities for renewal, nurtured from urban wastelands and social disorder.

Botanical motifs such as seedpods and cacti, Victorian topiary and hedging are also suggested through the textures of

Barkley’s forms. Using an array of pottery techniques such as coiling, slab building and pinch pot methods, indentations from fingers and tools produce ridges and recessions, puncturing the surface of the clay ground. These rhythmical gestures cajole the medium into resembling the pores of human skin, or surfaces that might be found in earth’s vibrant microcosm.

Karen Black is known for her gestural approach to surface across painting and ceramics. Her works explore politically charged themes around war, and female driven narratives across time and place. Her installation Temporary Arrangements (2017) has been conceived as an exploration of materiality and form, while functioning as a symbol of resilience and endurance.5 Black’s ceramic vessels have been mathematically up-scaled from third and fourth century glassware seen by the artist in an archaeological museum in Istanbul. Roman in origin, these receptacles were used to store an array of precious oils and perfumes used by all members of society. Their reproduction reflects the ongoing reiteration and reinterpretation of glass and ceramic vessels across the continuum of history. Some of these forms are just as likely to be found in a department store like Myer as they are in a museum context. Black considers them enduring forms that are inherently political, having survived centuries of conflict.

At first glance, Black’s surfaces could be read in a formal way, as beautiful self-referential abstractions about colour and form. Here the surface of the clay body is equivalent to the canvas ground in her paintings. Hand coloured slip is applied in gestural brushstrokes, and daubs of paint are allowed to weep and cascade downwards. Closer inspection reveals the suggestion of faces, or the silhouettes of figures clothed in hijabs - some stooped in grief, some gathered in groups, and some lying motionless. Black’s artistic lineage is not, in fact, mid twentieth century abstraction, but the subject matter of German Social Realist painter Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) and Francisco Goya (1746-1828), both of whom depicted sombre and sometimes harrowing scenes of human suffering in times of war.6 These sculptures function as memorials of survival, reflecting the endurance of Syrian refugees with whom Black worked with in Reyhanlı, the border town for the Aleppo crossing into Turkey. The layered surfaces convey trans-historical narratives about female experience, as well as feminist critique around

the control and exchange of woman’s bodies as a chattel.

A large-scale, predominantly yellow vessel with a fluted top conveys the graphic scene of a female refugee giving birth in a warzone. The ancient form of the Persian tear catcher (a device used to gauge a wife’s commitment to her husband by measuring the volume of tears she had shed) is realised in monumental proportions. Forms and details also suggest adornments and womens’ bodies more overtly - hips, busts and pregnant bellies feature prominently. A matt-black glaze on a pedestal resembles the texture of a black leather handbag; a viscous looking glaze infers bodily fluid or mother’s milk; a length of grey-blonde human hair resembles a tassel that might attach to a perfume atomizer. Resting severed on a plinth it could alternatively be read as some kind of trophy, a sinister souvenir from a sexual conquest or a relic from a battle zone.

These large-scale vessels are stacked in provisional groupings atop bulbous supports and geometric plinths. Tentatively placed, they are spatially responsive and could be configured in myriad other ways. This sense of impermanence is captured in the work’s title - Temporary Arrangements, reflecting the precarious placement of the ceramic forms, as well as the social displacement experienced by millions of women within the ongoing global refugee crisis.

In this installation, the gallery architecture combined with the sculptural qualities of the ceramic forms and their plinths, produces an immersive quality that spatializes Black’s painterly concerns into a three dimensional context. A greyblue curvilinear plinth suggests the gesture of a brushstroke, while another flat cylindrical form resembles a daub of paint that might be found on a canvas. These geometrical shapes have been applied as they would in a painting, to inform and unify the composition of the room and as directional devices to navigate the viewer’s experience.

