Playing with Fire

University of Wollongong Theses Collection University of Wollongong Theses Collection

University of Wollongong Year 

Playing with ﬁre

Matthew Jones University of Wollongong

Jones, Matthew, Playing with ﬁre, MCA-Res thesis, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 2006. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/57

This paper is posted at Research Online. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/57

Playing With Fire

Matthew Jones BCA

Playing With Fire

The following thesis presents research pertaining to Worlds Apart An exhibition of recent sculpture and process drawings by Matthew Jones BCA At Project Contemporary Artspace, Wollongong

2005

and is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree

Master of Creative Arts by Research

from the Faculty of Creative Arts UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG

2006

Frontispiece: My daughter observing a pit-firing. 2005.

3 Certification

I, Matthew Jones, declare that this thesis, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Creative Arts by Research, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution.

Matthew Jones

April 5, 2006

5 Acknowledgements

This research relies upon the equable presence of my daughter, Sari: collaborator and raison d’être.

Thanks also to my long-suffering supervisors Diana Wood-Conroy, Jacky Redgate and Jelle van den Berg.

I am indebted to Olena Cullen and Craig O’Brien, for leading me patiently through administration and technology, respectively.

Thanks, finally, for the flexibility and support of John Lascelles and the Project Contemporary Artspace committee in Wollongong.

7 Contents

Abstract 9

Introduction and Origins 12 Chapter 1: Environmental Processes 17 Chapter 2: Process as Performance 21 Chapter 3: Fire 27 Chapter 4: The Imagined City 44 Chapter 5: Play and Installation 50

Conclusion 67

* * *

Bibliography 68 List of Figures 71 Notes 72

Fig 1. Installation of glazed ceramic vessels, detail. Largest piece 6cm high. 2005.

8 Abstract

This research paper examines the essential considerations of my role as a Father, as they reflect and inform my practice as a sculptor. Using initial collaborations with my 5-year-old daughter as a conceptual trajectory, I began to explore domestic rhythms and the communality of multiple objects. Ceramic artist Angela Valamanesh and ‘Outsider’ Howard Finster were found to represent the polarities – austere and chaotic – of repetition.

Artistic engagement with the congenital temperament of a child initiated a return to base sculptural principles, bare materials and processes, pre-dating history and evoking the archetype of childhood. This considered regression led to the development of an exploratory ceramic practise upon the beaches, bush and farmland of South Coast New South Wales, culminating in the ephemeral performance object of a ceramic pit-fire.

Formally, I have adopted the universal anthropomorphism of the vessel, consciously grouped and presented as the individual members of small ‘communities’. This method of production resolved itself in the suggestive vacancy of the ‘dwelling’, and the discovery of a largely undocumented international tendency within contemporary art. Artists, including Charles Simmonds, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Katarzyna Jozefowicz and Graham Seaton, create uninhabited environments from tiny assembled modules, achieving the accumulation of a multitude. Similarly, my own work culminates in a series of miniature landscapes, experienced both as amorphous playthings and votive objects.

My research demonstrates that, through various natural correlations, the roles of ‘artist’ and ‘parent’ are adequately conflated.

For it is possible to trace back even the most elaborate of ceramic extravaganzas to a point where its feet stand, as it were, on the ground of daily experience.

- Phillip Rawson

10 Introduction and Origins

The title of my exhibition, Worlds Apart, refers literally to its formal presentation of separate, clustered environments. Colloquially, it describes the vague chasm between child and adulthood. This latter consideration represents the origin of my work as a Research Masters candidate. My processes - and consequent formal resolutions - intend to conflate the imperatives of ‘artist’ and ‘father’, and have led to the development of a holistic sculptural practice.

Accommodating a young child in the studio emphasises the base activity of visual art: the opportunity for playful invention at every pace[1]. In the studio, my 5-year-old daughter became an enthusiastic collaborator and 'play' itself became an exciting method of production. Our tactile creations, though rarely enduring the prescriptions of art criticism, served simply to illustrate the delight in which they were conceived: wild mobiles, liberal scrawlings, roughly concocted dolls[2] and domiciliary painted constructions.

Figs 2,3,4. Collaborative drawing and various untitled constructions. Dimensions variable. Wood, cardboard, acrylic. 2005.

Requisite to becoming a father was adapting to a realm of domesticity. I began to appreciate the subject, concept and

12 materials of the home, and its local context. For this reason, I responded initially to the work of Australian artist Angela

Valamanesh[3] (b. 1949), whose house, to cite an interviewer, 'exudes the flavour of her work - the love of texture and form, of place and space' (Reid, 1).

Valamanesh worked in ceramics until the early 1990's, using, in her own kitchen, the functional vessels she made. From that time she began to develop her sculptural practice, and has worked since then, simultaneously, as a sculptor and ceramic artist (Reid,1). Although Valamanesh’s vessels are viewed as gallery objects they remain referentially domestic. As Rawson observes:

This intimate connection with a potent aspect of daily life and experience is what gives ceramics its particular aesthetic interest. (Rawson, 3)

Her recent installations of functional, 'domestic' ceramics explore repetition, and, consequently, the slight variations that separate individual pieces from the multiple (fig A). Valamanesh creates pure forms; rhythmically irregular, yet precisely and delicately submissive to the particular vocabulary of a grouping.

Fig A. Angela Valamanesh. Shelf Life, Green Yellow Green. 7 ceramic vessels on MDF shelf, ed.4, 12cm max height. Shelf 11x70x11cm. 1997.

13 Though the work of Valamanesh was dissimilar in resolution, these notions of rhythm and repetition seemed entirely relevant to my earlier colourful, experimental collaborations with my daughter[4]. Indeed, the child's capacity for repetition, for rhythmic sounds and movements, is well documented[5], and requires no further reference than the domestic anecdote: the rhythmic rocking that calms a child, that urges a baby to sleep through an extra-uterine performance of her mothers breath and heartbeat; the cyclic chants, nursery-rhymes and recited vocal rhythms of child-play.

For this reason, I also began to appreciate obsessive rhythms within the disparate art-historical aggregation of 'outsider art'[6] - the rhythmic productions and compulsive repetitions of ‘eccentrics’ and self-styled visionaries. Repetition, in the West, has come to characterise art at the periphery, such as the amorphous environment 'Paradise Garden' (fig B), 1970's, by

American Salvationist Howard Finster[7] (1916-2001). The Garden’s three acres of irregular, architectonic vision uses found objects and urban rubbish to form a unique presentation of Paradise. In much the same way, repetition also characterises the ostensibly 'low-art' production of domestic crafts.

Fig B. Howard Finster. Paradise Garden, detail. Dimensions variable. 1970’s.

That rhythm also exists in Nature is an exhausted observation, repeated to the point of banality, but it is here also relevant to acknowledge the revolution of seasons, of day and night, of hormonal cycles, of the tide, of lives. Art historian Ernst Gombrich argues that the human heartbeat is the basic rhythmic device of artistic repetitions[8].

To allow a child's compulsive and congenital participation in these patterns is, I believe, a primary responsibility of parenthood. My own repetitive production of small objects underscores this obligation, and facilitates an experience of Nature's pulse through the processes described in this essay. Thus, my exhibition is primarily a presentation of ceramic multiples, evoking the unanimity, congregation and natural delineation of individuals, families and communities. ‘One of the prime reasons why ceramics is such an interesting art’, writes Rawson, ‘is that it fills the gap that now yawns between art and life’ (Rawson, 6).

Figs 5-12: Various small ceramic groups. Glazed/pit-fired. Dimensions variable. 2005

16 Chapter 1: Environmental Processes

‘Pottery is at once the simplest and most difficult of all arts. It is the simplest because it is the most elemental; it is the most difficult because it is the most abstract. Historically, it is amongst the first of the arts.’ (Herbert Read, Cited by Clark, 10)

Herbert Read’s words could, I believe, also be applied to the difficult art of parenthood. Thus, I began to dig small clay samples[9] (fig 13) from the bushland and beaches of my local environment: the Shoalhaven River, Kangaroo Valley and Jervis Bay. Each represents a fragment of my immediate habitat on the South

Coast of New South Wales, Australia[10].

Fig 13. Various natural surfaces, containing clay bodies, at Jervis Bay, Terara, Shoalhaven River and Kangaroo Valley. NSW. 2005.

Fig 14. Terara. Clay location. NSW. 2005.

