Steve Harrison INSIDE Gallery Managet’s Report Presidents Message 3 Clay Symposium 4 Presenter Profile: Robin Hopper 5S Irene Berchetenbreiter 6 The Quest for Wow 8 Now Showing 10 Clay Lines 11 OTTERS February 2007 Volume 43 No. 1 THE NEW DARK AGES AND DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS: UNUSUAL MATERIALS INTRIGUE AUSSIE POTTER In this age where everything ts a cheap import from China and nothing has any real value anymore, where every foreigner coming here is a potential terrorist, our politicians have terrorised us into sacrificing some of our hard fought for rights and freedoms, and we seem happy to meekly sign them away as long as interest rates stay low and we can have lots of cheap plastic junk. I believe that we are entering the new dark ages where humanism, education and the rule of science are being eroded, to be replaced with the new voodoo, ignorance and superstition. I have been interested for some time in aspects of the real, the tangible, the hand made, a sense of place, the ‘terroir’ of a locality. I have no interest in the fast track and the cheap throwaway. I want real things around me, things that will stay around me and develop a patina of age and a meaning born of context and familiarity. The work tn the exhibition: “Dirty Little Secrets” (Legge Gallery, New South Wales, Australia) is the result of this approach and the last two years’ research. It follows my last show here of local porcelains. a This new work 1s dark and not made from clay tn the normal sense. The material 1s an interesting mixture of decomposing basic igneous rock fragments and dirt that I collect locally. This ‘clay-like’ unusual stuff does not respond to normal clay working procedures. It tested me and defeated me for some time, but as POTTERS continued on page 7 GUILD of BRITISH COLUMBIA