A subtle olfactory intervention also permeates the space, as Black has detonated an array of scented oils from Egypt, chosen for their symbolic associations. Using a balance of musk, oud, rose and frankincense combined with Australian sandalwood, a harmonious chordal structure has been composed between base, mid and high notes that changes dependent on the viewer’s location in the space. According to Black, the aroma of rose oil has signified secrecy since Roman times. Suspended above a meeting table, it symbolises the freedom to speak plainly and without repercussion.7 Art has forever been utilised as a platform to elicit debate and 15

discussion about the state of the world. At a time when displaced refugees and migration are polarising subjects in Australia and indeed the world, these works enable a crucial dialogue by addressing pertinent themes.

Jenny Orchard’s ceramic totems and creatures are characterised by eccentric forms and complex surfaces.

This is apparent in her high frequency colours and patterns, experimental glazes and hybrid assemblages. Drawing from the natural world, mythology and imagined narratives, her repertoire is underpinned by ecological and ethical concerns The Imagined Possibility of Unity, (2017) furthers the thematic investigations that have driven her practice for four decades.

A strange cast of zoological and animal forms populate the gallery space. Some are striking in scale, reaching skywards at up to two metres high, while others skulk at ground level, like amoeba awaiting their next evolution. Orchard’s figurative creatures resemble genetic amalgams or medieval bestiaries that might have escaped from Dr Moreau’s laboratory.

With beaks, tusks and grinning teeth, some have lips on lumpen thighs, while others are scaled and claw-footed, with tentacles and cyclopean eyes. These chimeras are a fantastical mash-up of all the creatures from Noah’s Ark, and possibly some that never made it on board.

A cacophony of colour, Orchard’s surfaces are highly ornamental with painterly gestures and stylised mark marking. Textured patterns are incised or stamped onto the clay ground as impressions while in other areas, leaf-like forms have been sculpted in three-dimensional relief. While the work appears to relate to decorative pottery traditions, it is underpinned by a more serious intent.

The artist’s deep concerns around the environmental impact of genetic modification and industrial farming techniques are central to the work’s narrative. It is through these cheerful looking mutations that Orchard explores the idea of biological experimentation gone awry.8 Much like plants that self-pollinate, her Zookiniis or Interbeings are conceived as hybrid sexual entities. While some have pregnant bellies, others sprout uncanny botanical forms or protuberances from displaced orifices. Orchard’s intention is to generate an empathetic response to their joyous otherly forms.

Reminiscent of the fluid and composite nature of her creatures’ identities, Orchard’s clay forms are often constructed as modular units. Built in sections and stacked 16

around an internal spoke or armature, they allow flexibility and transformation where ceramic components from previous decades of sculptural practise can be re-employed and resurrected to build entirely new forms. For this major installation, Orchard has reintroduced found materials that include crystal chandeliers, plastic raffia tassels and a red duster that has been reincarnated as a feathered plume for the head of a bird. These inclusions allow her to expand on the possibilities offered by the ceramic medium, entering into a dialogue with other materials and their inherited associations.

personality, one that is comprised of multiple fragments and possibly inhabits manifold worlds.

Orchard’s work employs a variety of technical processes belonging to both sculptural and ceramics traditions. Fine details from fruit and vegetables such as durians and chokos have been captured through plaster mould making and slip-casting methods. Using earthenware and midrange clay, her hand-built forms have undergone multiple glazings and firings. Embracing chance and happy accidents, she experiments constantly with combinations of iron, copper, manganese and cobalt.

Along with the signs and symbols of magic, these masks and figurative forms reflect personal narratives and childhood nostalgia. Central to this work is the memory of an imaginary friend called Waterface, whose apparition has been the impetus for this recent branch of McGregor’s practice.

Whether this spectre is a ghost, protective guardian, or visitor from some distant past or future is uncertain.

Other components of the work relate to McGregor’s two grandfathers, one a pipe-smoker and the other a magician with a charismatic penchant for telling tall tales. These anecdotal details play out in the forms of pipes carved from corn, the inclusion of magician’s wands and a large scale wall drawing painted in clay slip derived from the remnants of his production process. The life-sized figure on the carpet is clothed in McGregor’s garments akin to a strange doppelganger, self-portrait or effigy. Adorned in Rudraksha prayer beads, his face is concealed with a silver clay mask.

