Elements of Place: ceramics by Avi Amesbury. FORM Studio and Gallery, Queanbeyan. Until November 22.
A fragment of a poem written by the artist – Is not a land's journey where I belong – inscribed on a delicate porcelain bowl is the thread that links together the work in the exhibition Elements of Place. The land (and the memories left behind by its history) is the subject of Avi Amesbury's poetic essay conceived in porcelain, slips and glazes.
Avi Amesbury is the executive artistic director of Craft ACT so it might come as a surprise to some people to find that she is also a practising ceramicist of some note. Amesbury graduated with an honours degree in ceramics from the ANU School of Art in 2002. During her time at ANU and since graduating, she has enjoyed both considerable success in attracting awards and acclaim for her work in group exhibitions. During 2012 and 2013 however Amesbury decided to channel her energy into working towards a solo exhibition – a decision vindicated by this thoughtful and mature body of work.
The works consist of tall cylindrical vessels, open bowls, and tiny beakers arranged in both small and large groupings. In addition there are two-dimensional mounted wall pieces. Amesbury has used local clay sourced from between Canberra and the South Coast and mixed with volcanic ash given to the artist by a friend as well as ash from the residue of bushfires.
In both a visual and conceptual way, links are drawn between the works even though they have often been conceived over several years. The skill with which the artist has achieved this is evident in the fact that the exhibition itself presents a coherent statement of the artist's personal vision.
Some of the works such as the tall cylindrical vessels stand alone. In other works such as the groupings of the small beakers (the Horizon series), the relationships between them positions the work so that the whole becomes greater than its parts. And in the wall pieces from the Unravel series, it is the sensitive placement of the ceramic forms and the judicious selection of the images (potent signifiers of meaning in these works) that are the dominant factors.
The tall cylindrical forms from the Elements series and After the bush fire series are the largest ceramic pieces (about 60 centimetres high) in the exhibition. They tower above the other works like tall trees in the landscape and with their abstract markings bear a passing resemblance to totem poles in that they carry encoded messages of both experience and memory. Their markings are variously made up of patterns based on small painted and raised dots, and free flowing vertical stripes in coloured glazes and slips. In the Element series, nos. 1 & 2 are the most dramatic. Their highly glazed brown surfaces reflect the light so that they illuminate a decoration of raised dots and long slashes of coloured glaze. Other cylindrical vessels in the After the Fire series have a white porcelain body with ash also incorporated into the body of the clay to give it an attractive speckled appearance. The artist uses glazes and coloured slip decoration with encrusted areas of ash to achieve her highly effective but restrained decoration in these works. However among this latter group, Dream of Home no. 25 is the exception. The surface of this cylindrical vessel is highly textured with its encrusted layers of earth coloured glazes suggesting the narrative history formed in the layers of a landscape. In less skilled hands this textural surface could be overpowering but the artist has retained a pleasing balance between the decoration and the form.
In addition to these tall cylindrical forms is a collection of small open bowls in porcelain. These bowls have bands of encrusted glazes and slips forming a concentric decorative ring around them. On some of these works the artist has included text based on fragments of her own poem – A land's journey. The complete poem however remains as elusive as the words of a half-remembered song.
The Horizon series consists of small groups of little irregular formed beakers (about three centimetres tall) decorated with painted and raised dots that form a band (or horizon) around them. These small beaker collections remind me of pebbles on a beach. Each one is unique yet viewed as an entity they make a pleasing landscape – a kaleidoscope of texture, shape and colour.
At the heart of the exhibition are the beautifully structured works from the 2014 Unravel Series. They are based on photographs taken by Amesbury at Cockatoo Island in 2008. Cockatoo Island was a historic naval ship yard in Sydney that closed down in 1992. It played an important role over many years in the nation's history. These enhanced and manipulated photographs have been applied as decals to the small ceramic forms and delicate porcelain bowls that are arranged in sculptural cubist-like constructions. These ensembles of geometric forms are either arranged directly on the wall or mounted on a back board. The great care that the artist brings to balancing the small components that make up these works and the delicate and subtle placement of fragments of photographs so that everything is in balance, contribute to a pleasing aesthetic and harmonious stasis. The shadows cast from these elements also adds another spatial dimension. The tiny bowls seem to balance delicately in these compositions. In a sense they symbolise the fragility of nature and perhaps can be read as a meditation on the precarious nature of life and memory.
Avi Amesbury's exhibition, sympathetically curated by Peter Haynes, is a mature and coherent exhibition of ceramics that reflects both the natural and man-made landscape filtered through a thoughtful and poetic sensibility.
