Stuck In The Mud

In most art forms there are entrenched views about what constitutes real artwork and real skills. This kind of debate is not exclusive to ceramics. In painting traditionalists and abstract painters have engaged in terminal conversation about what constitutes real art, representation of the world or its abstraction. A key debate in ceramics focuses on craft skills versus low or no skills and often comes out in specific detail such as whether painting rather than glazing pots determines the real or true ceramicist. These debates can become tired through repetition.

The works in the exhibition mimic different revolutionary artefacts including banners, commemorative ceramic forms, sound and video. Exhibiting artists include Connie Anthes, Glenn Barkley, Amanda Bromfield, Kuba Dobrialski Rachael McCallum, Holly Macdonald, Katy B Plummer, Madeleine Preston, Eloise Rankine, Ashley Scott and Bev Shroot. The exhibition includes an artist floor talk, a panel discussion with artists, curators and writers and an open workshop sessions at the Kil-N-it studio. The workshops are for anyone interested in working with ceramics and in learning hands on about the craft art debate through making.

Bev Shroot, The State Porcelain Factory

Obscure art debates can reveal tensions and ideas about how we live and function. Why it is so important for media to be fixed? What anxiety do rigid doctrines reveal about cross-disciplinary ideas beyond the arts? Ceramics, like textiles and photography is a medium that is already in every home. Often people have undertaken a pottery class either as a child or through community classes and ceramics accessibility has been in some respects its stumbling block to greater acceptance in the fine art world: with its broad appeal ironically relegating it to craft and therefore a lower status. However it is the community’s active engagement with the craft of ceramics and fine arts awkward understanding and relationship with craft that ‘Stuck in the Mud’ explores.

Public Programs:
Women in the Arts – Wednesday September 14
Kil.n.it studio visit and talks – Saturday September 17
Artist talks – Saturday September 24

 

Verge Gallery
1 to 24 September, 2016
Sydney
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