This cobalt pigment has been subsequently translated into the backdrop of the installation and paired with a black and white checked linoleum floor chosen for its optical quality. This is a unique effect that borrows from one of Orchard’s enduring influences: The Memphis Group (198187), an Italian design movement known for their fusion of unconventional forms with the wild geometry of Art Deco, popular culture and the candy-coloured palette of the 1980s.

As an artist who commenced her practice in this decade, these influences continue to inform her work.

The shifting phantasmagorical quality of McGregor’s biro drawings is evoked in this site-specific installation that is comprised of myriad elements. Entitled Pipe Dream (2017), a series of whimsical clay masks and stacked totems inhabit the walls, while a magician’s hat dwells opposite. A life-sized figure rests on a Persian carpet that appears to be levitating above the gallery floor, while the suggestion of a portal to another realm has been applied in green chalkboard paint.

Laith McGregor garners from his subconscious for artistic source material. His body of work for the 2017 SMFACA coalesces around childhood fantasy and nostalgia, while exploring the intersection of magic and reality, fiction and nonfiction.

Created in the ethereal tones of silver and white combined with black and green, the clay masks have been pinched, pummelled and formed through the gestural imprints of the artist’s hand. Finger indentations produce facial features that have a shifting, morphing quality akin to moving water. Clay has been extracted to create holes for eyes - remaining as negative spaces or voids of possibility that might transport the wearer who looks through them.

Laith McGregor has a multidisciplinary practise spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics and video. His figurative works often explore reoccurring themes of self-representation and portraiture, and their progression from ancient cultures through to the present. McGregor is particularly known for his biro pen illustrations, which fuse photo-realistic portraits with excerpts of text, pop cultural cues and mythology. This visual and conceptual layering of material results in an oscillating depiction of the self or

While this naïve art style seems contrary to McGregor’s scrupulous drawings, his approach and choice of clay has an inherent logic: the raw materiality lends itself - like no other medium - to the manifestation of three-dimensional matter.

Channelled through the intent of the artist, ‘thought forms’ are willed into being, and use of the primordial medium becomes an invocation, a ‘psychic medium’ in another sense of the word. This production process reflects the role of the artist in many ancient cultures as shaman or conjuror, one

that is able to unlock doors to parallel worlds. A archetypal illusionist perhaps, who appears to wear many masks, and through a sleight of hand can discard them as effortlessly as a winter coat, or a magician who astral travels on a levitating Persian carpet.

Each of the finalists in the 2017 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award expand on the ceramic medium, pushing it beyond the bounds of its materiality and utility.

These artists re-think historic approaches and imagine new possibilities, exploring the forms and methodologies of pottery traditions. The functional and decorative value of surface ornament and glaze is employed to reveal and examine global political narratives and broader artistic dialogues. Themes include concerns around genetic modification; the global refugee crisis; literary references; the unconscious; and representations of place and Country.

The artists often take an installation-based or spatial approach that is at times site-referential, and always site responsive or immersive. They adopt sculptural techniques and integrate unconventional materials, extending the possibilities of clay and glaze into a contemporary context, in tempo with a post-medium art world.

Anna Briers SAM Senior Curator 1. Interview with the artist on the work Open Vase Central Leader (2017), May 2017.

2. The Cummeragunja walk off (1939) was the first major political protest

by Aboriginal people post-colonisation, who left harsh labour and living conditions on the Cummeragunja Misson in NSW. Crossing the Murray River into Victoria, they established settlements in Barmah and in the bushland of ‘The Flats’ between Shepparton and Mooroopna. See https://waynera.files. wordpress.com/2010/10/cummerawalkoff-doc.pdf accessed June 2017.

