Foreword
The Cicely and Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award was established to celebrate Victorian-based craft and design, and reflects the National Gallery of Victoria’s continuing commitment to contemporary practice. In the past, each of the exhibitions associated with the Award has been devoted to a particular design discipline. The 2012 Cicely and Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award, however, has been developed around a theme. This year’s exhibition focuses on the idea of containment, and thus represents a broad spectrum of media and approaches.
In 2012 the exhibition presents fourteen Victorian artists, representing both leading practitioners in their field and those more emerging. We would particularly like to acknowledge the contribution of Joe Pascoe, CEO and Artistic Director, Craft Victoria, for his advice during initial discussions. The final selection of artists was made by the NGV’s Amanda Dunsmore, Curator, International Decorative Arts and Antiquities, and Emma Mayall, Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art, in close collaboration with former Deputy Director, Frances Lindsay.
The judge for this year’s award is Robert Reason, Curator, European and Australian Decorative Arts at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Robert is also Affiliate Lecturer in the School of History and Politics at the University of Adelaide, and was a former President of Craft Australia. Prior to his appointment at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Robert was Curator at Shepparton Art Museum.
I would like to congratulate the artists on their participation in the 2012 Cicely and Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award. The NGV remains indebted to The Cicely and Colin Rigg Bequest and ANZ Trustees for their outstanding support of contemporary craft and design in Victoria.
Tony Elwood
Director, National Gallery of Victoria
Introduction
The 2012 Cicely and Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award exhibition speaks to the notion of containment.
Rather than vessels, we chose the theme containment to allow a broader interpretation that embraces both the conceptual and the specific. The fourteen artists’ works represent a wide range of practices and media, including ceramics, glass, metalwork, plastics, found items and natural materials. The selection of artists encompasses those with well-established profiles as well as those more emerging artists. Our aim as curators has been to showcase richness, vibrancy and diversity.
The choice of a theme for this year’s award, rather than a specific area of practice, delivers enormous scope for interpretation. Many of the works embody a sculptural aesthetic while remaining inherently functional, yet they play with the possibilities of what might be, beyond their practical value. Other works are presented in the context of a traditional concept, for example Katherine Wheeler’s Tea set, 2010-12 (pp. 32-3), yet their elements are far from having any practical value; indeed, Wheeler’s work openly subverts the expectation of practicality. Emma Davies’s Ghosts of stoneware, 2012 (pp. 10-11) – comprising vessels made from plastic netting – similarly challenges the notion of physical containment, the strength and familiarity of its forms visually subverting the viewer’s expectations.
Neville French’s porcelain works (pp. 14-15) could be described as vessels, yet their quiet, subliminal surfaces and asymmetric forms compel us to interpret the idea of containment through a wider lens – the qualities of landscape are embodied in both their interior and exterior surfaces. At first glance Owen Rye’s wood-fired Jar, 2011 (pp. 28-9), appears to be just that, yet it stands as a metaphor for all those aspects of life, like planting a garden or observing the stars, that are impossible to value monetarily, but are essential to our being. Garry Bish (pp. 6-7) experiments with visually turning his vessels inside out. His otherwise traditional vessel forms display depth and perspective around their exterior, the receding steps lead seemingly to the interior yet also to beyond.
Although David Ray’s Stone soup, 2012 (pp. 26-7), appears to be quite literal, the ideas that sit behind it encapsulate contrasting layers of meaning. On the one hand, the work considers the idea of a shared family meal, yet it also addresses Ray’s concerns regarding the lack of family meal time in contemporary life. Furthermore, the decorative nature of the work makes specific reference to aristocratic dining in the eighteenth century, automatically suggesting privilege and exclusion.
Mark Edgoose (pp. 12-13) combines ambiguous notions of functionality with a highly resolved industrial aesthetic. His work appears to be purely sculptural, almost decorative in a hard-edged way, something one could envisage along the wall of an entrance hall, yet not a work that immediately entertains ideas of functional value. Nevertheless, despite its incongruous visual quality, Edgoose’s work is inherently functional, each container ready to receive the appurtenances of everyday life as one enters the house.
