Tag Archives: Australian pottery

Bemboka Gallery – Australian pottery

Judith Pearce and David Rofe are a couple who have been collecting Australian pottery since the mid-1970’s. Their contemporary styled rural gallery is nestled in the coastal mountains of Bemboka in the far south coast of NSW, Australia, in a purpose-built wing of their home. Primarily their aim is to display a diverse collection of work produced by Australian potters and ceramic artists over the last fifty years. A new exhibition is created each season that features stories from the collection which in a sense makes the gallery like a museum showcasing the history of Australian pottery. Visitors also have the opportunity to purchase works they might not have had a chance to see when they were first put onto the market.

Judith worked at the National Library of Australia and it seemed a natural extension of her interests to start building a database of Australian contemporary potters and their marks. They source their works from exhibitions, galleries, retail outlets and the artists themselves along with buying works on the secondary market from eBay, auction houses, and private sales.

Current exhibition : Mid-Century Modern: The influence of European style on post-war Australian ceramics.

Displayed below is a selection of pottery that has been shown at the gallery.

 

Peter Andersson

Vessel

 

David Williams

  Large vase with a classic rounded shape and pale brown crystalline glaze

 

Peter Buttaglen

Celadon Plate

 

Janna Ferris

Round-bodied earthenware jug decorated in a raised floral design using underglaze stains and wood-fired. 2009

Janna specializes in earthenware tableware decorated with underglaze stains in a style influenced by the patterns on old china, cottage garden flowers, and the works of Clarice Cliff, Dorothy Haffner, Patsy Hely and the painter Margaret Preston.

 

    Jane Barrow

 

Barbara Swarbrick

White china plate decorated with sulphur crested cockatoos.

Oval platter with scalloped ends and delicate hand-painted picture of a female nude.

 

Arthur Boyd and John Perceval.

 Casserole dish

Arthur Boyd (1920-1999) learnt to make pots in the family home at Murrumbeena, Victoria.

 

Cheryl Watson

 Large plate made of a pale tan-coloured clay left unglazed on the chattered base and narrow rim, with a bare-chested Amazonian woman painted in slip and oxides on the shallow concave surface.

 

Mitsuo Shoji

 

Paydirt Pottery

Genie Bottle

 

Ellis Ceramics

Two slipcast earthenware jugs

 

Mad in Australia

 Large slip-cast vase in a zig-zag shape with a hand-painted black, orange, yellow and purple abstract design.

 Mad in Australia was a Melbourne design studio set up by the sculptor Dianne Coulter in 1983.

 

Greg Daly

Shallow bowl with a finely-crazed, oxidised copper glaze, partly-reduced on the base, and gold lustre decoration. – 2005

Vessel of compressed spherical form with ultramarine and green glaze and gold lustre decoration.

 

J.Oldroyd

Spherical Vessel

 

Ted Secombe.

 

Sergio Sill

Shino charger

 

Richard Murray

Lidded Box

 

Unknown

Bird Bowl

 

Jenny Orchard

 Exploding Seed

 

Paul Wynn

Bottle  1978 – 1980

From left : Jenny Orchard: vase 1997, Christopher Sanders: bottle c.1981,Victor Greenaway: bottle 1970, Les Blakebrough: charger, 1984

 

Unknown

 

Shino Bowl

 

Les Blakebrough

Giant lidded stoneware jar with winged lid and pale blue, cobalt and red glazes.

 

Ian Clare

Deep-sided bowl tapering to a small base, with finely crazed white glaze in a raku nu style, inside and out.

 

Lino Alvarez

Raku Vessel

 

Paul Davis

Square slab-built platter made of a pale yellow earthenware with rounded corners, shino half glaze and Middle Eastern influenced graphical decoration.

 

Ros Auld

Ros Auld is a potter based in Borenore near Orange, NSW, specialising in slab-built, or thrown and manipulated, stoneware forms decorated with wood ash glazes and trailed and incised slips, coloured oxides and gold lustre.

 

Kalmar Pottery

Kalmar Pottery was set up in Sydney, NSW, by Irene and Julius Kalmar, emigrants from Hungary after World War II. The pottery was active from the early 1950s to the mid 1960s.

 

 Rudolf Sibrava

 High-sided white stoneware bowl with speckled violet and magenta glaze with some cobalt blue at the base, and gilded rim.

 

Ditmar Urbach

Sphere

 

Unknown

Stoneware vase

 

Robyn Stewart

Blossom Jar

 

Victor Greenaway

 

Lindsay Bedogni

Dove

 

Claudia Australia

Pourer

 

 

Joan Campbell 

Three Sea Eggs

Chris Sanders

Lidded crock

 

Val Charle

Stoppered Vessel

 

Maiju Altpere Woodhead

Beaker

 

Ljubov Seidl

High sided bowl

 

Carl McConnell

Two handled bowl

 

More Bemboka gallery here  http://www.australianpotteryatbemboka.com.au/

 
 
 
 
 

 

Australian Potter Jeff Mincham

 

” I’ve always thought of myself as living in a landscape, perhaps its because I’ve never lived in a city or even a town for longer than a few months. The events of the landscape draw me towards it. My works  explore my engagement with its moods, its changes and dramas. They speak of harsh dry windswept lands, of the shimmering distance beneath brooding skies. A passing moment of mystery and wonderment captured by the eye and embedded in memory.” …   Jeff Mincham, 2007

