Exhibition Insight... Built Worlds

Jane McKenzie, *Polydoba Folly*, 2022, terracotta, 370 x 360 x 380, photograph courtesy of the artist

Architectural scale models and sculptures have long held an important role in assisting architects in exploring design possibilities, communicating complex ideas and breathing life into two-dimensional drawings. From the cities and temples of Ancient and Pre-Columbian civilisations, the ornate cathedrals of the Renaissance and the extensive palaces of the Baroque through to contemporary town planning and urban development, architectural models give physical presence to an architect’s vision of new structures and cityscapes.[i] While serving an immensely practical purpose in building design, architectural miniatures have also enabled the creation of purely fantastical structures and impossible cityscapes that push the limits of what is structurally or practically feasible in the real world.

Built Worlds is showing at JamFactory Adelaide until 23 April 2023

Words by Caitlin Eyre

Grounded in the rich historical and practical use of scale models and sculptures by architects, Built Worlds explores architectural miniatures as a means by which artists can create new worlds that are shaped by their own hands and guided by their own design principles. These worlds might variously allude to utopian visions for the future, explore historical architecture through a contemporary lens, express the maker’s innermost thoughts and experiences, and provide tangible blueprints for spaces that only exist in the imagination. This exhibition features the work of five contemporary ceramic artists who use clay to explore architectural themes and who are inspired by the forms and aesthetics of the built environment, including Charmaine Ball, Grace Brown (Oh Hey Grace), Jane McKenzie, Natalie Rosin and Tom Summers.

Charmaine Ball is an emerging artist from Boorloo Perth with a background in graphic design. Born in South Africa, Ball’s artistic practice encompasses painting and sculpture, with her work responding to structural elements encountered in the built environment, including the forms, materials, angles and shadows. Through her handbuilt clay sculptures, Ball examines spatial configuration and tactility through an interplay of weight and weightlessness, light and shadow, and positive and negative space.

The dynamic architectural sculptures that Ball presents in Built Worlds are informed by Ball’s fascination with the striking concrete bunkers built in German-occupied France during World War II. “Like these ascetic, austere fortifications, my work appears as contained, shut-off realms – spaces that both barricade and confine simultaneously,” Ball says. The pieces reflect Ball’s personal experience of navigating family illness within a global pandemic and the layered emotional states that accompanied this period of her life. Despite serving as an exploration of the intractability of Brutalist forms, however, Ball adds a touch of softness to her sculptures, their heft and austerity meditated by a hopefulness. If one looks carefully, one can note the inclusion of gaps and small windows to provide openings that allow for light, fresh air and escape.

Grace Brown (Oh Hey Grace) is a Naarm Melbourne-based ceramic artist and teacher. Her work is inspired by geometry and architecture, with her previous background in Fashion Design and pattern-making resulting in a precise and often mathematical approach to building ceramic forms. Through her practice, Brown seeks to create utopian cityscapes, dwellings and miniature communities that transport the viewer to another time, place or universe, with each piece serving as a portal to a new world. Her work invites the viewer to engage with their imagination and to uncover their own interpretations and narratives to the fantastical cityscape, thereby providing a welcome escape from the daily grind.

In her most recent body of work, Brown uses architectural forms and impossible structures to explore the mysterious realms of imagination and themselves in the creative possibilities of the unknown. Geometric shapes and silhouettes are paired with a minimal colour palette and sumptuous gold detailing to allude to the aesthetics of ancient monuments and utopian cityscapes, as though each sculpture has been bleached white by the sun whilst holding precious relics from another time. “Creative escapism can provide relief from the stresses of daily life and help us to dream of stronger connections to ourselves, others and the world around us,” Brown says. “The abstract forms, impossible structures and gold detailing allows the viewer to let go of the constraints of reality and enter into a world where anything is possible.”