Fig 15. Collecting clay at Blenheim Beach, Jervis Bay, NSW. 2005

Fig 16. Blenheim Beach. Clay location, Jervis Bay, NSW. 2005.

Once extracted from a site, the raw clays are sun-dried for a period of approximately three weeks to remove all moisture, so that they may effectively break down in water. When dry, the clays are soaked for a further two weeks, until they settle into

18 inconsistent slurry. This grainy liquid is then brushed through three surfaces of progressively finer texture to remove stones and organic matter, leaving it much softer in texture. The creamy clays (a variety of whites, reds, yellows and browns) are then left for a further week, during which the particles settle, leaving a stratum of water above. Excess water is gently sponged from the surface, and thicker slurry remains. This latter is poured onto the earth and left to dry until malleable.

Fig 17. Slurry of Shoalhaven River clay. Fig 18. Shoalhaven River clay in situ.

In this way, a great variety of clay bodies were tested and prepared. The exhibition includes a small presentation of these raw clays, unprocessed, as a tribute to the diverse aesthetic of clay in its natural state. Based upon visual and practical merits (colour, texture, consistency, malleability, durability, availability) seven clays were then chosen to shape the ceramic vessels and sculptures that appear in the exhibition. The origins and characteristics of these clays are tabled thus:

19 Table 1. Clay Location Description Ceramic Firing 1.White Escarpment, Blenheim Grey/white, sandy, Fires to a brittle, STONEWARE. Beach Beach, NSW crumbly, pure white. inconsistent 2. Red Escarpment, Blenheim Intense Fires to a very STONEWARE Beach Beach, Vincentia, NSW red/pink/grey, brittle blood red/ sandy, crumbly violet. 3. Pink Southern bank, Smooth, creamy, Fires to a durable STONEWARE River Shoalhaven River, Nowra, flesh-pink, stony light pink. NSW 4. Green Farm Paddock, Terara, Extremely smooth, Fires to a metallic EARTHENWARE farm NSW malleable, dark red/brown. green/brown 5. Brown Farm Paddock, Terara, Light brown, Fires to a very hard, STONEWARE farm NSW sticky, fibrous muted red/brown. 6. Yellow Hillside, Kangaroo Valley, Coarse, light Fires to a hard, light STONEWARE Valley NSW brown/yellow brown. 7. Farm Paddock, Terara, Rich dark brown, Fires to a durable, STONEWARE Chocolate NSW earthy, malleable metallic grey/brown

Figs 19-22, below. Two unfired vessel groups before exhibition, demonstrating the contrasting colour and texture of raw clays. 'Red beach' clay and 'brown farm' clay are shown. These two clay bodies are also shown in situ. 2005.

20 Chapter 2: Process as Performance

My process is the expression of a documented 'performance', in that the requisite acts prove independently exquisite. I found that it was necessary to respond (and concede) to the colours, textures and forms of nature, as a plant during its growth. The

British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy[11] (b. 1956), who works through a comparably gentle interaction with the natural environment, wrote: ‘I couldn't possibly try to improve on Nature. I'm only trying to understand it by an involvement in some of its processes’[12].

Indeed, clay is not created but cultivated. The satisfactory achievement of a fired vessel is not a refinement or manipulation of nature, but an effective collaboration with her imperatives. ‘If the artist superficially applies his skills as a painter or modeller’, writes Garth Clark, ‘he would never coax the beauty out of the material, for the beauty could only be released by the liberating passage of the process’ (Clark, 9). By analogy, the developmental passivity of this performance can be applied to the achievement of parenthood itself: not through manipulation or refinement of a child, but responding and conceding to her natural curiosity and delicacy. Friedrich Froebel, the nineteenth century German educator, wrote that children

..ought not to be schooled and taught, they need merely to be developed. It is the pressing need of our age, and only the idea of a garden can serve to show us symbolically the proper treatment of children. (Leary, 19)

It was Froebel, of course, who created the term ‘kindergarten’, i.e. ‘children’s garden’. Thus, the roles of artist and father become complementary in approach. Throughout the process, quite naturally, my daughter was a constant, joyful presence.

Ceramic art, adjunct to a child's developing perception of her surrounds, also animates the imperatives of environmental

21 sustainability. Indeed, similar concerns have provoked the revival of studio-based ceramics[13], descending from the seminal influence of Bernard Leach[14] (1887-1979), who returned to England from Japan in 1920 to set up a ceramics studio (Cooper, 181-2). During the late 1960's, clay became an effective expression of

'hippy' values[15], impelling a direct experience of the earth and evoking an idealised return to the social model of the 'tribe', from whence, pre-historically[16], the technologies of ceramic art were engendered.

And indeed, my complete ceramic procedure was successfully performed with no synthetic or secondary elements. All that was needed could be extracted from the naturally occurring phenomena of the physical and local environment, within the immediate surrounds of my home, without prior volition or refinement. The raw clay, as discussed, was quite literally scratched from the kaleidoscopic face of nature. From there, it is reduced to malleable form and converted to ceramic through the gentle facilitation of nature's universally persuasive implements: sunlight, water and fire.

Through this expressed delight with raw material, and a conscious paring-back of pre-made contrivances, I assembled my clay- modelling tools (fig 23) from whittled bamboo, sticks, feathers, animal hair and many other organic, found objects[17]. These tools are made for particular practical tasks, not as contributions to an aesthetic canon. Yet, the resulting objects transcend their status as functional manipulators and present themselves as accidental sculptures; performance objects; roughly hewn props, necessitated by the making and marking of clay objects.

22 Fig 23.

The integrity of a performance is transmitted through the visual record of its transience. A pre-fabricated tool leaves little more than the suggestion of a 'pre-fabricated' mark, while handmade tools embellish the clay surface uniquely, and may be perpetually altered to accommodate the variables in a task. Goldsworthy explains:

I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and 'found' tools .. a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown over tree becomes the source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. [18]

This extra labour[19], whilst consciously 'performed', is an action impelled by a sincere concern for the visual object, by the desire for a sincere engagement with the nature of an intended work. Again, my art process reflects and informs my role as father: a parental action, I believe, must emerge from a genuine concern for the visible nature of a child, not from an abstract hypothesis of what a child is thought to be.

23 By the same token, I quickly rejected the prescribed regularity of commercial glaze, in favour of my own hand-made glazes, loosely based upon traditional Asian glaze standards such as celadon[20]

(fig 24) and temoku[21]. Yet, these glazes were still too reliant upon extraneous ingredients (e.g. commercial flux and ball clay) to be conceptually consistent (and, therefore, visually consistent) with the essential nature of my ceramic process.

Thus, I further reduced the glaze-making process, and consequent fired results, developing a series of elemental, ash-based[22] surfaces (fig 25). These ash glazes contain, at the extremity of material reduction, no further ingredients than the sieved ash of a fallen fruit tree from my own backyard[23], the liquid slurry of hand-processed clay and water.

Fig 24: Ash-glazed Bottles (detail). Glazed ceramic. Each 5x5x10cm. 2005.

Fig 25: Celadon Bottle. Glazed ceramic. 5x5x10cm. 2005.

Fig 26, top: Raw-glazed objects before firing. 2005 Fig 27, above: Some hand-made glazes. 2005

26 Chapter 3: Fire

One procedure, however, remained conceptually incoherent: the firing of the clay pieces. The minimum 600° heat necessary to convert brittle, soluble clay to stony, permanent 'ceramic' was still achieved in a purchased, gas-heated kiln. Dissatisfied with this incongruity, I began to research the pre-historic methods of pit-firing[24] successful within many of the world's cultures, and, in places, still performed for both utility and ceremony[25].

On the history of ceramics in Japan, Tsugio Mikami describes clay pots, as early as the Neolithic period, being 'heaped up and baked' within open fires (Mikami,78). It is a remarkable correlation that, in isolated regions of Africa, unfired clay pots and objects are still simply stacked upon the ground in an open area. A mound of grass is then used to cover the work and cushion a further layer of indigenous combustibles[26]. A similar technique in Mexico involves unfired vessels tumble-stacked upon a bed of dry wood. The mound of pots is then covered with more wood and coals are added to start a bonfire[37]. Within the Republic of Niger, a wall of disused, broken pots insulates a new collection of objects within the fire. Temperature can be controlled by a considered use of slow and fast-burning materials, by the sprinkling of water upon the fire, or by the placing of rocks as heat buffers[28].

