Individual artists with their personal doctrine, experiences, motivations and expectations have brought a hybridity to contemporary Australian craft. Post-fifties ceramics broke from traditional aesthetics to explore the notion of what ceramics could be. Semi-industrial manufacturing is revisited, the use of landscape as expression – the distinct geography, the growing spiritual association with the land; conceptual expression through making; self exploration; the domestic; and cultures of the modern world are all themes explored by the 35 artists represented in Impact.

International renowned artists Greg Daly, Janet Deboos, Gail Nichols, Alan Watt and Patsy Hely were presented alongside mid-career and emerging artists and recent graduates. Collectively, the artists in Impact have been represented in international exhibitions from the USA, Japan, Korea, China and Europe to the UK and are represented in numerous international, national and state collections.

Distinct approaches to the domestic could be seen in the work of Anna Gianakis, Kaye Pemberton and Yanze Jiang. Gianakis’ industrial and design-based practice utilises mould-making techniques to produce multiples that are then thoughtfully arranged to suggest other forms. Pemberton makes sensual domestic ware meant to be handled and used. Her tea sets feature teapots with rich celadon glazes and inlayed coloured millefiori highlights. The teacups nestle in soft pillows that aesthetically infer the art of relaxing with a comforting cup of tea. Yanze Jiang, the winner of the 2004 Shepparton Ceramics Prize, has been working with a factory in Zibo, China to bring her unique figurative teapots into production.

Ian Jones and Sally Howes demonstrated the continuing influence of Japanese aesthetics in ceramics, yet each of their interpretations was unique and highlighted a fruitful relationship between east and west, where ideas become enriched through cultural exchange. Jones, who has lived in Japan, embraces the Japanese concept of wabi sabi (the art of imperfection) in his large wood-fired platters. Howes’ work incorporates decals from photographs of traditional customs and dress taken during recent trips to Japan. She combines these decals with strong graphic patterns to create fresh sushi plates where the past and the present co-exist.

Bev Hogg and Amanda Schultz come to their figurative work from very different directions. They both contain slipcast objects of consumer culture, although these objects are used to discuss very dissimilar theoretical ideas. Hogg’s latest large hand-built figures feature slip-cast water bottles as a means of introducing environmental issues. In contrast, Schultz slip-casts plastic blow-up products to create unsettling abstracted forms that reference the uncanny and the corporeal.

Multiple ideas of nature and landscape were presented in the works of Alan Watt, Anita McIntyre and Patsy Hely. Watt’s sharply articulated sculptures generate a relationship between the processes involved in creating ceramics and industrial processes in the environment, like mining and road construction. McIntyre’s platters, with their abstracted imagery and built up layers of terra sigillata and slips, evoke ideas of landscape and the histories of remote parts of Australia. Hely slipcasts real twigs gathered from where she lives to create striking porcelain wall-mounted vases. Her work investigates nature through ceramic representation, concepts of place and explores ideas of function and utility.

The Canberra Potters’ Society, the School of Art at the ANU, Craft ACT, artsACT regional networks and regional galleries have all formed collaborative relationships that support and promote ceramic art from Canberra and the region. The cross–fertilization between academic education, professional production and community advocacy in the ACT has fostered innovation, technical skill and risk-taking. This atmosphere helped to produce Impact, a stimulating and exciting exhibition presented by the Canberra Potters’ Society Inc. at Verge: 11^th National Ceramic Conference in Brisbane in July 2006.

Invited artists: Jane Crick, Greg Daly, Janet DeBoos, Patsy Hely, Bev Hogg, Yanze Jian, Ian Jones, Anita McIntyre, Madeleine Meyer, Gail Nichols, Kaye Pemberton, Joanne Searle, Hiroe Swen, Alan Watt, Yuri Weidenhofer 

Selected artists: Maiju Altpere-Woodhead, Avi Amesbury, Debra Boyd-Goggin, Sarit Cohen, Cathy Franzi, Anna Gianakis, Robyn Gough, Christopher Harford, Christopher Harman, John Heaney, Maryke Henderson, Ian Hodgson, Sally Howes, Daniel Lafferty, Jacqueline Lewis, Moraig McKenna, Sarah Rice, Amanda Schulz, Lia Tacjnar

Bev Hogg

Cathy Franzi

Chris Harman

Greg Daly

Ian Hodgson

Janet DeBoos

Patsy Hely

Sally Howes