Exhibition Insight… Ceramica Maxima
Ebony Russell, Over The Top Quintal Flower Vase (Pastle), 2021; Over The Top Candle and Flower Centerpiece I, 2021; Over The Top Tripple Holder Candleabra (Pastle), 2021. Photo: Simon Hewson.
A flamboyant showcase of colour, shape, form and texture, Ceramica Maxima celebrates the unusual beauty found in decorative maximalism and deliberate imperfection as explored by nine contemporary Australian ceramic artists.
Words by Caitlin Eyre.
“More is more and less is a bore.”
Iris Apfel (1921 – present)
American businesswoman, interior designer and fashion icon
In vivid contrast to the aesthetic trend towards Scandinavian simplicity, restrained colour palettes, stark minimalism and the pious decluttering of our material lives, artists who embrace decorative maximalism approach the making process with a distinctly ‘more is more’ ethos. Often playful, experimental, visually opulent and charmingly haphazard, maximalist decorative arts objects are characterised by loose, flowing lines, randomly applied embellishments, abstract illustrations and patterns, bold, often clashing colour choices, irregularly shaped forms and layered material complexity. Informed by the traditional Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, whereby imperfection is heralded as adding beauty, value and richness to objects as opposed to detracting from them, these decorative arts objects eschew the narrow definition of perfection and what many may consider to be a conventional beauty to instead find beauty in the strange, unusual and imperfect.
In celebration of the unusual and imperfect beauty of decorative maximalism, Ceramica Maxima showcases a visually rich and diverse survey of artwork by nine contemporary Australian ceramic artists who use their vessels and sculptures as a canvas to explore and experiment with texture, form, materiality and surface decoration.
Ryan Hancock, Underbite Hound reassures Parry Hotterwargs that Glup Shitto and Orangutan Wig wearer are pretty cool as they steal a copy of a Knights Tale starring the late Heath Ledger from Civic Video, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.
Ryan Hancock is a Sydney-based visual artist whose creative practice is a meeting of ceramics and contemporary painting. Riffing on popular culture and imbued with dark humour, Hancock’s artworks feature layered visual gags and a bold, expressive use of colour, form and technique that produce an effect that is both comic and complex. In this exhibition, Hancock presents a series of narrative vessels that depict, combine and reflect on a myriad of reproduced imagery from both past and contemporary culture. “These vessels aim to create new cannons and timelines, using the illustrative glazing technique of maiolica to set the scene,” Hancock says. “The maiolica painted pots offer reimagined narratives, depicting chaotic worlds filled with painted graphic figures from history, popular culture, and internet dark humour.”
Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, James Lemon is a ceramic artist whose tactile, playful objects draw from celestial, religious and ecospheric imagery. His pieces are crafted using traditional methods of handbuilding and coiling that are then distorted to record movement and gesture. In this way, Lemon’s warped vessels challenge the notions of functionality and utility that are inherent in objects of this nature and utilise the ceramic form as a canvas to explore colour and abstraction. “The unpredictable melting of glazes in an electric kiln creates varied, highly textured surfaces which are a combination of glossy, matte, liquid and structured,” Lemon says.
Ebony Russell is an artist, ceramicist and sessional lecturer in the Ceramics Department of Sydney’s National Art School known for her decadent, ostentatious and overtly feminine ceramic creations. Using piping — a technique usually reserved for the cake decorating craft of royal icing — Russell creates vessels, candelabras, grottos and tiaras that are an ode to excess and are made entirely of decorative ornamentation. The saccharine embellishment and delicate layers in Russell’s sculptural and functional objects are intensified and given permanence with the use of high-fired porcelain. “My practice challenges the established perceptions of cultural and artistic practices that were coded as feminine and thus insignificant,” Russell says. “I wish to celebrate the decorative, promiscuous aesthetics and politics of purity, the superficial, excess and delight – with pleasure.”
Tessy McAuslan-King is a Djillong (Geelong) based potter and artist who creates overtly decorated handbuilt ceramic vessels that reference forms found throughout the pottery tradition. Her material practice examines the point of convergence between ceramic sculpture and domestic ware. Using a relaxed and messy approach to glaze application, McAuslan-King utilises the surface and form of the vessels to reflect her interest in haphazard and ‘accidental’ ornamentation. “The build-up of materials on the body of the pot is a chaotic process with fortuitous outcomes,” McAuslan-King says. “This method working allows me to have an open and free exchange with each element in my process, the final works existing as house-bound sculptures that mimics organically formed matter.”