The pit, literally a hole dug in the earth, replaces the precedent 'bonfire' as a more efficient container of heat, and, itself, precedes the 'built' kiln as a firing chamber. Early pit-kilns have been documented in sub-Saharan Africa[29], often with air fed into the chamber through underground tunnels or bellows.

The pit efficiently fires the work, leaving a range of colourful blushes upon the clay surface: ashen blacks, with smoky gradients of pink, purple, red and orange. The colours and contrasts, left

27 by the flames and the reduction of oxygen, are more pronounced upon a white clay body, such as my 'White Beach Clay' (see table 1). A darker clay body, such as my Red Beach Clay, displays a more muted ensemble of warm earth tones.

I made my pit (fig 28) in a paddock beside my home in Terara (A), a farming community on the South Coast of NSW. Thus, from the outset it was to be a localised performance, consistent with the notion of domestic production that defines both precedent practices and my own. The relevant combustibles are also gathered from the surrounding environment (B).

The pit is a half-metre deep, filled with sawdust and leaves (C), into which the raw clay pieces are buried. My pieces are then enclosed by progressive stratum of materials: grass, leaves, fresh green fireweed to assist oxidation (D), sticks and branches of increasing thickness (E), logs and, finally, abandoned hardwood planks from disused fences and local dairies (F). The bonfire is intentionally built with 'kindling' at the centre and wood growing more large and dense towards the periphery. This allows a form of heat retention within the stack, and utilises the smaller, softer combustibles as a cushion to protect the clay.

A B C

D E F Fig 28.

Fig 29.

The stack itself (fig 29) is an impermanent 'monument' to process, suggesting the temporary, natural constructions of Goldsworthy. Performance work such as Goldsworthy's 'Ballet Atlantique' (fig C), 1995, are easily compared to the fire-stack, being site- specific, materially indigenous and implicitly 'performed'.

Fig C. Andy Goldsworthy. Ballet Atlantique. Performance artwork. 1995.

29 The massive fire continues to flame and smoulder for approximately three days. Once the heat has abated, I approach the resultant pit of thick, deep ash to exhume the work. The fired objects (figs 31,32) must be literally excavated as in a careful 'archaeology'. Each small piece is discovered and sifted from the ash, its survival assessed, its newly coloured surface examined with delight. Pulled, like artefacts, from the dust of the inferno, the pieces are hardened and impressively stained.

Fig 30. Pit firing, Terara, 2005.

Fig 31. Small pit-fired ceramic vessels. Each less than 3x3x4cm. 2005.

Fig 32. Small pit-fired vessel-forms. Dimensions variable (tallest 12cm). 2005.

For my small, ceramic objects, the fire-stack becomes a massive, ephemeral chrysalis: a smouldering uterine space for the elemental nourishment of clay. The pit-fire itself is a 'vessel'[30]. It is a literal container for the heat of its flames and embers, a

31 metaphorical womb for the nativity of its objects and a conceptual repository for the meaning of its process.

This compelling metaphor, linking fertility and clay production, is widely understood through the voice of African object-makers[31]. In Morocco, potters speak literally of a kiln 'giving birth' to the pots it contains[32]. The Thonga women of Southern Africa (who pit-fire their ceramics) neatly invert the kiln-birth metaphor. Clapping and dancing to celebrate a successful labour, they sing:

"I praise my cooking pot, which did not crack!"[33]

This extra-utilitarian anthropomorphism of domestic ware - its votive function - is by no means peculiar to African potters. Even within the vocabulary of contemporary Western society, a pot is said to have a lip, a mouth, a neck, a belly, a foot, shoulders, a waist and a bottom. Indeed, design historian J. Onians suggests that the ancient Greek philosophical concern with form and identity (as expressed by Plato and Aristotle) depends entirely upon the vocabulary of the artisan, particularly the potter (Onians, 64).

A comparable ascription of moral status to the aesthetic of domestic objects is well expressed in Andrew's description of the process behind American Shaker Furniture:

The 'Holy Laws of Zion' had admonished him to labour until he 'brought his spirits to feel satisfied': 'let it be plain and simple, and of the good and substantial quality which becomes your calling and profession, unembellished by any superfluities, which add nothing to its goodness and durability. For conscience sake, then, the table must be well-proportioned, have grace and purity of line, as well as plainness akin to the humility of Shaker life... [34]

This description may be usefully compared to an Asian ceramic aesthetic, particularly to the 'purity, plainness and humility' of

32 the Japanese tea bowl[35]. The tea bowl also precedes Shaker furniture as a vessel for the expression of moral qualities. Kei Fujiwara, a celebrated craft potter during the 1980's, has said of his Japanese tradition:

It is refinement and character that distinguish the true potter from the man who simply works at making pots. He must be someone who experiences and recognises what is good. By absorbing [this] into his being, he can put strength and character into what he

makes out of clay. [36]

Shaker table and Japanese tea bowl are not so brutally anthropomorphic as an African cooking pot, but the implication is clear: the domestic vessel is quite literally a vessel for meaning: a space for the concealment or visualisation of corporeal wishes and fears. Rawson observes that ‘a pot contains both the reality of materials and process, and the inner realities of man’s identity in relation to his own world of meaning’ (Rawson, 8). This historical archetype lends potency to my own small 'communities' of containers.

Figs 33,34. Small, glazed vessels. Dimensions variable (tallest 12cm). 2005.

Fig 35. Small, pit-fired vessels. Dimensions variable (less than 7x7x7cm). 2005.

Fig 36. Small, pit-fired vessel-forms. Dimensions variable (tallest 12cm). 2005.

Fig 37. Small bowls, detail. Glazed and pit-fired ceramic. Each less than 2x2x2cm. 2005

34 My vessels are formally dependent upon the profile, character and texture of Neolithic ware, and of the Japanese tea bowl. Initially, I examined those various forms described by the term 'pot', in a consciously obsessive production of multiples. Installed as groupings, the anthropomorphism of the clay vessel becomes an expression of social collectives. My forms appear to interact and congregate, expressing the vagaries of uniqueness and convention. These pots are exhibited, like those of Valamanesh, in an environment of austerity. Minimal presentation (see fig 38) enhances the votive quality of the objects, contrasting a simultaneous, adjacent presentation of earlier, brightly playful and chaotic pieces.

Fig 38. Exhibition view, Project Contemporary Art Space, Wollongong, 2005.

Fig 39. Small pit-fired bottles. Detail. 2005.

Fig 40. Small glazed vessels, detail. Dimensions variable (tallest 8cm). 2005.

Fig 41. Small glazed vessels, detail. Dimensions variable (largest 5x5x10cm). 2005.

Fig 42. Small pit-fired vessels. Each 5x5x5cm. 2005.

Fig 43. Small glazed vessels. Largest piece 14x8x5cm. 2005.

Fig 44-52. Various small vessel groups, details. Dimensions variable. 2005.

Figs 53,54,55. Various small vessel groups, details. Dimensions variable. 2005.

Figs 56,57. Small vessel groups, details. Dimensions variable. 2005.

Fig 58. pitfired ceramic bottle , 10x10x10cm, with small cups, glazed, fired marbles, each 4x4x4cm, detail. 2005.

Figs 59,60. Small vessel groups, details. Dimensions variable. 2005.

Fig 61. Series of ash-glazed vessels, details. Pieces approx. 4x4x4cm. 2005

Fig 62. Three small jug-forms. Bisqued ceramic. Tallest form 12cm. 2005.

43 Chapter 4: The Imagined City

Having thus expended my interest in the formal variables of pots, through a final exploration of containers in various stages of collapse or decay (fig 41) [37], I began to explore the many other hollow receptacles that may be grouped and referred to as

'vessels', amongst which: boats, heads[38], bodies, ducts, tubes and dwellings. The vessel-form of 'dwelling'[39] immediately became a central consideration, not least as it adequately expressed the domiciliary nature of parenthood. To my daughter, the form of dwelling, in miniature, also suggests a doll-house, and supports my conceptual fidelity to 'play'.

Fig 63. Formal transition from 'pot-form' to 'dwelling-form', detail, exhibition view. Dimensions variable. 2005.

Fig 64. Raw clay dwelling-forms, inspired by children’s drawings collected from local kindergartens as field research for this degree. Dimensions variable (each less than 10x13x8cm). 2005.

