Auckland Studio Potters: AiR2
3 November – 18 February, 2024
Exhibition Opening: Thursday 2 November, 6pm
Curator Talk with Richard Penn: Saturday 17 February, 10.30am
Photography Gallery
The Artist in Residence programme was established at Auckland Studio Potters in 2019. Applications are called from national and international potters and ceramicists to spend up to three months in one of ASP’s two pod studios on the Centre’s grounds in Onehunga, Tāmaki Makaurau. The ASP committee has identified the residency programme as having the potential to stoke the local fires of a resurgence in ceramic arts worldwide and to provide a creative hub for experimental and traditional ceramics in New Zealand. Resident artists help around the centre and teach where possible and in doing so become valuable contributors to the centre’s whanaungatanga and shared sense of community.
Included artists are young graduates, PhD candidates, traditional artisan master-craftsmen to contemporary exhibiting artists and modern table and homeware specialists. The AiR programme is keen to foster this eclectic cross-section of clay workers and recognises the value in both traditional and contemporary ceramic practices.
AiR2 marks Auckland Studio Potters’ second Artist in Residence exhibition showcasing the work of the seven residents at ASP during 2023. It is a testament to our commitment to developing ASP as a creative institution, its members, and New Zealand ceramics. We do this by looking both inward at the unique inventive spirit of New Zealand-based ceramicists and outward by embracing the ingenuity and distinctive aesthetics of international clay workers into the programme.
Auckland Studio Potters is a not-for-profit community-based organisation that offers pottery classes from beginners to master classes. It is located in Onehunga, Auckland and was established in 1961.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Working primarily with clay, Emelia French (b. 1994, Taranaki) explores the inherent kinship between earth and body, material and gesture. Developing a material intimacy, she works for closeness without closure, sustaining the waywardness of clay whilst using the formal conventions of sculpture and painting. Her artworks explore the capacity of ceramics to evoke both the specificity and generality of the present.
French holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (with first class honours) from Elam School of Fine Arts (2012-2015), a Masters of Fine Arts (with first class honours) from Elam School of Fine Arts (2017) and most recently, has completed a PhD in Visual Arts through AUT University (2019-2023).
Rob Cloughley is the ceramics programme coordinator and lecturer at the Dunedin School of Art, he has been working with clay for about 30 years, and during that time his own practice has been predominantly focused on ceramic sculpture. His work has included installation, performance, collaboration, and mixed media. Rob has been interested in creating sculpture that tells a story of liminality, and the simulacra of industry that might be organic, remnants of a post-industrial age. The work exhibited here in Air2 is both the exploration of previously visited ideas, and some new experimental process and form.
Lisa Geue (b. East Germany) is a multidisciplinary artist currently working with clay, creating vessels inspired by her ancestors and organic-looking sculptures with a focus on form and experimental glazing. Her work can be described as the reclamation of female identity in a generation that is still fighting to bring down barriers. She creates in a fragmental and experimental way, constantly pushing the boundaries of the material she is using.
The vessel has become an archetypal symbol through the eras in human existence for crafts (wo)manship and spiritual rituals. Lisa Geue’s central focus in her work is the Vessel and its archetypal status, as well as the human vessel in her sculptural approaches.
Chantel Matthews artworks can be described as sculptural moments inspired by the ‘everyday’ with a particular interest in how we hold time and space, Chantel’s art / curatorial practice conceptually explores whanaungatanga (working together/relationship through shared experiences) and manaakitanga (supporting others) through kai kōrero, wānanga and collaboration.
Rebecca Steedman is a Tāmaki Makaurau based educator, designer, and artist. Selected interdisciplinary projects include: Time Beds at Aratoi Gallery (2023, Wairarapa), Life Underwater Series at Helter Skelter (2022, Auckland) The Weight of Things (2020, Auckland) at RM Gallery, Auckland, Civic Pride (2019/2020, Dunedin) a Typographic collaboration with Richard Orjis at the Dunedin Public art Gallery, Formations (2019, Dunedin) at Blue Oyster gallery (including the Caselberg Trust residency, Dunedin), Finding Ground (2018, Wellington) at Meanwhile Gallery. Recent awards include first time exhibitor award in Auckland Studio Potters Fire and Clay exhibition at the Pah Homestead (2020, Auckland), and a finalist in the Fire and Clay Exhibition (2023, Auckland) and she received a highly commended Molly Morpeth Canaday Awards (2021), Whakatāne, and was a finalist in The Portage awards, Te Uru (2021/2022). Resident at Auckland Studio Potters (2023) and Driving Creek Pottery (2022).
Sylvie Joly is a French potter based in London where she runs a small ceramics studio. Her work is inspired by the colours and properties of various clay bodies. Her residency at ASP allowed her to explore news clays and new ways of firing the work. As well as jars thrown on the wheel she made a series of kurinuki vessels fired in reduction. Her forms are always influenced by Japanese and Korean traditional ceramics.
Ceramic artist Jackie Muller creates industrially inspired sculptures from her studio in Laingholm. After leaving the plumbing profession in 2021, Jackie studied for a Diploma of Arts and Design – Ceramics with Dunedin School of Art. Her work “Fixtures and Fittings” won the “Artist in Residence Award” - Fire & Clay 2022. Jackie finds inspiration in connections to the past, revelling in the manipulation of plumbing ware to tell stories relevant to the present and future.