Tessy McAuslan-King, Lattice, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.
Claire Johnson, Woman With Urn, For Pablo, 2021. Photo: JamFactory.
Claire Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist and former dancer whose ceramic practice is particularly informed by her love of movement and gesture, with the act of highlighting space and form serving as a kind of dance in itself. Her ceramic works are often layered with texture and glaze, highlighting Claire’s interest in expressing the ‘artist’s hand’ in her work, with each brushstroke, mark and impression an imprint of the artist’s own gestural mark-making. Drawing inspiration from Surrealist and celestial imagery, the figurative illustrations that Johnson adorns her ceramic vessels invoke the loose, painterly styles of ceramic works by Pablo Picasso, Betty Woodman and Marc Chagall.
Sydney-based ceramic artist Luke Ryan O’Connor utilises the vessel form as a site of experimentation that celebrates interruption and the unconventional. Approaching making in a playful manner, O’Connor incorporates wheel thrown forms with additional appendages that are cast from moulds salvaged from discarded waste, such as aggregate chunks of broken brick, tile and styrofoam. O’Connor reimagines these inexpensive and unremarkable materials by coating them in gold and platinum lustre, the multicoloured glazes concealing to produce thick, creamy coatings that melt and crack over the surface of the sculptures. “The vessels borrow curves, lines and materials from foundational ceramics, but their real-world resonance, their perkiness, their attention-seeking is mostly at odds with tradition,” O’Connor says. “They have excused themselves from the status quo and are back, fully realised and with clout.”
Kirsten Perry is a self-taught Melbourne-based ceramic artist whose practice is predominantly based around slip cast mid-fired functional and non-functional vessels that pay abstracted homage to traditional ceramic forms. Painted with gooey glaze, slip and gold lustre, the biomorphic objects that Perry creates are initially carved from disposable materials such as foam and cardboard. Attracted to flaws and vulnerabilities, Perry utilises her ceramics practice to draw attention to the textures, imperfection and unusual beauty of these materials. “I love to investigate the relationship between elements of error, chance, anthropomorphism and humour,” Perry says. “Traditionally, errors are discarded or covered up, but I like to challenge this aesthetic by highlighting and exaggerating them.”
Self-taught Melbourne-based craftsperson and ceramicist Nadia Robertson creates hand built clay sculptures and vessels that explore the fragility of our natural environment and highlight the materiality of the Earth’s porous textural surfaces and patterns. Her ceramic artworks are born out of an appreciation and desire to the collect natural materials from beloved places, with the imagery of seashells and seeds featuring prominently in her practice. “What charms me most about working with clay is that it allows me to be in tune with the natural flow of time,” Robertson says. “I often feel a strong presence in my hands with clay – perhaps best explained as a vibration of energy.” Her current series of sculptures convey spatial beauty and gestures of undulating moments through space, offering an invitation to slow down and appreciate nature’s cycles.
Bruce Nuske, Teapot, 2021. Photo: JamFactory.
Nadia Robertson, Seed Girl Adorned, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.
South Australian ceramic artist Bruce Nuske has always regarded pattern and embellishment as an integral aspect of his practice. “I have never been a minimalist,” Nuske says. “I collect masses of visual fragments that furnish my workspace.” In crafting his elaborate ceramic vessels, which are partly planned, partly improvised and rely on intuition and whim, Nuske draws from a broad range of historical design precedents that are repurposed to suit both the material traditions of clay and his own making style. The surfaces of his vessels – namely teapots, cups and plates – often feature repeated patterns inspired by flower pressings, textile patterns and historical wallpaper. As a passionate gardener, Nuske often draws inspiration from the natural world, with references to botanical designs and forms serving as a poignant characteristic of his ceramic practice.
Ceramica Maxima is a flamboyant showcase of colour, shape, form, pattern and texture that celebrates chaotic charm and unconventional beauty of imperfection and abstraction. By highlighting the aesthetic allure of pronounced materiality, visual opulence and haphazard processes, this exhibition encourages a broader definition of beauty outside of traditional conventions to find new ways of seeing and experiencing decorative arts objects.
*Maiolica is a style of white-glazed earthenware that was popular during the Italian Renaissance (14-17th century); it is distinguished by the white opaque glaze that occurs during the firing process due to the presence of tin oxide.
Ceramica Maxima is showing at JamFactory at Seppeltsfield
1 May - 11 July 2021.
JamFactory at Seppeltsfield is open 11AM - 5PM daily.
Selected works from this exhibition are available to purchase from the JamFactory online store.