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

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