Jane McKenzie, *Polydoba Portal*, 2022, terracotta, 300 x 330 x 40 mm, photograph courtesy of the artist

Natalie Rosin is an architectural graduate and full-time ceramic artist practicing in Sydney on the Country of the Gadigal of the Eora nation. Her sculptural work explores the intersection, conflict and dialogue between architecture and ceramics within a framework of making that is open to experimentation, the discovery of unexplored forms and the creation of intuitive structures. The resulting ceramic forms in turn prompt new expectations and ways of thinking about the spaces we inhabit and the environments that are built around us.

In this exhibition, Rosin presents a series of delightfully whimsical structures inspired by the almost universal childhood experience of crafting sandcastles in a moment of unrestrained, pure creativity. For theSandcastle Sanctuaryseries, Rosin used a similarly intuitive method of making to delve into her conscious and subconscious mind, using her hands to mould the raw clay while asking herself an endless series of questions: What would a structure formed by the tides and the elements look like? How might many ancient cultures manipulate this form over time? What does a space that is both enclosed yet open to nature look like? “To build a sandcastle with clay – that is an exciting and confusing place to get lost in, and to forget about time”, Rosin says. “In asking myself these questions, I aimed to answer through forming my own architectural sanctuaries…The places in my mind now experienced through sculpture.”

““In asking myself these questions, I aimed to answer through forming my own architectural sanctuaries…The places in my mind now experienced through sculpture.””

— Natalie Rosin

Tom Summers is a Queer ceramic artist and product designer who is currently based in Tarndanya Adelaide. A recent alumnus of JamFactory Associate Program in the Ceramic Studio, Summers has focused his handbuilding practice on finding harmony between scale and proportion, while also exploring colour through the use of pigment-infused clay. He creates distinctive handbuilt ceramic vessels that explore the built environment and warp his personal experience of place to reflect the vibrant inner world that exists within each of us.

The five sculptural pieces presented in Built Worlds are a surreal and personal reflection of the built environment that surrounds us during the course of daily life. The vessels reference recognisable architectural features and motifs, but sit outside of known markers of time and place, seeming simultaneously futuristic and relic-like in an expression of Summers’ unreachable utopian vision. “Through my works, I seek to show how we can all find solace in our own imaginings and how imagination can be used to build spaces that embrace diversity and celebrate difference,” Summers says. “I hope to create a space for viewers to take refuge in my work and provide them an opportunity to explore and express their own stories.” In this way, Summers’ imagined built world encourages us to open ourselves to new possibilities, to experiment with our identities and, ultimately, to find peace within ourselves.

Charmaine Ball, *Obdurate*, 2022, black clay, 260 x 230 x 150 mm, photographer: Eva Fernandez

Grace Brown, *Sun and Moon*, 2023, white raku and gold lustre, 230 x 240 x 115 mm, photographer: Jessica Grilli

Jane McKenzie is a ceramic artist based in Castlemaine, Victoria on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Anchored in a visual language of geometry and architecture, her sculptural works have evolved from a life-long preoccupation with making art and a parallel architectural career. Starting with flat slabs of clay, McKenzie uses her material to explore the connection between structure and voids to play with depth, space, light and shadow.

As with most of the imagined architectural sculptures McKenzie creates, the Polydoba series was initially inspired by a building that exists in the real world – in this instance, the Great Mosque of Córdoba in Spain. “I was enthralled by its vast hall, with rows of columns connected by double tiers of arches,” McKenzie says. “The wonder of the space is enhanced by alternating red brick and light-coloured stone in the arches.” The series began with the singular piece The Folly, with McKenzie seeking to replicate the drama created by polychrome arches. From there, the additional sculptures developed as an abstracted version of a fictitious Moorish town comprising of a gateway, towers and shopfronts to counterbalance the quasi-religious building depicted in The Folly. In combining a lively palette of terracotta, bright blue, black and white with the geometric patterns of the relief ornamentation, McKenzie reflects the joy and awe she associates with Moorish architecture in her imagined cityscape.