Jeff Mincham Ceramic Bowl
‘The Floodplain’ – high-walled, multiglazed, multifired ceramic bowl.
Craft Australia in conjunction with Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design has the award : Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft which celebrates the achievements of Australia’s iconic and influential crafts practitioners and is designed to promote the work of Australian artists whose exemplary craft skills that have been recognized by their peers.
The fifth recipient of this  title, Australian ceramicist Jeff Mincham is a craftsperson of the highest order. Since he first exhibited his work in 1976 at Adelaide’s famous Jam Factory, Mincham has continued on with his dedicated practice for over three decades, working, exhibiting and experimenting with techniques and methodologies.
Jeffery Mincham Ceramic Vessel
‘Morning Sea’

His practice, largely influenced by the ancient Japanese technique Raku which he has both taught and followed, depends on temperature and fire. Having worked with this method for near on two decades, Mincham, impressively, moved to another way of working in the mid 1990s, focussing on drawing from the local scenery.

Mincham’s rigorous early training with both Milton Moon at the South Australian School of Art and Les Blakebrough at the Tasmanian School of Art  is evident in his disciplined approach to technique and form. But the maverick spirit which drew him to the highly unpredictable field of raku is alive and well.

Jeff Mincham Ceramic Vase

‘Summer Grasses I’ – thrown, multiglazed ceramic form with brushwork.

 

 

jeff mincham raku bowl

‘Edge Of The Tides’ – hand built, multifired ceramic tea bowl.

 

 

Jeff Mincham is one of Australia’s most prominent and long established ceramic artists and for thirty years his practice has been influenced by the remarkable landscape setting of his home in the Adelaide Hills.  His beautifully resolved vessels contain a visible dialogue between the artist and the environment in which he lives and works, a narrative that is particularly resonant within the ceramic medium which is of the earth but shaped by human hands.  The highly tactile surfaces of these vessels are the result of a unique patination process that Jeff refers to as ‘firing and weathering at the same time’.  “The colours, moods, textures and events comprise a universe of constant change which retains a seamless, constant identity and provides an inexhaustible source for my forms and their surface treatments.  The works are often fired many times to achieve the depth of surface and unique character that they finally attain and many do not survive the journey.  However, I have survived a long journey myself to arrive at a point of strong resolution in my work and I conclude that it is the constant struggle that produces the best results.”

He has held over 40 solo shows across Australia, and exhibited in the USA, Asia and Europe.  His ceramics have been widely collected and are represented in the National Gallery of Australia and most major state and regional galleries.  Jeff’s work is also held in many overseas collections such as the Aberystwyth Arts Centre (Wales), Johnson Collection (USA), Silber Collection (USA), National Gallery of Malaysia, State of Hawaii Public Collection and Taipei Fine Arts Museum (Taiwan).

 

Jeff Minchem Vase with contemporary geometric  decoration

‘Day into night’ – multiglazed and multifired elliptical vessel.

From an interview with Karen Finch ( Craft Australia ):  Growing up in a rural environment, he says, conditioned him to deal with the landscape and it remains the most common basis for his work. The impact of Japanese style, techniques and philosophies has influenced the way he looks at the landscape and reinterprets it in clay. He is preoccupied with the mutability of his surroundings, monitoring natural events, how objects grow, die and rot – the cycles and processes of the natural world. The combination of a solid form, most often a vessel form, and a figured surface becomes a metaphor for the idea of shifting changes over an underlying structure. Decorative motifs in his work have gradually become more abstract as he searches for the means to communicate the essence of the landscape rather than use the surface of the form merely as a three dimensional canvas. Textures, colours and varied surfaces vie with each other to create a sense of the inherent conflict between order and disorder within the landscape, conveying messages of emotional communication to the viewer.

Jeff Mincham green Raku vessel

Lichen – thrown, hand built, multifired ceramic bowl.

 

 

Pelagic memoire (bowl) by Jeff Mincham

‘Pelagic memoire (bowl)’ – 2009

 

 

Jeff Mincham Ceramic Vase

‘First Rains’ – coil built, elliptical ceramic form with carved image.

 

 

Ceramic Vase Jeff Mincham

‘Hill Views’ – multiglazed and multifired elliptical vessel.

 

 

Textural green ceramic vase - Jeff Mincham

‘Windswept Hillside’ – elliptical carved vessel.

 

 

Jeff Mincham contemporary pottery vessel

‘Out of the East ‘- 2012

 

Jeff Mincham pottery vase

‘Home of the curfew’. 2009

 

 

Jeff Mincham pottery planter

‘A Grey Dawn Breaking’ –  Jeff Mincham – 2012

( Sabbia Gallery )

 

 

Jeff Mincham-oval-ceramic vassel

‘Estuary’ – multi glazed oval vessel.

 

 

Jeff Mincham Australian ceramic vessel

‘Cipher’

 

 

Jeff Mincham australian pottery vessel with abstract motifs

‘Reconstructed landscape I’ – multiglazed rectangular faceted vessel.

 

 

Jeff Mincham ceramic vase

‘Transit Variations’ 2012

 

 

Jeff Mincham square footed Vase

‘The Marshlands’ – 2009

Jeff Mincham