Cups, plates and bowls

A couple of months ago, Raewyn Atkin­son and I met at Golding’s to talk about her new work, cur­rently on view at the Bowen Gal­ler­ies. It was a light Septem­ber after­noon and we sat out­side warm­ing our backs in the late-after­noon sun. I told her my sorry story of miss­ing her 2013 exhib­i­tion at Bowen — such a con­ver­sa­tion starter — but I had kicked myself after hear­ing a stream of glow­ing reports.

The exhib­i­tion was called Wasters, a term used for the rejects of indus­tri­al pro­cessing. She’d star­ted the work for the exhib­i­tion while de facto artist-in-res­id­ence at UC Berke­ley. It reused shards and ceram­ic pieces recovered from the shore of Point Isa­bel in San Francisco’s Bay Area. They were dumped there when the Tepco Pot­tery fact­ory closed and prob­ably while it was still operating.

Raewyn used the shards — often those with decals — to re-cre­ate new plates and new imagery.

And as she said that after­noon, his­tory is a whole lot of shards reas­sembled in dif­fer­ent ways accord­ing to who’s doing the telling. And this sense of recon­struc­ted stor­ies under­pinned the work in Wasters — wheth­er it’s

the recon­struc­ted art his­tory of The oth­er shore, a work that takes the draw­ing by Isaac Gilse­mans’ A view of the Mur­der­ers’ Bay, as you are at anchor here in 15 fathom (1642) and presents it in frag­ments; or the sense of recon­struc­ted lives that the sepia-toned plates — pieced togeth­er from shards — cre­ates with its fam­il­ies of home­less people and their shop­ping trolleys.

The exhib­i­tion also included big­ger works like Wasters I, a large circle of cup pieces with handles still attached. At the top the pieces are ultra-white, but the white mud­dies as the eye travels down. And at the bot­tom, red pieces have barnacles attached. When I noticed this, it made me look at the work a little dif­fer­ently. I got a feel­ing of things sink­ing and regenerating.

And these cup handles bring me to Raewyn’s latest work — a series of wheel-thrown por­cel­ain cups, plates and bowls. They are glazed with her sig­na­ture col­our — a sort of gla­cial blue that melts and con­geals on under­sides, and makes me feel like I’m star­ing through ice at something.

And this exhib­i­tion of domest­ic ware seemed an appro­pri­ate end­ing to the year as we know it: the moment that is sig­nalled by a gath­er­ing of fam­ily and friends around a table laden with food and wine. Every­one exhausted but in cel­eb­ra­tion that it is all, finally, over.

What a year — in the arts, polit­ic­ally, socially. One to remem­ber. And so it was I took pleas­ure in Raewyn’s immer­sion in fam­ily and domest­ic life reflec­ted in these exquis­ite, quiet cups, plates and bowls. Happy holidays.

Art in Decem­ber and January

This month at Enjoy is Loaded, cur­ated by Gary Peters and Sarah Caylor. It fea­tures a super-inter­est­ing mix of artists — Johl Dwyer, Mikay­la Dwyer, Julia Mor­is­on, Eliza­beth New­man and John Nix­on. That’s until 13 Decem­ber, fol­lowed four days later by the annu­al Buy Enjoy. Everything in this exhib­i­tion is $125 and you can often buy your­self a present by your favour­ite artist of the moment. In Janu­ary, cur­at­or Ema Tavola and a group of Pacific artists — Tanu Gago, Leil­ani Kake, Luisa Tora — will be in res­id­ence. Watch that space.[/info]