Figs 65,66,67,68. Miniature landscapes, details. Glazed ceramic. Each less than 7x6x9cm. 2005.

My resultant installations of groups of dwelling-forms follow a considerable, yet largely undocumented international tendency within contemporary art. A seminal figure is, perhaps, the American artist Charles Simmonds (b. 1945), whose first installations of miniature habitations were built upon his own body. During the 1970's, Simmonds' tiny villages began to appear upon the edges and window ledges of abandoned buildings from New York to Shanghai (Beardsley, 1).

Simmonds carried a bag of damp clay and tiny bricks, constructing the abandoned landscapes and dwellings of an imagined civilization (fig D). Initially, the art world read these delicate installations as a commentary against commodification (Beardsley, 1) as they were not collectable. But, Simmonds was clearly fascinated with the mysterious architecture of his unseen 'little people', evoking the cultural systems and processes of a

45 hypothetical society - and inevitably inviting a reconsideration of our own.

Fig D. Charles Simmonds. Habitat. Clay, mud, pigment. 1978. New York.

The 'mysterious', within Simmonds’ uninhabited habitats, finds precedence in the work of Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), Surrealist inventor of imagined urban environments, among which: 'The Soothsayers Recompense", 1913 (fig E). In this painting, the subject of ‘sleep’ is introduced through de Chirico's incarnation of the classical 'Sleeping Ariadne'[40], augmented by his typically internalised dreamscape: a melancholic image of the vacant dwelling. Early 20th Century Modernists became widely concerned with a conceptual interpretation of such corporeal phenomena as sleep. Of popular significance was the publication of Freud's

'The Interpretation of Dreams' in 1913[41]. De Chirico’s work relies upon the assumptions of psychoanalysis: that the human figure, asleep or otherwise, contains an interior - a bubbling landscape of subconscious texture beneath a smooth externality.

Similarly uninhabited, yet expressing a pointed criticism of mass habitation, is the cardboard and paper installation of Polish artist Katarzyna Jozefowicz (b. 1959), installed at the 2001 Sydney Biennale. The work, titled 'Habitat' (fig F), suggests a vast population, yet illustrates none. Comparable, also, are the expansive cities of contemporary British sculptor Graham Seaton[42]; dramatic sculptural installations of plaster multiples. Seaton's site specific 'Sprawl', 2000, (fig G) casts the viewer as giant, overlooking a sweeping expanse of tiny, unpeopled dwellings.

Fig E. (top)Giorgio de Chirico. The Soothsayers Recompense. Oil on canvas. 1913. Fig F. (above)Katarzyna Jozefowicz. Habitat. Cardboard installation. 2001.

Fig G. Graham Seaton. Sprawl. Site specific installation, multiple plaster objects approx 1.5" x 2.5", floor area approx 85sq metres. 2000.

Figs H, I. Bodys Isek Kingelez, Ville Fantôme, 1996, paper, plastic, and cardboard, 3 ft. 11 1⁄4 in. x 18 ft. 8 1⁄4 in. x 7 ft. 10 1⁄2 in. (installation view detail)

The architectural miniatures of Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez (b. 1948) are similarly remote. Yet, unlike Jozefowicz and Seaton, Kingelez recreates a private vision of real cities

48 (some of which he has never seen), from the discarded objects of the urban environment; bottle caps, cardboard, tinfoil and other materials collected from his own local habitat. In this way, the work of Kingelez is more easily analogous to the bright, fanciful environments of Howard Finster.

Kingelez's 'Ville Fantome' (figs H,I) is typically polychromatic and technically complex, presenting a personalised reproduction of his home city of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Indeed, it is the work of Kingelez to which I am most responsive. His cities are painstakingly fabricated, and connected to the 'real world' (through formal reference to the traditional architectural model) as something that could, or may, exist. In fact, Kingelez labels his particular practice "Architectural Modelism", stating:

I wanted my art to serve the community that is being reborn to create a new world, because the pleasures of our earthly world depend on the people who live in it. I created these cities so there would be lasting peace, justice and universal freedom. They will function like small secular states with there own political

structure, and will not need policemen or an army [43].

Here, again, Kingelez adopts a Finster-like utopian vision, expressing the naïve and resolute characteristics of the typified 'outsider'. It is necessary to consider that the reality of Kingelez's actual habitat, much like Finster's suburban America, was far from the meticulous fantasies of his imagining. The sprawling anarchy and chaos of his home-city, Kinshasa, betrays Kingelez’ tender escapism. Kingelez offers the viewer a colossal votive object[44] for his political and aesthetic dedications. Yet, despite this severity of purpose, the work is delightfully playful, humorous, and communicates a childish fascination with the built environment.

49 Chapter 5: Play and Installation

Like those of Kingelez and Finster, my own installations (figs 69 to 95) are functionally escapist, though essentially playful, composed of multiples that may be rearranged endlessly; 'jig-saw’ puzzles with infinite solutions. ‘In other words’, writes Gaston Bachelard, ‘the tiny things we imagine simply take us back to childhood, to familiarity with toys and the reality of toys’. It is significant that, before assuming the role of 'gallery objects', my installations were used by my daughter in her games: spread across the grass of our backyard, assembled between shelves in her bedroom, arranged and rearranged on the studio floor.

To my child, these uninhabited installations serve as vast, amorphous props within the joyful theatre of child-play. Many pieces were broken, lost, crushed or hidden through the process of their role as toys. This history imbues the resultant 'sculptures' with a particular potency: they have been shaped, marked and animated by the very act of play. The 'assembled' quality of aggregate modules further suggests impermanence and instability, contrasting the conventional attributes of a cityscape.

Fig 69. Ceramic installations at Project Contemporary Art Space, Wollongong, 2005.

50 Jozefowicz, Seaton and Kingelez are similarly engaged with miniaturised modules and the accumulative aesthetic of the 'multitude'. This latter quality also unites the aesthetic polarities of Finster and Valamanesh. Whilst the separate pieces of these five artists are tiny, precious and finely crafted, it is almost impossible for the viewer to consider an individual element; such is the visual complexity of the whole.

In my own work, I refer to this quality as ‘Monumental Intimism’ This, an apparent oxymoron, emerging from a sustained personal interest in the production, repetition and aggregation of Intimist artwork. Bachelard uses a comparable term: ‘intimate immensity’ offering immensity itself at a category of philosophy. For myself, large scale Intimism necessitates a consideration of those Parisian artists assembled around the central talents of Bonnard and Vuillard during the late 19th Century. The artistic efforts of the 'Nabis’ group are entirely relevant to my discussion of Intimism, domesticity and, in particular, childhood.

In a 1996 exhibition ‘Paris in the Late 19th Century’, curated by Jane Kinsman, at the National Gallery in Canberra, a presentation of work by these artists, including the medieval revivalism of Denis and Serusier and the crisp woodcuts of Vallotton, were hung under the apt title 'Inventing Intimacy'. During the 19th Century many Parisian artists discovered a particular kind of apolitical Realism in the intimacy of the domestic interior. The family home became a stage for the depiction of private rituals.

The small painting, 'After the Meal', 1890, by Vuillard, is a good example of the Nabis predilection for domestic themes delivered in works of modest size. Like all Nabi work, it is more a composition of colour and pattern than a Realist critique, yet the absence of social comment only serves to enhance a domiciliary aura. Bonnard's well known folding screen, 'Nurses Prominade', 1899, escapes the domestic realm in its depiction of a Parisian

51 street, yet returns to the notion of 'home' in its literal function as a piece of furniture. The folding screen is symptomatic of the popularisation of Japanese art in late 19th Century Paris. This influence shows in the Nabis' flatness of modelling, bright colours and decorative patterns.

Babies and children also feature prominently within Nabi art. It is well worth noting that the notion of 'early childhood' had come late to France. There was not even a word for 'baby' in the French vocabulary until the 1880's (Kinsman, 49). The idea that infancy was an important stage within an individual's life, and that this was the responsibility of a child's parents, was new. The Nabi were part of a society that had begun to celebrate childhood, and this is evidenced in Vuillard's panels of children in the park and in such as Bonnard's 'Family', 1893. This art- historical enlightenment parallels my own sudden foray into parenthood.

Thick glaze made from my childhood marble collection, pots presented as votives to play Ceramic vessel, fired marbles, one of series (15 pieces). each 4x4x5cm. 2005.