3. The Situationist International (founded in 1957 by Guy Debord) played a central role in the student led revolution in Paris, 1968. The statement refers to sand that was found beneath cobble stones that were dug up to build barricades and throw at police. See Osborne, Peter. Conceptual Art, Appropriation, Intervention, Everyday - Guy Debord, Phaidon Press Inc, New York. (2002 and 2005) p.240.

4. Excerpt from Burnt Norton, the first poem in Four Quartets by 20th Century poet T.S Eliot. Originally published in his Collected Poems (1909-1935) in 1936.

5. Excerpt from artist’s statement on the work Temporary Arrangements (2017), May 2017.

6. Gibson, Prue. Karen Black, Beautiful Tragedies, in Art Collector Issue 73, July-September 2015.

7. Artist’s statement, May 2017.

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yasmin smith.

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glenn barkley.

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karen black.

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jenny orchard.

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laith mcgregor.

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glenn barkley.

karen black.

BIOGRAPHY Born 1972 Bankstown, NSW Lives and works in Sydney and Berry, NSW

BIOGRAPHY Born 1961 Brisbane, QLD Lives and works in Sydney, NSW

Glenn Barkley is an artist, curator, writer and gardener.

He is Co-founder and Co-Director of The Curators Department, Sydney and of kil.n.it experimental ceramics studio in Glebe, Sydney. He was previously Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2008–14) and curator of the University of Wollongong Art Collection (1996–2007). Recent solo exhibitions include itsalright, Utopia Art Sydney (2016).

Group exhibitions include Glazed and Confused: Ceramics in Contemporary Art Practice at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery (2014); Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object, curated by Lisa Slade (2016); The Garden of Earthly Delights, Westspace, Melbourne (with Angela Brennan) (2016); and Watching Clouds Pass the Moon, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, curated by Ineke Dane (2016).

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Barkley’s work is held in public collections such as the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Artbank, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth; Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane; and Wollongong City Art Gallery, NSW. It is also held in private collections in Australia, New Zealand and USA. He is represented by Utopia Art, Sydney; Niagara Galleries, Melbourne; and Heiser Gallery, Brisbane.

Karen Black holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Griffith University, QLD (2011) and is currently an Adjunct Lecturer at The University of NSW. She is a recipient of an Artspace One Year Studio Residency, Sydney (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include Crown Legs Arms, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (2016); Dust over Aleppo, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney (2014). Recent group exhibitions include Shut up and Paint, NGV International, Melbourne (2016-17); Borders, Barriers, Walls, Monash University Museum of Art (2016); and Painting, More Painting, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2016). In 2016 Black was a finalist in The Gold Award at Rockhampton Regional Gallery and in 2014 was awarded the Belle Arti Prize and was the Art and Australia/Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award recipient in 2013.

In 2011 Black was named as a Global Spotlight Artist at Art Taipei. Black’s work has been exhibited at Art Basel HK, Art Stage Singapore, Art Taipei, and Tokyo Art Fair.

Her works are held in numerous public collections including Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Australian War Memorial, Canberra; Griffith University Art Gallery, Queensland; Artbank, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth; Macquarie Bank Collection, Sydney; and in the Salsali Private Museum, Dubai; in addition to various private collections both in Australia and overseas. She is represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; and Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney.

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laith mcgregor.

jenny orchard.

BIOGRAPHY Born 1977 QLD Lives and works in Byron Bay, Australia and Bali, Indonesia

BIOGRAPHY Born 1951, Ankara Turkey Lives and works in Sydney, NSW

Laith McGregor holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours), from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Melbourne (2007); and a Bachelor of Fine Art (majoring in Painting) from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, (2006). He has exhibited widely throughout Australia and overseas. Recent solo exhibitions include Swallow the Sun, Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand (2016); NOONISMIDNIGHT, Station, Melbourne, (2016). Recent group exhibitions include Art Los Angeles Contemporary with Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand (2017); The Red Queen, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania (2013); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013); Physical Video, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland (2011); and Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing, Heide Museum of Art, Melbourne (2010).

