A
s a latecomer to visual art, I relect and
realise that my initial sculptural forms actually
happened when I was producing theatre and
dance works in Melbourne and Sydney - in the days
before I formally studied visual art as a mature-aged
student. So my introduction to artistic form was then
through choreography, costume and set design,
which later expanded and deepened as I was
attracted to other materials over the years.
In the early 1990s, as I worked my way through
my studies in ceramics, it quickly became evident
that although I liked to produce vessels and other
useful things, I also was also very drawn to using
clay to produce nonfunctional pieces. I have
always been interested in ancient architecture and
the sites of archeological digs; these were my
early inspirations for sculpture. It was not just the
architectural forms that interested me, it was also
the artifacts and pottery surfaced by theefects
of acidic soils - the encrustations and patinations
of their millennia-long entombment. I discovered
I could emulate these textures through archaic
ceramic processes, using wood ired kilns that
partly simulated a volcanic process - the wood ire
aesthetic is obscure and elemental.
As a ceramics student my work had then, as
it does now, a strong emphasis on clay as a
medium. The curriculum then had an orientation
to tableware, which is still very much a part of my
work. However I was interested, from my earliest
sculptural deliberations, in the way various media
could be combined. It is an interesting challenge,
for example, to marry ceramic with wood, steel with
wood, or ceramics and metals. Those challenges
are still intrinsic to my work practice and involve
me developing abilities to handle the materials.PROFILE
“As artists we are always
challenging ourselves and
presenting new problems to be
solved; seeking guidance and
support is a very important part
of realising our potentials”.