Fig 70. Ceramic installation (detail). Individual modules 4x4x5cm, installation dimensions variable. 2005

Process maquette, not exhibited. Raw clay. 10x6x6cm. 2005.

Figs 71-78. Various ceramic installations (details), pit-fired/glazed/bisqued. Individual modules 4x4x5cm, installation dimentions variable. 2005.

Ceramic installations (details). Fig 79, top: pit-fired. Fig 80, above: glazed. Individual modules 4x4x5cm, installation dimensions variable. 2005.

Figs 81,82,83. Various ceramic installations (details), pit-fired/glazed/bisqued. Individual modules 4x4x5cm, installation dimensions variable. 2005.

Figs 84,85. Glazed ceramic installation (details). Individual modules 4x4x5cm, installation dimensions variable. 2005.

Fig 86, above: Ceramic installation (detail). Fig 87, top: Plaster installation (detail). Individualmodules 4x4x5cm. Installation dimensions variable. 2005.

Figs 88,89. Glazed ceramic installations (details). Individual modules 4x4x5cm, installation dimensions variable. 2005.

Figs 90,91. Glazed ceramic installations (details). Individual modules 4x4x5cm, installation dimensions variable. 2005.

Figs 92,93. Ceramic installations (details). Individual modules 4x4x5cm, installation dimensions variable. 2005.

61 Like de Chirico's empty, shadowed monoliths, my installations suggest the activity of child and adult, of community, without literally representing the figure. My work presents the generalised concept of human activity, an invisible, amorphous society, absorbing and reflecting the viewer's intimations. As Bachelard writes: ‘Values become engulfed in miniature, and miniature causes men to dream’.

Many of these ceramic pieces have been sifted from the ash of the pit-fire in an apparent 'archaeology'. This process is expressed through clear formal allusion to an ancient excavation. Yet these dwellings are reduced to the essential; pared back in an effort to avoid cultural specificity, rather presenting an archetype of that particular vessel-form, the 'habitat'. This economising of form - the emphasis of generalised planes and formal masses - is both an exercise in the vocabulary of Modernism and a characteristic of the amorphous object upon which a child may cast her fantasies. While it was Auguste Rodin who initiated this procedure of formal reduction in sculpture, Constantin Brancusi carried the process through to its logical conclusion: the independent, self- referential object. Brancusi's 'The Sleeping Child', 1907, a relatively naturalistic portrayal of its subject, informs his 1908 marble 'Sleep', which deviates from the values of portraiture to emphasise the generalised concept of 'sleeping'.

While sculpting with my daughter, it is compelling to watch her intense satisfaction in reducing my unneeded maquette to an abstract, textured form with scant, cactus-like appendages; neatly inverting the layman's common (and occasionally appropriate) criticism of 'modern' art: "a child could do that!"

And indeed, my daughter's ‘reductions’ do reflect the progress of Modernist sculpture: a rapid paring back of those characteristics deemed superfluous to an expression of the formal essentiality of an object, or the mere tactility of materials. She allows me to

62 deviate from my prior allegiance to naturalism. My personal scepticism of abstraction is temporarily assuaged by the presence of a child: naturally versed in abstractions of thought, deed and form. I am wary of making self-conscious imitations of childish inspiration, yet her tiny, potent vocabulary of visual expression impels my appreciation of non-literal art.

For centuries, the art of children had been discounted as irrational. Not until the eighteenth century, and Jean-Jaques Rousseau in particular, were children redefined as being akin to “the pure, good and natural Noble Savage” (Duborgel, 28). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the avante-garde of European art also became interested in the work of children, which they regarded as authentic, uncultured and original (Peiry, 14). Members of various collectives, such as Der Blaue Reiter, the Fauves, the Munich Circle and Die Brucke, attempted a simplified form of expression inspired, at least in part, upon an enthusiasm for children’s artistic expression. Formal collections of child art were also begun, notably that assembled in 1908 by Gabriele Munter in Munich. Four years later, this collection was utilised by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, who reproduced children’s drawings in the Der Blaue Reiter almanac. These works were presented, non-hierarchically, alongside works of folk art, tribal art and the art of Braque and Picasso (who would later collaborate with his own children). Kandinsky claimed that the expressive power of children places their artwork ‘on the same level as (and often much higher than!) the work of adults’ (Kandinsky, 251).

Citing this art-historical process while responding to childhood entails an obvious reference to the conjecture of 'primitivism', and necessitates a word of caution: Attaching the supposed attributes of anomic inspiration the art of the child (or the traditional society) is problematic. The mid 20th century artist, ‘Constant’, like his contemporaries Jean duBuffet and Karen Appel,

63 drew much influence from the apparent brutalism of children’s art. Regarding its 'primitive' nature, Constant argued that

..the child knows of no law other than its spontaneous sensation of life and feels no need to express anything else (Rhodes, 27).

Early childhood is clearly characterised, not by spontaneity, but by a sincere appetite for regulation. My daughter creates most joyfully within the circumference of a prescribed task, thrives upon 'laws' and imitates eagerly.

Paul Klee, perhaps, displayed the most consistent and active interest in child art, declaring, at age twenty-three: ‘I want to be like a newborn, knowing nothing of Europe, ignorant of the poets and fashions, almost a primitive’ (Peiry, 14).

Klee wrote:

For these are the primitive beginnings in art, such as one usually finds in ethnographic collections, or at home in one’s nursery. Do not laugh, reader! Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in their having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age (Klee, 43).

‘Preserving a child from corruption', of course, is a multifaceted duty, extending far beyond the relative inconsequence of image- making. During these same years, the child psychology movement made concurrent, though less superlative objectifications of children’s drawing. Experimental psychology of the time studied children’s art within the context of family or school, indexing and classifying what a child drew and attempting to understand the need to which the art was responding. Psychologists were less inclined to form aesthetic judgments, or to form polemical notions of ‘child artists’.

64 Georges-Henri Luquet wrote that the principles of adult artistic activity are to be found at work already in drawings of children. Luquet’s analysis concluded that, far from spontaneous 'primitive' approximations, children’s drawing represents a will to clarify and to abstract the world, a will to translate reality into a symbolic language; a system of signs. In fact, Luquet refused to use the word ‘art’ to describe the drawing and painting (the automatism) of children. (Luquet, 24-37)

The legitimizing of children’s art in the 20th century, by the overlapping contributions of avante-garde artists and psychology, changed our perception of artistic education. Children are no longer taught artistic conventions (perspective, tone, proportion etc.) but encouraged to honour their ‘innate’ sense of color and form. As avante-gardism became institutionalized, children were taught ‘children’s art’ as imagined by adults. As Picasso observed:

We are told that children must be left to be free. In reality, they are forced to make children’s drawings. They are taught to make them. They are even taught to make children’s drawings that are abstract. (Bernadac, 149)

It was Englishman James Sculley, who, in the early 20th Century, warned against 'the adult fallacy, the tendency to judge children by grown-up standards' (Viola, 38). A healthy child, it seems, will gradually resist the ‘primitive’ incursion of anomie and impulse, assimilating, with great satisfaction, the rhythms of her parent and community. Likewise, the inhabitant of any society, traditional or otherwise, adheres necessarily to its 'law', and rather gains her ‘sensation of life’ from the successful repetition of a collective paradigm, suggested by the repetitions and collectives within my body of work.

I value the collaborative relationship between my daughter and myself, and, indeed, I more student than mentor. Yet, it is her

65 capacity for visual curiosity from which I have much to learn. My daughter invests the resultant artwork with the vitality of a child’s game. Even within the final context of the gallery, the unseen inhabitants of these miniature landscapes are the fantastic inhabitants of my daughter's multifarious, private and kaleidoscopic imagination.

Figs 94,95. Glazed ceramic and mixed media installation, detail. Dimensions variable (each module no greater than 4x4x10cm). 2005.

66 Conclusion

Thus, the procedures and origins of my art practice adequately coalesce with the all-consuming act of parenthood. Both endeavours stimulate an intimate relationship with the temperament of nature: an intuitive and congenital experience. The various aspects of my process have been pared back in a considered regression; a gradual elimination of pre-fabricated tools and materials, in deference to the bare offerings of the environment; comprising a return to the essentiality of object production, pre- dating art-history and pertaining to the archetypes of community.