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His work is included in public collections including Artbank, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland; The Art Gallery of South Australian, Adelaide; as well as in private collections in Australia and overseas. McGregor has been the recipient of a number of significant residencies and prizes, most recently the HIAP Helsinki residency through the Australian Arts Council; the National Work on Paper Prize, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; and the Collie Print Trust Printmaking fellowship, Australian Print Workshop. He is represented by STATION, Melbourne; and Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ.

Jenny Orchard is currently completing a PhD in practice led research at Sydney College of the Arts. For over four decades she has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally in Japan, Germany, Italy and the USA. Recent solo exhibitions include Living in the Clouds, Beaver Galleries, Canberra (2016); My Journey Through the Hidden Suburbs of Reconstruction, Maunsell Wickes Gallery, Sydney (2014). Selected group exhibitions include The 2nd Jakarta Ceramics Biennale, Indonesia (2012-13); Art from Australia, Gail Art Museum, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea (2015); Uncertain Paradise, Gallery Imazoo, Seoul, South Korea (2015); Ceramic Art from Australia, Tao Gallery, Tokyo; Sculpture by the Sea, Sydney (2009, 2010 and 2011); OVERUNDERSIDEWAYSDOWN, Manly Art Gallery and Museum (2016) curated by Glenn Barkley.

Orchard’s work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. She is represented by Beaver Galleries, Canberra; Maunsell Wickes, Sydney; and Despard Gallery, Hobart.

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list of works.

Yasmin Smith Open Vase Central Leader Widow Maker, 2017 slip cast ceramic objects with 3 types of wood ash glaze, corrugated iron and canvas tarpaulin dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and The Commercial Gallery, Sydney Glenn Barkley Garden Garniture, 2017 earthenware, glaze and collage dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne Karen Black Temporary Arrangements, 2017 is comprised of:

yasmin smith.

Temporary Arrangement – Yellow in 3 parts, 2017 earthenware, glaze, human hair and cotton embroidery thread dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

BIOGRAPHY Born 1984 Sydney, NSW Lives and works in Sydney, NSW

Temporary Arrangement – Red in 5 parts, 2017 earthenware and glaze dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

Yasmin Smith holds a Masters of Visual Arts (Ceramics) from Sydney College of the Arts (2010). Solo exhibitions include Ntaria Fence, The Commercial Gallery, Sydney (2015); Stone Skin, The Commercial Gallery, Sydney (2013); For the promise of water or being clean, Peloton, Sydney (2011); If I could come near your beauty with my nails, Newspace Gallery, Sydney (2006). Smith presented a major work, Apprentice Welder, as part of Installation Contemporary, curated by Aaron Seeto at Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, Sydney (2013). Group exhibitions include World Material, guest curated by Chloé Wolifson at Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney (2017); Sculpture at Barangaroo, curated by Sarah Rawlings at Barangaroo Park, Sydney (2016); THREE/THREE, The Commercial Gallery, Sydney (2012); Everything’s Alright, curated by Amanda Rowell, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2010).

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Her work is held by Artbank, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth; and in numerous private collections. Smith was a Director of the influential Sydney artist-run initiative, Locksmith Project (2008-2010). She is represented by The Commercial Gallery, Sydney.

Temporary Arrangement – Ochre in 7 Parts, 2017 earthenware and glaze dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Temporary Arrangement – Blue in 8 parts, 2017 earthenware and glaze, copper rod and velvet ribbon dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Temporary Arrangement – White in 9 parts, 2017 earthenware and glaze dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

Jenny Orchard The Imagined Possibility of Unity, 2017 is comprised of: 8 Interbeing Totems Reverence to the Spirit of Shared Consciousness, 1997-2017 ceramic, metal stand, rubber, plastic polymer pipe, raffia, synthetic fibre, bubble wrap, plastic chandelier parts, tin necklace, car tyre inner tube. courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart 11 Individuals from the narrative My Journey Through the Hidden Suburbs of Shared Consciousness: Witch with Silver Nose, 2017 ceramic, glaze, and enamel dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart Tall Black Mama, 2017 ceramic and lustre dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart Black Mama Cook, 2017 ceramic and lustre dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart Impossible Blue Rose Friction, 1997-2017 ceramic, glaze and metal joint dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart

