Waiting for La Niña 2007

Spotter's circle 2007

Porcelain disk, inlaid drawings and glaze

Waiting for La Niña jug series 2007- stoneware, ash, iron drawings.

Exhibited: "The Jug Show', 2007, All Hand Made Gallery, Sydney

Heavy rain has set in again in the highlands. By phone to Aurukun on the western side of the Cape, north Queensland, I'm told it has been raining for 4 weeks. A true monsoon season at last. Driving back from Sydney late yesterday, I passed through another squall of an intensity I have only encountered previously in the tropics. 

Porcelain disks and bowl 2007. A stupendous hailstorm has just rolled in and through from the south. Another feature of warm northerly meeting cool front in the midst of season's change.

Homebound, 1996. Paperclay, copper, glaze.

Paluma rain, 2005

Seasonal change has arrived in the highlands. Yesterday the first cold southwesterly front blew in. Heard there was snow in the Tasmanian highlands also. Seasonal change collapses time and takes one to other places in recall. A sensory jolt to the synapses.

WW2 Timber-cutting camp in rose gum forest, North Queensland. But this is another story...

Solace Works 2007-8

Blakey's bowl 2007 - Detail, glazed porcelain

Roll call 2007 - porcelain

Two more pieces from Solace Works; current solo exhibition in Sydney.

This is the third week of a solo exhibition for me. Rain has returned on the day the Climate Change Review Report was released. I've heard that the best number to aim for is 400ppm CO2 to avoid a 2C rise in temperature. The target number recommended by the Garnaut Report was 450 ppm, which gives a 50-50 chance of avoiding 2C temperature rise. Why make ceramics in the Greenhouse Age? This morning, I was treated to an aerial show by a flock of about 20 Gang-gang cockatoos, wheeling and calling around the Eucalypts surrounding house and studio. Captivating. Nothing at all that ceramic can capture nor replicate, in any form or surface. Ineffable.

In the paddocks next to my studio are animal watering troughs - circular, concrete pools, originally for sheep. In the last week, Gang Gang cockatoos have started arriving in numbers to roost in the remnant Eucalypts fringing the paddocks, and to feed locally. Adults with advanced young. The first call this year was in late December. The circular trough is a favourite, and they land and drink and call in constant contact and warning of my presence, if I move into sight. Of all the parrot species that use the local area - seven regularly - these are the most elusive and human-shy.

There are no kingfishers from the north this summer, but that is another story. The mini-corridor of Buddleia that we planted a year ago has been in strong bloom, and clouds of butterflies have been visiting throughout December and January, despite the regular rains and storms. Now, with the first feel of early autumn, they have mostly gone. A sudden, decisive conclusion to a season's 'work'.

Light web 1, 2005

I have been photographing porcelain and light over the past six years, since moving to set up a studio in the New South Wales southern highlands. The atmospheric clarity of low pollution and altitude, the constant sweep of winds across the uplands, and the dramatically seasonal shifts in height and angle of sun have kept me looking and experimenting. . Glazes, inlays, engravings all interact with the time of day. I seek out light in the middle of the day, unlike in the tropics of home town where I sought deep shade. The work in the previous post is There remains one thread, 2007 - a small porcelain bowl with inlaid lines of bone china. After firing, the net of coloured inlays ridges above the surface of the white porcelain. I've been working on this material effect over the past eight years.

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porcelain and light

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Cloud line (laughing K) 2007 - backlit detail, December

Cloud line (peat rise) 2007 - January daylight through base

Two works included in Solace Works 2008, Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney Feb 5 to March 1.

Australian Paperclay 1996

Small breath, 1996 is a paperclay reticulum (a little net). It is a precursor to groundtruthings in porcelain. It was a shadow-caster, and when inside, was mounted on a wall to catch the daily transit of light and shadow. In winter, with the low northern Sydney sun on clear days, it was bathed for long stretches in direct sun light. The Reticulae series from which it came, was partly a response to an interest in the water-carrying tissue of trees, the xylem. In the realm of botanical anatomy, it is made up of cells called 'vessels' or 'vessel elements'. These are carriers perforated for cross-communication between elements. I liked this coincidental language, the idea of the 'perforated vessel' (inside-outside play), and the cellular aesthetics encountered during lab days as a biologist. Small breath carried air and recall, and marked time in light, shadow and private association.

Roses have no teeth 1995-6. Paperclay and metals.