My Research Masters presentation is an exhibition of small things[45], monumentally aggregated, or employed as the individual members of small collectives. Humanity (and human activity) is suggested through the inherent anthropomorphism of the 'pot' and the vacant paradigm of the 'dwelling'. These votive objects reflect the scale and nature of childhood, the capricious process of 'play' having quietly resolved itself in an exhibition of contemplative miniatures.

Object makers are necessarily influenced by the separate roles they must perform, and my relationship with my daughter will evolve; its influence upon my art practice interminable.

I await new developments with the vast anticipation of a child...

Previous page, Fig 96: ‘Father and Child’.Bisqued ceramic pair. Max. height 5cm. Exhibition view. 2005

Bibliography

Works cited: Andrews, E. and Andrews, F. Shaker Furniture: The Craftsmanship of an American Communal Sect. Dover. New York. 1950.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. Boston. 1994.

Barley, Nigel. Feats of Clay from Africa. British Museum Press. London. 1994.

Beardsley, John. Hybrid Dreams: Charles Simonds. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1992.

Bernadac, Marie-Laure (ed.). Pablo Picasso: Propos sur l’art. Gallimard. Paris. 1998.

Clark, Garth (ed.). Ceramic Art: Comment and Review 1882-1977. E.P. Dutton. New York. 1978.

Cooper, Emmannuel. A History of World Pottery. BT Batsford. London. 1988.

De Waal, Edmund. Bernard Leach. Tate Gallery Publishing. London.

Duborgel, Bruno. Imaginaires a l’ oeuvre. Greco. Paris. 1989.

Gombrich, E.H. The Sense of Order : A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. Phaidon. Oxford.

Junod, H. The Life of a South African Tribe. Neuchatel: Attinger. 1912.

Kandinsky, Wassily. Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art. First Da Capo Press. New York. 1994.

Kinsman, Jane (coordinating curator). Paris in the Late 19th Century (catalogue). ANG. Canberra. 1996.

Klee, Felix (ed.). The Diaries of Paul Klee. Uni of California Press. Berkeley. 1964.

Leary, Karen (ed.). Childhoods Past: Childrens Art of the 20th Century. NGA. Canberra. 1999.

Lucie-smith, Edward. The Story of Craft: The Craftsman's Role in Society. Phaidon. Oxford. 1981.

Luquet, Georges-Henri. Les Dessins d’un enfant, étude psychologique. Alcan. Paris. 1913.

68 McNally, D. Piaget, Education and Teaching. Hodder & Stoughton. Sydney. 1975.

Mikami, Tsugio. The Art of Japanese Ceramics. Heibonsha. Tokyo. 1979.

Onians, J. Idea and Product: Potter and Philosopher in Classical Athens. Journal of Design History 4, pt. 2. 1991.

Peiry, Lucienne. Art Brut: The Origins of the Outsider. Flammarion. Paris. 1997.

Rawson, Phillip. Ceramics. Oxford Uni Press. London. 1971.

Read, Herbert. A Concise History of Modern Sculpture. Jarold and Sons. Norwich. 1964.

Reid, Chris. Angela Valamanesh: A Bilingual Artist. Interview/article published at www.cacsa.org.au/publish/broadsheet/BS_v30no4

Rhodes, Colin. Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives. Thames and Hudson. London. 2000.

Works Consulted:

Chave, Anna. Constantin Brancusi: Shifting the Bases of Art. Yale University Press. New Haven. 1993.

Faerna, Jose Maria (ed.). De Chirico. Harry N. Abrams Inc. NY. 1995.

Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris. Bodys Isek Kingelez (1995). Exhibition catalogue, texts by André Magnin, Bodys Isek Kingelez, and Ettore Sottsass.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Macmillan. NY. 1913.

Lindstrom, Miriam. Children's Art. University of California Press. 1962.

Lloyd, Michael. Gott, Ted. Chapman, Christopher. (curators). Surrealism: Revolution by Night. ANG. Canberra. 1992.

Mansfield, Janet (ed.). Ceramics: Art and Perception: International. Issues 52, 55, 56. Ceramics: Art and Perception Pty Ltd. Sydney. 2003, 2004.

Museum for African Art, New York. Home and the World: Architectural Sculpture by Two Contemporary African Artists, Aboudramane and Bodys Isek Kingelez (1993). Exhibition catalogue, texts by Jean-Marc Patras and David Frankel.

Nam, Kimyong (ed.). Competition International: World Ceramic Biennale 2005 Korea. The World Ceramic Exposition Foundation. Korea. 2005.

Neu, Jerome. The Cambridge Companion to Freud. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 1991.

Paine, Sheila. Artists Emerging: Sustaining Expression Through Drawing. Ashgate. Hampshire. 2000.

Rhodes, Daniel (revised Hopper, Robin). Clay and glazes for the potter. Krause Publications. Iola. 2000.

Richardson, Marion. Art and the Child. University of London Press. London. 1942.

Serpentine Gallery, London. Big City: Artists from Africa (1995). Exhibition catalogue, text by Bodys Isek Kingelez.

Strachey, James (ed.). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. The Hogarth Press. London

Trade Routes: History and Geography. 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa (1997). Exhibition catalogue, text by Hou Hanru.

Viola, Wilhelm. Child Art. University of London Press. London. 1984.

Watkins, James C. Wandless, Paul Andrew. Alternative Kilns and Firing Techniques: Raku, Sagger, Pit, Barrel. Lark Books. New York. 2004.

70 List of Figures

Fig A. Image found at www.beavergalleries.com.au. Printed with permission. 02/05/05.

Fig B. Image found at www.finster.com. Printed with permission. 13/07/05.

Fig C. Image found at www.sculpture.org.uk/artists/AndyGoldsworthy. Printed with permission. 14/07/05.

Fig D. Image found at www.the-artists.org/ArtistView. Printed with permission. 07/10/05.

Fig E. Image found at www.abcgallery.com. Printed with permission. 22/09/05.

Fig F. Image found at www.artfacts.net. Printed with permission. 07/10/05.

Fig G. Image found at www.chisenhale.org.uk. Printed with permission. 21/09/05.

Fig H. Images found at www.caacart.net. Permission pending. 18/01/06.

Figs I, J. Images found at www.artcyclopedia.com. Printed with permission. 07/10/05.

Figs 1 to 107 show my work, as it appeared in the exhibition, 'Worlds Apart', at Project Contemporary Art Space, Wollongong 2005; or of process tools, materials and locations specific to preparation for that exhibition.

71 Notes

1 The act of collaboration between artists and children bears a diverse history, stretching from the childhood 'recoveries' of 'Art Brut' (a term coined by Jean Dubuffet in the mid-1940's to describe 'raw' art; unaffected by the fashions of society and the art market, including that of: untrained visionaries, folk artists, recluses, eccentrics, criminals, psychiatric patients and children) to the rather more affectionate work made by Picasso with his children. Picasso revered the artistic production of children, and his dictum that an adult artist must 'relearn' the ability to draw like a child is often repeated.

2 Dolls, fig 97, and previous page. Series of seven. Ceramic, fabric, animal hair, wire. 10x5x5cm. 2005.

Fig 97.

3 Valamanesh currently lives and works in Adelaide, Australia.

4 Example from studio, fig 98, mixed media, 2005.

Fig 98.

5 By such as the Austrian 'child-art' observer, Franz Cizek, who, in the early 20th Century, categorised the 'second stage of Real Infantile Art' as the 'Rhythm of Spirit and Hand' (Viola,23). The process of repetition, in the studio, was joyfully received by my daughter, and by children at local kindergartens and primary schools, with whom I conducted several clay workshops as a field study of child-art production.

6 A term coined by Roger Cardinal in 1972, an English version of Dubuffet's 'Art Brut', and a field first championed by Dubuffet and the Surrealists (Rhodes, blurb). Amongst the makers of 'outsider art' are those listed at note 1, above.

7 Described in detail by Rhodes (Colin), p185-187.

8 Ernst Gombrich, in his publication "The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative art" (see bibliography) explores the craft practice of pattern-making as a response to the challenges of material, of geometrical laws, and of psychological restraints, and discusses the relation between pattern-making and pattern perception.

9 Two years before my daughter's birth, I spent a year travelling the South American coastline. Stimulated by the pre-Columbian wares I had encountered, I resolved to probe the breadth and depth of ceramic history. More recently, I have been made two trips of further significance, exposing me to the domestic clay traditions of China, being the source of my own ancestry, and of Southeast Asia.