Hooded Creature with Brush Hair, 2017 ceramic and synthetic brush dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart Seed Guardian with Bare Feet, 2017 ceramic and glaze dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart Marine Transitional Creature, 2017 ceramic and raffia dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart Transitional Flightless Bird with Flashy Eyes, 2017 ceramic and glaze dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart I Had a Dream Someone Ate Mr Trump, 2017 ceramic and glaze dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart Green Vase, 2016 ceramic, glaze and lustre dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart Laith McGregor Pipe Dream, 2017 is comprised of:

Seed Guardian with Godzillas Hands, 20032017 ceramic, glaze and metal fastening dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart

Pipes, 2017 ceramic, enamel, chalk board paint, found pipe, wood and brass wire 55 x 38 x 12cm courtesy and © the artist and STATION Gallery

Seed Guardian with Child Bearing Hips and Tin Necklace, 2002 - 2017 ceramic, glaze, raffia, tin necklace and metal fastening dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart

Hangover, 2017 ceramic, enamel, found ceramic sculpture, pipe and wire 47 x 42 x 18cm courtesy and © the artist and STATION Gallery

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image credits.

Old Timer, 2017 ceramic, enamel, wood and wire 70 x 40 x 7cm courtesy and © the artist and STATION Gallery Thinking, 2017 ceramic, enamel, chalkboard paint, found pipe, wool, peacock feather, cue ball and wire dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and STATION Gallery Waterface Self, 2017 ceramic, enamel, fibre-glass, clothing and accessories dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and STATION Gallery Magic, 2017 ceramic, chalkboard paint, wool and peacock feather 33 x 32 x 17cm courtesy and © the artist and STATION Gallery Shhh, 2017 ceramic, enamel, chalk, chalkboard paint, found pipe, glass and wood dimensions variable courtesy and © the artist and STATION Gallery

pages 4-5,22-25 Glenn Barkley Garden Garniture, 2017 image: Christian Capurro pages 12,18-21 Yasmin Smith Open Vase Central Leader Widow Maker, 2017 image: Christian Capurro pages 26-29,45 Karen Black Temporary Arrangements, 2017 image: Christian Capurro pages 8, 30-33 Jenny Orchard The Imagined Possibility of Unity, 2017 image: Christian Capurro pages 34-37 Laith McGregor Pipe Dream, 2017 image: Christian Capurro page 38 Glenn Barkley in his studio, 2016 page 39 Karen Black in her studio, 2017 image: Aaron Tait page 40 Laith McGregor in his studio, 2017 courtesy and © the artist and STATION Gallery, Melbourne. Image Amanda Austi page 41 Jenny Orchard in her studio, 2017 courtesy and © the artist and Despard Gallery, Hobart. Image Greg Pier page 42 Yasmin Smith in her studio, 2016 courtesy and © the artist and The Commercial Gallery. Image Elle Fredericksen

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2017 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award Shepparton Art Museum 17 June – 13 August 2017 Catalogue published by Shepparton Art Museum June 2017, Edition 500 ISBN 978-0-9943430-8-6 © 2017 Shepparton Art Museum, the artists and authors. The views and opinions expressed in this catalogue are those of the authors.

No material, whether written or photographic, may be reproduced without the permission of the artists, authors and Shepparton Art Museum. Every effort has been made to ensure that any text and images in this publication have been reproduced with the permission of artists or the appropriate authorities, wherever it is possible. Details correct at time of printing.