Robin Bold (pp. 8-9), Titania Henderson (pp. 16-17) and David Pottinger (pp. 24-5) each work with the beauty of the raw material. For Henderson and Pottinger this is porcelain, with its subtleties of colour and texture, while for Bold it is the hand-working of silver incorporated with unusual materials such as plaster bandaging. The capricious nature of porcelain conveys the subtle beauty of Henderson and Pottinger’s work. Both are constantly wrestling with the challenges of this material and its unpredictable nature, yet the porcelain is ultimately transformed and its qualities captured in the sophisticated elegance of their work. For Bold, the clustering of her vessels alludes to the idea of the family unit; many of her vessels also suggest a mother-child relationship. In this sense, Bold’s vessels address ideas of nurturing and protectiveness.
Richard Morrell’s Perilous containment, 2012 (pp. 20-1), is purely sculptural, yet its raison d’être is containment. It encapsulates a world within itself, however, the interpretation of this world is left to the viewer’s imagination. Ian Mowbray’s My family souvenirs, 2012 (pp. 22-3), plays with notions of scientific experimentation and the preservation of body parts, yet ultimately the work is about capturing memories. Yhonnie Scarce’s Not willing to suffocate, 2012 (pp. 30-1), refers to the oppression of Aboriginal people by the colonising power, and in this sense the notion of containment takes the form of gripping and suffocating. Marian Hosking’s Clearing, 2012 (pp. 18-19), is, conversely, a gentler, more meditative work which, despite making a strong statement about man’s mistreatment of the natural environment, is nevertheless poetic and deeply reflective.
Visiting the artists in their studios allowed us to enter their creative environments. These are worlds within worlds. In one case, a visit to a seemingly ordinary suburban garage revealed a space transformed by its own industrial and creative dynamic. The studios in themselves speak to the notion of containment.
Our dialogue with the artists, combined with an observation of the tools and raw materials of their practice, allowed us to gain a deeper insight into their working methods and ideas. The artists’ discourse on their challenges, failures, happy accidents and successes highlighted the space in which an artist’s studio is located, at the edge of experimentation.
Amanda Dunsmore
Curator, International Decorative Arts and Antiquities, National Gallery of Victoria
Emma Mayall
Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria
Titania Henderson
The product of a finely balanced alchemy, working with porcelain today is as much a highwire act as it was in the early eighteenth century, when the secret of making porcelain was first discovered in Europe.
Titania Henderson’s practice speaks to the heart of that fragile, delicate and most capricious material – white gold. The fragility of her work is not an accidental result of the material’s inherent nature but reflects. rather, a deliberate, highly personal choice – the use of porcelain instilling her work with deep vulnerability. Henderson’s work teeters on the edge of a sense of warmth and humanity, and of unease.
The chalky, milky whiteness and fine corrugations of the porcelain curls in Together, 2011-12, bring to mind butter curls, wood shavings, or the soft velvetiness of fine cardboard. They are imbued with tactility and familiarity. Yet the delicate piling of these fragile forms creates a sense of tension and disquiet. As Henderson describes them:
These folded, paper-thin forms foster ideas around the injustice within culture. The contrast between the fragility and vulnerability of each piece, and the cohesiveness of their arrangement as a whole, reflects my interest in capturing the idea of ‘the other’.
This ‘other’ may be read in numerous ways, but undoubtedly makes reference to the black form placed carefully amid the white stack, significantly located at the bottom of the pile and placed inside one of the white curls. Its containment speaks of its vulnerability and helplessness. Henderson writes, “The pieces each have a translucent quality and I find the final balancing and piling process creates a powerful sense of group containment.
Henderson’s work is deeply emotional; the tenderness of her forms creates a dialogue between life, nature and artistic expression. Her use of bone china imbues the works with both fragility and robust strength, qualities akin to human nature. The individuality of each form is both deliberate and accidental – a result of fire – yet their beautifully finished edges and finely resolved surfaces speak of a highly skilled perfectionism.
A.D.
TITANIA HENDERSON 