10 Art production depends upon a reverence for chronology. A moment in art is scarcely understood without sufficient reference to the art that preceded it; the wealth of accumulated knowledge that bolsters its production; the status quo that necessitates change. For this reason I adopted, as closely as possible, the pre-historic practice of extracting materials directly from nature, synthesising the astonishingly consistent traditions of Asia, South America and the African continent. The relevant pages do not presume to offer a complete technical treatise, much less a concise history. Such would be superfluous to the intention of this documentation. My intention, here, is to emphasise the experiential implications of the ceramic process as they reinforce

73 the imperatives of Fatherhood. The procedure of clay is made relevant to my practice through a conscious performance of its chronology.

11 Contemporary British artist, whose recent landscape installations include 'Arch at Goodwood', 2002 and 'Snowball', 2002. www.sculpture.org/biography/andygoldsworthy.

12 As quoted on the above website.

13 The Australian incarnation of this phenomenon was encouraged by the formation, in 1956, of 'The Potters Society' (Cooper, 199). Among whom, Peter Rushforth, Ivan Englund, Mollie Douglass and Ivan McMeekin. It is noteworthy that no indigenous clay tradition exists in Australia. It would be reasonable to assume that the relatively nomadic lifestyle of the Australian Aborigines did not facilitate the production or use of fragile ceramics.

14 'The pre-eminent artist-potter of this century' (de Waal, 6). Leach's influence was central to the value and critical appreciation of pots in the west.

15 This was not an aspect of my experience, as I was born in 1980. However, I believe it is also necessary to acknowledge the attendant vices, associated with the compelling, though evidently impossible notion: reinventing the perceived ideals of traditional communities.

16 The earliest known pottery belongs to the cave-dwelling communities of the Mesolithic period, and dates no later than 6500BC, though seems likely that the date be much earlier (Cooper, 16). The independent origins of clay usage, amongst various, isolated cultural groups in different parts of the world, is a matter of speculation. Nomadic races, it must be assumed, would have had little time or use for fragile, low-fired ceramics. It would be reasonable, therefore, to ascribe the discovery of ceramic art to the relatively settled communities of the New Stone Age. As Cooper, 11, observes: ‘The invention of the process of pottery .. is lost in the obscurity of time.’

17 The eclecticism of the found tool is described by Barley, p136, in a description of Zulu pottery: 'an extraordinary diversity of objects may be employed to imprint pattern. Feathers, grass, textiles, baskets, thorns, shells, nets, bracelets, twigs, nails, pieces of calabash, carved and wooden roulettes, string, fruits, corncobs, bones and of course, fingers are recorded as being used.'

18 As quoted on the website, www.sculpture.org/biography/andygoldsworthy

19 Despite this long process, I am not attracted to the post-modern conception of ‘Process-Art’. Rather, it is my intention to engage with my daughter through a gentle practice of John Ruskin's[48] dictum that: ‘..it would be well if all of us were good handicraftsmen of some kind, and the dishonour of manual labour be done away with altogether’ (cited by Lucie-Smith,210).

74 Our focus is always, with patience and clarity, upon the end result. The simple desire for a more satisfying product - for complete ownership of an intended object - necessitates a sustained, laborious procedure. William Morris, central figure within the British Arts and Crafts movement, energised by Ruskin and attracted to the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood (Lucie-Smith,209). Relevant to my text, Morris was concerned with decorative reform of the domestic interior. Morris, who put Ruskin's words into practice[49], wrote that a craftsman[50] should

..always thoroughly understand the process of the special manufacture he is dealing with, or the result will be a mere tour de force. On the other hand, it is the pleasure of understanding the capabilities of the special material, and using them for suggesting (not imitating) natural beauty and incident, that gives the raison detre for decorative art [51].

Specific reference can here be made to the industry of traditional African potters. As Barley, 112, writes:

The most striking thing about African potting is the sheer simplicity of the raw materials required. Using earth, a few stones or pieces of calabash, a twig or corn stalk, and some firewood, African potters create objects of enduring and breathtaking beauty and absolute utility. The primary tool is the experienced human hand.

20 Celadon: a pale green glaze developed during the Chinese T'ang dynasty (Cooper,49), reaching its height of popularity during the Sung dynasty.

21 Temoku: a dark brown glaze developed in china, though named by the Japanese (Cooper,53).

22 Wood or vegetable ashes have been used since pre-history. It seems that the Chinese discovered the glaze quality of ash within their open- fired wood kilns, where a film of ash often landed on one side of the pot (Rhodes,314-15). Chemical analyses of wood or vegetable ash show alumina, silica, potassium and oxides; most ashes will melt to a fluid glass at high temperatures.

23 Reference can here be made to Goldsworthy's use of fallen trees, as the opportune offerings of nature (see citation, page 16).

24 My first observation of pit-fired ware was a traditional, earthenware bowl from New Guinea. This gift I had received from its maker, a young woman, during a visit to the Eastern islands (specifically, Ferguson Island) of that country in 1994. The method of pit-firing, that I have devised, is primarily a consideration of early practices in Africa, with regard to the materials and imperatives of my local environment. Reference has also been made to the traditions of South and Central America, and the Pacific.

Fig 99. A group of bisqued installation modules with unfired glaze waiting for firing in the studio, pre-exhibition.

25 Barley, 41. The aforementioned notion of 'performance' is, here, particularly relevant. The role of pit-firer intones the pertinence of history, and imbues the resultant objects with a satisfying chronology. For a child, this process delivers a profound experience of wonder, of elemental technology and primordial production, delivered within a package of visual and tactile delights. As a father, the process encourages a direct and fundamental engagement with the inquisitions of the child, as each bare element is discovered, uncovered, questioned and utilised.

26 Native grasses, sticks, branches, even the dried manure of animals (Barley,41).

27 Watkins, p35.

28 Barley, p42.

29 Barley, p88.

30 As a sculptural performance object, it further assumes the form of vessel, appearing, simultaneously and ephemerally, as an over-sized, wooden jar and as an expressive allusion to the architectonics of traditional societies: a small, burning hut.

The permanent expression of this brutal, impermanent monument is the delicate colouring left upon the ceramic surface. Naked flame is suspended against the clay; a 'still' developed in the body of the fire- pit.

My daughter, naturally, was a constant presence (fig 100).

Fig 100.

31 African pots, like human bodies, are thought to accommodate a variety of essences: nature spirits, ancestors, deities, diseases and attributes (Barley, 85). Indeed pots lend themselves well to the visual language of the inside and the outside, the container and the contained, the thing concealed and the thing poured into view. The African metaphor between pot and body varies greatly between groups (Barley, 52). With remarkable consistency, however, vessels are used to understand change and development within the human form. Relevant to the interface between fatherhood and art production, is Barley's observation that 'In East, Central and Southern Africa, there is a widespread use of pottery in the teaching of moral knowledge to the young'. Junod, 68, explains:

Thonga rites may be seen as a continuous process of regulating human change through the adjustment of hot and dry, wet and cool, sky and earth to achieve control and balance of the world and so moral harmony. The potting image in this provides a central armature by which these contraries may be visualised and managed. The child is a fired pot that progressively cools.

32 Barley, 88.

33 Barley, 92.

34 Andrews, 32.

35 Closely associated with 'The Way of Tea', and raku ceramics in particular (Lucie-Smith, 84). The etiquette and philosophy of the Japanese Tea Ceremony demands a thesis unto itself. It can be said, however, in reference to the comparison made, that the ceremony, and its related vessels, are rudimentary and finely crafted with a regiment of

77 simplicity. I owe this observation to my participation in Japanese tea ceremonies, as field research for this essay.

36 As quoted by Lucie-Smith, 84.

37 I developed a series of low-fired ceramic vessels fired incrementally higher than the clay body could endure, though not so high as to melt the clay completely. The result (fig 41) is a group of seemingly animated, collapsing vessels.

38 I used 'the head' as a conceptual vessel, albeit eccentrically, during a short time away from my daughter, making a series of self- portrait heads for her to play with during my absence. Although this was primarily done in good humour, I discovered that she had seized upon the notion with great sobriety, speaking earnestly to these little effigies in the way that a child may often confide with an animal or doll. Here the role of 'votive' was quite literally, though somewhat accidentally, realised. The heads appear in the exhibition, see fig 101.

