Bemboka Gallery - Ceramics and Pottery Arts and Resources

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Bemboka Gallery – Australian pottery

October 21, 2012

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.