Peter Voulkos teaching (1999) from https://www.toledoblade.com/local/education/2002/02/19/Potter-connected-art-and-ceramics/stories/200202190044
Unskilled craft can play a role in refreshing a field of practice as long as it acknowledges the worth of such a field.
A recent Craft Cooee hosted by the World Crafts Council – Australia drew great interest from ceramicists. Bernard Kerr organised a discussion around the practice of “sloppy craft”. For Kerr, this deliberately unskilled work falls into “two camps”.
…one that is highly skilled and uses polychrome blobs, gilt, glitter and oozing surfaces often with growths or excrescences, regularly leaving the indexical marks of the making process and the other that is intentionally ‘anti skill’. The latter often wilfully and wantonly eschews competence, is cracked, exploded or slumped so the work signifies a wounded and broken character that, to my eye, expresses a nihilistic ennui and hopelessness
Kerr references Takuru Kuwata in the former intentional camp, and the conceptual artist Sterling Ruby as someone whose work represents a mockery of skill. For Kerr, this debate goes back to the influence of Bernard Leach who criticised the overblown ornamental porcelain ornaments as “meretricious” and posed as an alternative, the modest ethic of “wabi-sabi”.
Fellow ceramicist Fleur Schell is similarly damming.
Sloppy Craft is an inward-thinking or egocentric trend that actually distracts the audience through maximalist anti-aesthetics. I am uninterested in discussing craft that shows a lack of skill, rejects beauty and adopts the more is more approach. This is not the most helpful narrative as we look to be inspired by craft for pathways to navigate the next millennium. Sloppy craft positions the ego of the artist as central to the meaning of the work. This is the fundamental problem we face as a civilisation today
This issue has arisen with the emergence of visual artists using clay. Figures like Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran achieve great success with a punk-like aesthetic that is deliberately haphazard and provocative in content. These artists reflect a libertarian disdain for categories: “I never see the paintings as paintings or the ceramics as ceramics – I just see them as artworks.” The negative reaction from ceramicists to their work is fuel to the fire, highlighting their transgressiveness.
The radical field
Behind this conflict is the broader issue of the field itself. Like other modern creative practitioners, ceramicists constitute their field through exhibitions, conferences and writing. This isn’t necessarily a conservative structure. A radical figure like Peter Voulklos could emerge creating abstract expressionist works at odds with the controlled works of the time.
But it is still possible for a writer like Paul Greenhalgh to include Vouklos in his epic history of the medium, Ceramic, Art and Civilisation (2020). Greenhach writes how Voulkos was very much embedded in the ceramic community, learning from Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada.
Joan Miró had talked about the ‘destruction of painting’, as a means of inventing a new way to paint. In the same spirit, Voulkos sought the destruction of ceramic, in order to find a new way of making pots
The approach undoubtedly showed the influence of the ancient Korean and Japanese traditions, as in the early Korean moon jars, where a sublime perfection was expressed through fingermarks and deliberate flaws, and the fierce spontaneity of Japanese Raku wares
David Ray, Four Treasons series, 2022, earthenware, decals, enamel, platinum
A more recent example is the work of David Ray. Ray eschews many of the fundamentals of authentic ceramics with the liberal use of decals and deliberately wonky construction. But he does this in a way that harkens back to the themes of ornamental porcelain, such as Dresden figurines. The Four Treasons series references the Staffordshire Pearlware figures that constitute the “four seasons”. Their bucolic themes are undermined by modern vehicles that perpetrate the rampant destruction of nature. The very breaking of artistic rules enables Ray to continue a ceramic story into the contemporary era.
The rise of the “creative”
At a time of “liquid modernity”, the idea of a “field” is fiercely contested. In the 2000s, the gallerist Garth Clark went on a crusade against “Fortress Ceramica”, seeking to lure ceramicists away from their field to lucrative sales in the visual arts. This attack on fields of practice has led to the emergence of the “creative” as a highly individualised practitioner whose work is about “blurring boundaries”.
“Creatives” are patronised by ambitious young entrepreneurs seeking a profile in the powerful networks. These clients are serviced by the new market for “collectable design”.
You can find collective design in one of the most fashionable Melbourne galleries, Oigåll Projects. Their exhibition for Melbourne Design Week featured speakers made from recycled cast aluminium by Tom Fereday. The work is a great testament to innovation in materials.
Speakers are a functional item, but the work is deliberately exclusive. The works Oigall displays are either one-offs or editioned. The very name “Oigåll” is designed to trip up newcomers, revealing those “in the know” who have “word of mouth” versus those who resort to what they read (it’s a family nickname for someone called “Gertrude”, the street where the gallery is located).
Money has its uses. Appealing to wealthy clientele is a way of gaining the capital necessary to make important work. And many such collectors have a deep appreciation of the medium. But it’s important to be aware of how status can compromise artistic value. There’s nothing intrinsically worthy about the rare or exclusive. Nor is something commonly available necessarily of lesser importance. Rarity is a standard mechanism to increase value in a capitalist market. De Beers had to deliberately restrict the supply of diamonds in order to raise their prices.
Cultivating the field
A more authentic evaluation is framed by the communally identified field of practice. As PhD candidates ask themselves, how does my work contribute to this field? How well does it realise the field’s creative techniques? Maybe it’s mastering porcelain medium to make ornamental iPhones, connecting the tradition of Dresden china to Apple technology. While contributions should add something new to the field, they should do so in a way that expands the potential of established concepts, materials or techniques.
This doesn’t necessarily lead to works overloaded with meaning. As with Voulkos, there are times when it’s useful to strip away traditions. Fields do have a lifecycle. When the field is overdeveloped, there will be moves to go “back to basics” through works of immediacy. But this is in service of the field, not to rise above it.
Of course, it is possible to straddle both worlds. The collectable design market affords the opportunity to make unique work. But at the same time, it’s possible to belong to the craft community that sustains meaning across generations. In acting, Cate Blanchet complemented her Oscar-winning film performances with occasional returns to classic theatre such as Streetcar Named Desire.
As Gaudi has it, “Originality consists in returning to the original”.
Comments
Great article Kevin. I’m definitely in the ‘break the rules but interrogate the results in respect of tradition’ camp.
Btw I was once lucky enough to see Cate Blanchett in the Glass Menagerie at the wharf theatre.
Ceramic artists/ practitioners are obviously free to make work of which ever skill level they have acquired or desired but. It is the gate keepers that do the medium a disservice but discounting both technique and tradition outright. Ramesh is definately a “punk” expressive and as the were the Pistols , authentic . It’s the hangers on, the sheep like dags that cling to the rear of a movement already passed. It’s the ( Malcolm “come lately” McClarens ) that represent the status driven bandwagon of lesser thans , that do the ceramic art scene a world of disservice. Many are called but few are choice.
I have enjoyed this expansion of the Cooee event which for me left many conversations incomplete.
I feel there is room for all (but less tolerant of lack of skill taking up public space ) and maybe sloppy craft aesthetic is a space within the ceramic field that was available. Is it new? In recent rereadings of some vintage maybe even antique ceramic magazines I was seeing some globby drippy ‘surface decoration’ not dissimilar to recent outings.
Maybe Sandra the drippy decorations are part of a fetishisation of the handmade, which is evident more in loss of control than skilled work. We need greater appreciation of mastery.