Fig 101. Self portrait heads. Doll-making compound, human hair, acrylic. Each 4x4x9cm. 2005 Fig 102. Dwelling forms, unfired clay. dimensions variable. 2005

39 An example of dwelling forms in the studio, fig 102, process work, not exhibited.

40 The image of a young woman in languid repose, seminal to the image of sleep in art. The original, attributed to Polycles, from around 250BC, has informed countless incarnations, including De Chirico's.

78 41 But it can also be said that psychoanalysis was anticipated in antiquity. Aristotle was the first to document the occurrence of 'rapid eye movement' and believed that dreams represented the 'life of the soul'[52]. Whilst Surrealism was a partial response to Freud's 'discovery', the importance of a post WWII climate must be acknowledged.

42 Work discussed, and image found, at www.britart.co.uk/works

43 Cited at caacart.com/html/kingelez_bio_english.html

44 See notes 20c, 26 and 31.

45 The small scale of my work is demonstrated below:

Fig 104. Fig 105.

Fig 106

Appendix: Sculpture from Children’s Drawing from Sculpture

August 12, 2005. Vincentia Kindergarten 11 Saumarez St Vincentia NSW 2540

Shortly before my exhibition, Worlds Apart, I arranged to spend a day running art activities at my daughter’s kindergarten in Jervis Bay, NSW. The children were already familiar with my presence; I had previously presented clay workshops, with throwing demonstrations on a pottery wheel, followed by pinch-pot and hand- building exercises. I had taken a variety of work back to the kiln, firing and glazing the collection of heads, vehicles, animals, dwellings and figures. Many of these pieces were used as source material when creating the ceramic installations for Worlds Apart.

One objective, on this last visit, was to infuse my own work more implicitly with the interactions of childhood. I intended to feed my own sculptural work through the pre-schooler’s perception, and, in turn, respond sculpturally to their collected responses.

On a draped table, I set up a small installation of several of my ceramic vessels, rather like a still life. I then opened a box of robust charcoal sticks and distributed some thick art paper. The children were given as much time as they needed to draw the group of vessels, or the piece that they most liked.

Having gained permission from the children’s parents, I took the collected drawings back to the studio and set them, one by one, upon an easel, building a three dimensional representation of each child’s charcoal image in blank porcelain. This cyclic

80 progression, from adult aesthetic to child response to adult interpretation suggests the flux that exists between the polarities of old and young. Indeed, my daughter and I are engaged in a constant exchange of ideas: my intimations are fed through her responses, enquiries are made, assumptions dissolve and I, afresh, must interpret the reaction.

The result of this exercise – a series of six porcelain vignettes, pictured below – evokes the sketchy, bio-morphic quality of the original charcoal drawings. The subject is ambiguous (are they pots? dwellings? creatures?) and playfully indifferent to its formal gallery context. There is a delightful tension between formal masses, swelling and receding, sagging under the weight of one object, or rising to support or envelop another. The kinesis of a child’s line drawing has been translated to clay.

The children at the kindergarten belonged to the psychologist Piaget’s ‘Pre-operational Stage’ (2-7 years). Observations of children’s drawing gathered by Piaget led him to propose stages of development in spatial thinking. ‘Pre-operational’ children begin to represent spatial features, but the sky and the ground are represented as separate objects as there is no comprehension of the horizon. If drawing a figure, both eyes are drawn on one side of the head because, to the child, the important feature is that they are enclosed within the head shape. Piaget argued that a child at this stage did not possess the ‘Projective Geometry’ that would allow her to imagine the other side (McNally, 29).

If children’s drawings are, indeed, two-dimensional in the purest sense - both literally and by conception - translating these to sculpture requires an almost complete frontality. The pieces are not ‘in the round’, but faithful to the child’s ‘face value’.

Of course, the observations of Luquet (an alternative developmental theorist) and others (Gardner 1980, Milbrath 1998),

81 held that the drawings of young children often do not refer to the particular object depicted but to a generic type - a prototype. In this case, however, individual characteristics (textures, masses and traits) have filtered down from the original installation in lively caricature.

The six respective children’s drawings were also hung at the exhibition, worlds apart.

82 Response to Recommended Revisions

December 2, 2007

I have revised my thesis: Playing With Fire, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree Master of Creative Arts by Research from the Faculty of Creative Arts UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG, 2006.

Examiner one recommended substantial revisions to the thesis component of the degree. Examiner two recommended minor revisions to the text.

In light of the examiners’ comments, my supervisors, Professor Diana Wood-Conroy and Ms Jacky Redgate, made the following recommendations:

1. That I add 400 words on the role and impact of the father/daughter relationship on my creative work, with reference to relevant theoretical literature.

2. That I add an appendix of 500 words documenting experiments in local kindergartens, substantiating my knowledge of early child development.

3. That I include key works of Gaston Bachelard, Garth Clark and Philip Rawson as references within the text, and in the Bibliography.

4. That I make corrections to details about Bernard Leach and place material found in footnotes 45-58 in the body of the text.

I believe that I have satisfied these recommendations as follows:

1. I have combined 550 words of new research with footnotes 45-58 to explain the role and impact of the father/daughter relationship upon my creative work. This text can be found on pages 62-66 in chapter 5 (Play and Installation). I have examined the development of new attitudes towards children’s art in 20th century Europe in the fields of art and psychology, discussing the interaction between art and childhood through the perspectives of such as Rosseau, Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso and the psychologist Luquet. A further 163 words have been added to page 21 to

84 introduce the psychologist Froebell and to compare the acts of art- making and child-rearing. I have explained the personal impact of my daughter upon my creative work thus:

“Accommodating a young child in the studio emphasises the base activity of visual art: the opportunity for playful invention at every pace. In the studio, my 5-year-old daughter became an enthusiastic collaborator and 'play' itself became an exciting method of production.” (p. 12) “Requisite to becoming a father was adapting to a realm of domesticity. I began to appreciate the subject, concept and materials of the home, and its local context.” (p. 12) “To allow a child's compulsive and congenital participation in these patterns is, I believe, a primary responsibility of parenthood. My own repetitive production of small objects underscores this obligation.” (p. 15) “It is significant that, before assuming the role of 'gallery objects', my installations were used by my daughter in her games: spread across the grass of our backyard, assembled between shelves in her bedroom, arranged and rearranged on the studio floor. To my child, these uninhabited installations serve as vast, amorphous props within the joyful theatre of child-play. Many pieces were broken, lost, crushed or hidden through the process of their role as toys. This history imbues the resultant 'sculptures' with a particular potency: they have been shaped, marked and animated by the very act of play.” (p. 50) my daughter's ‘reductions’ do reflect the progress of Modernist sculpture: a rapid paring back of those characteristics deemed superfluous to an expression of the formal essentiality of an object, or the mere tactility of materials. She allows me to deviate from my prior allegiance to naturalism. My personal scepticism of abstraction is temporarily assuaged by the presence of a child: naturally versed in abstractions of thought, deed and form. (p. 62) “I value the collaborative relationship between my daughter and myself, and, indeed, I more student than mentor. Yet, it is her capacity for visual curiosity from which I have much to learn. My daughter invests

85 the resultant artwork with the vitality of a child’s game. Even within the final context of the gallery, the unseen inhabitants of these miniature landscapes are the fantastic inhabitants of my daughter's multifarious, private and kaleidoscopic imagination.” (p. 66)

2. I have added an appendix of 587 words outlining an experiment in a local kindergarten with direct implications towards my exhibition and my understanding of early childhood development.

3. I have included references within the text to Gaston Bachelard (cited on pages 50, 51 and 62), Garth Clark (cited on page 21) and Philip Rawson (cited on pages 10, 13, 15 and 33). I have added the following texts to the bibliography:

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. Boston. 1994. Clark, Garth (ed.). Ceramic Art: Comment and Review 1882-1977. E.P. Dutton. New York. 1978. Rawson, Phillip. Ceramics. Oxford Uni Press. London. 1971.

4. I have corrected information about Bernard Leach, which now reads: “Indeed, similar concerns have provoked the revival of studio-based ceramics[13], descending from the seminal influence of Bernard Leach[14] (1887-1979), who returned to England from Japan in 1920 to set up a ceramics studio (Cooper, 181-2).” (p. 22) I have placed material found in footnotes 45-58 into the body of the text.

Matthew Jones, MCA-R candidate, student no# 2365601.