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Australia at that time had progressive arts policies and grants
were made possible for a variety of activities including studios and
apprenticeship training schemes plus expansion into craft courses at
art schools, societal formations and gallery growth. Gwyn received a
grant to create a workshop in Tasmania, established Linden Rise in
Kingston and began again. John Pigott, a student at East Sydney Tech
while she taught there, joined her and they built the studio, a kiln
and entered research into the local materials. He became her second
husband.

Again the ware centred on domestic needs and John Pigott’s lyrical
decoration, based on Japanese Oribe style, enlivened the production.
From 1974, Gwyn taught at the Tasmanian School of Art in Hobart
alongside Les Blakeborough. She also taught in women’s prisons and
special needs schools — experiences she valued highly.

In 1980, she moved to Adelaide and a residency at the Jam Factory,
leaving John Pigott to continue making pots in Tasmania, although
they later exhibited together. She moved to Queensland where
she continued to develop work at a residency at the Queensland
University of Technology, and, from here, was also a regular teacher
for the Australian Flying Arts School outreach programmes. From
here, between various journeys overseas, for finally she was beginning
to gain some financial independence as her pots sold readily for
increasing sums and she was picked up by good galleries, she moved
to Netherdale in sugar-cane country in central Queensland in 1989.
It was isolated, surrounded by, as she told me, sugar-cane workers,
and she embarked also on her most productive period, not necessarily
in numbers of pots but in solo and group exhibitions all over the
world. Despite her increasing recognition across all sectors of the art
culture, her confidence meant she never succumbed to the attitude
that her work should only be seen in a fine art context. She happily
acknowledged her roots in craft and was comfortable showing
anywhere that was prepared to display her work as she wished. On
this she was meticulous, sent carefully prepared maps and notes as to
placement plus instructions on height for viewing and lighting.

« . .

I have come to a point in my work where I am almost exclusively
making work for exhibition. The content of my work, although always
rooted in a tradition of wheel-thrown vessel making, has deepened,

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Australia, Bowls--Shigaraki. 2012.
Photo: Brian Hand

Works by Gwyn
Hanssen Pigott.

and I feel the work, still always domestic in scale and purpose, is
best seen only by itself; presented as still life, or installation, to give
strength to its voice... They are as much for contemplation as for use.
‘They are as much for use as for contemplation.”

Later, over the 1990s, she worked and taught in Cambodia and
exhibited in Switzerland, Germany, Thailand, Tokyo, Barbican in
London, Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, Faenza in Italy and Garth
Clark Gallery in New York. Her first major survey exhibition was at
the Queensland Art Gallery, and she was part of several group shows
of Australian ceramics that toured to Korea, Italy, Germany, Brazil,
Uruguay and. Chile as well as inclusion in the seminal Raw and the
Cooked in London curated by Martina Margetts and Alison Britton.

Honours have been numerous. In 1993, she was awarded a three-
year Artist Development Fellowship from the Visual Arts and Crafts
Board. In 1997, she was presented with an Australia Council Emeritus
Award, and in 1998, was awarded an Australia Council Fellowship.
Throughout these years she has been in residencies in many centres
around Australia and off-shore and received several grants so that her
work might progress.

She moved to Ipswich in south-eastern Queensland in 1999 and
the exhibitions and honours continued. Besson in London, LACMA
in Los Angeles, 8th Frankfurt Triennale, Germany, The Powerhouse
in Sydney, New York, Washington DC and Philadelphia in USA,
Helsinki in Finland, Toronto, Icheon in Korea and Gifu in Japan.
She held a major solo show Caravan, at Tate St Ives in Cornwall in
England.

In 2005, a major survey show, drawn from private and public
collections in every area of Australia plus from the UK, celebrating 50
years of making pots, was set up at the National Gallery of Victoria
and was accompanied by a beautifully designed, substantial, richly-
illustrated catalogue with several excellent
texts by writers including Tanya Harrod,
Alison Britton and Emmanuel Cooper. It’s a
catalogue that should be in every library.

Gwyn was a regular visitor to New
Zealand. A workshop tour took place in
the early 1970s, when she stayed briefly in
many places over the country and formed
lasting friendships with Warren Tippett and
Graeme Storm. She was judge for the Fletcher
Brownbuilt Award in 1982 when she awarded
the premier prize to Chester Nealie and
importantly, continued to do us honour by
sending an entry for many years afterwards. It
was here, in 1988, she first showed more than

one piece together: Two Inseparable Bowls, in

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Potters Guild of BC Newsletter « July/August 2043

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