Shepparton Art Museum 70 Welsford Street, Shepparton VIC 3630 Mail: Locked Bag 1000, Shepparton VIC 3632 p + 61 3 5832 9861 e art.museum@shepparton.vic. gov.au w www.sheppartonartmuseum. com.au @SAM_Shepparton #SMFACA

Director Dr Rebecca Coates Senior Curator Anna Briers Collections Curator / Registrar Lilian Yong Marketing Co-ordinator Amina Barolli / Sarah Werkmeister Visual Arts Educator Catherine Read Cultural Development Public Programs Officer Feyza Yazar Community Engagement Officer – Indigenous Belinda Briggs Administration Officer Jessica Solty Museum Technician Janet Burchill Casual Museum Technician Tamas Malya SAM Shop Co-ordinator Lynne Parker Front of House Casual Staff Ella Bradshaw, Silvi Kadillari, Patsy Killeen, Kerry Miller, Rebecca Clayton, Harshini Goonetilleke, Wendy D’Amore.

Catalogue Designer Jasmin Tulk Photographer Christian Capurro Printer Ellikon

SAM would like to thank the artists and their representative galleries; Lyn and Noel Patone; Peter Thompson from Geoffrey Thompson Fruit Packing Company Pty Ltd; and Jenny Houlihan and the volunteers from the Australian Botanic Gardens Shepparton.

Glenn Barkley would like to thank: Heiser Gallery, Brisbane; Niagara Galleries, Melbourne; Utopia Art Sydney; Mindy Solomon Gallery Miami, USA; Northcote Pottery Supplies, Melbourne; Rachael, Eloise, Belinda and Luke at kil.n.it, Glebe; City of Sydney for their support through the Accommodation Grants Program; Lisa, Lyn, John and Glenda Havilah; Scott Duncan; National Art School Sydney; Lynda Draper; Emma Rutherford; Super big thanks to Holly Williams, The Curators Department and lastly the amazing Mechelle Bounpraseuth.

Karen Black would like to thank: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney; Sue Fitzsimon, Lynda Draper, Tom Polo, Jasper Powrie, Jane McKenzie, Yutaka Tadokoro and the Redcliffe Pottery Group, Queensland; Petra Svoboda, Jim Ward, Ky Curran, Mandy-Lou Brookes, Vanessa Wallace, Gabrielle MacTaggart, Kat Sawyer, Susan Hawkins, Jenna Green, The Ozanam group, Sydney; Tom Magee, Curtis Black, Vyvyan Black. This work has been made possible with the assistance of a 2017 Artspace One Year Studio and The UNSW Art & Design.

Laith McGregor would like to thank: STATION Gallery, Melbourne; Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; his friends, family and Waterface.

Jenny Orchard would like to thank: Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran and Nell for their wonderful support making this show. Sophie Purcell and Jay for their patience in the studio/house. Bernadette Mansfield, Mansfield Gallery, Sydney; Dominick Maunsell, Maunsell Wickes gallery, Sydney; and Steven Joyce, Despard Gallery, Tasmania for their years of ongoing involvement and collaboration.

Yasmin Smith would like to thank: The Commercial Gallery, Sydney, Amanda Rowell and Sofia Freeman; Elise Fredericksen for her assistance and documentation; Lyn and Noel Patone for the Beurré Bosc pear wood; Peter Thompson and family for the Sundowner apple wood; Robert Baines for his assistance in exploring local bush lands; Julia Rochford, Bell Barrett and Lauren Mason for the loan of their garage in Sydney when my studio flooded. Sydney College of the Arts Ceramics workshop and the support of Jan Guy, Canbora Bayraktar and Yves Lee; the staff at Shepparton Art Museum; Belinda Briggs for showing me around Shepparton, highlighting significant places and events to the Yorta Yorta people. I acknowledge Yorta Yorta country, People and Ancestors and what this land has provided to people past and present. My deepest appreciation to the land for providing me with materials and inspiration for the creation of this work.

Major Sponsor and Principle Partner

Transport Partner

SAM is proudly provided by Greater Shepparton City Council and receives operational funding from Creative Victoria, the State Government funding body for the Arts.

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