What: Portage Ceramic Awards
Premier Award: Joint winners Jim Cooper, of Dunedin, for Drug Jars and Vendor; Madeleine Child and Philip Jarvis, of Dunedin, for Doodads & Doodahs and Widespread Occurrence of Possible Symbioses
Merit Awards: Phillipa Durkin, Wellington; Kristy Palleson, Wellington; Emily Siddell, Auckland
John Green Waitakere Artist Award: John Parker, Sang Sool Shim, Keum Sun Lee, all of West Auckland
Judge: Scott Chamberlin, professor of ceramics at the University of Colorado and artist in residence, Unitec
Where and when: Lopdell House Gallery, Titirangi, to December 6.
Scott Chamberlin is sore. This is what happens when you are swimming for your life in a tsunami, in churning water with fractured trees, chunks of buildings and other debris, at Lalomanu Beach in Samoa.
While his wife and children were scrambling up the steep hill behind, water surging to their waist, Chamberlin was submerged in the turbulent sea. The family was alerted by a Wellington schoolgirl who saw the retreating sea and bare reef, realised what it meant and ran screaming along the beach to warn her family. Because of this, no one from their part of the resort perished. A little further along, with no vigilant schoolgirl and no hill to run to, lives were lost.
Chamberlin is relieved - to put it mildly - to be recovering back in Auckland, and enthusiastic about the exhibition he has put together for Lopdell House Gallery. The Portage Ceramic Awards have been a part of the art calendar for nine years. With the richest prize money ($12,000 for the Premier Award; a total of $9000 for the other awards) and entries at almost 200, they are a barometer of the state of ceramics in New Zealand.
But Chamberlin is concerned. "I think there are a lot of very interesting artists in this country but the Portage does not always attract them for some reason or other. I don't know the answer to that.
"Every award show will attract a lot of people who probably are not going to get in - that's normal. My attitude was to hone entries down with the objective to get a stronger, clearer show. I was hoping to get emerging artists as well as people working in the field for a long time and this has happened."
Chamberlin has made changes to the standard format of the "one-pot-shot". He wanted a smaller artist group and once he decided who they would be, went back asking to see more work so "what is displayed is a larger and more representative body of work from each, and this, I think, has turned out to be interesting".
This widening of dialogue has created more of a curated show, with several works from individual artists rather than a selection of single works showcasing what is happening in studio practice, as seen previously.
"I tried to primarily choose artists who could be shown in other contemporary art contexts and be understood and appreciated in that broader arena.
"The vessel-makers in this particular exhibition could be shown anywhere, by and large. What surprised and somewhat disheartened me was there was almost nobody submitting utilitarian ceramics for the show.
"If they feel only sculpture is acceptable, then that is a sorry set of circumstances and it runs antithetical to what you think about when you make art - you don't make art for a judge."
Chamberlin is enthusiastic about the artists whose work he has chosen as joint winners for the Premier Award. "Jim Cooper's ability to look at something that is over-decorated, chaotic, wacky and crazy all at the same time and still bring it into something that talks about ceramics, the material aspects in the glazes, for example - runny, too thick, too colourful so that many people might think it sloppy.
"I think it's anything but that and this man knows what he is doing and is quite an amazing technician. It's very subversive of the old Anglo-Oriental tradition which I think is good. It is also ambitious in scale and for the context in which one might see it."
The other winners are collaborative team Madeleine Child and Philip Jarvis. "Their work is kind of weird and gross but also intensely beautiful and I think that is something very difficult to do, especially in ceramics. The work is around natural living organisms and the sort of plant life seen in highly weathered, difficult places.
"It's made of both out-of-the-ordinary ceramic materials, like Egyptian paste, plus all sorts of other materials like rubber bands. The psychological eloquence and resonances of this mixed media use I found really interesting. You realise the work is curious and odd and at the same time humorous, but also very smart. It's clear these people are looking at all sorts of other art practices, whether fashion or design or whatever, it's a nice hybridising of disciplines I find very contemporary."
When asked if he sees any significance in the fact that all three winning artists come from Dunedin, he laughs. "That's a good question to which I don't really know the answer but Otago has a tertiary ceramics programme they have all taught in and there are others in the show who I believe have been students of theirs, so perhaps this is indeed saying that Dunedin is a centre of excellence."
Repetition, a feature Chamberlin has noticed in many works in the show, is the way potters traditionally build skills and is not uncommon in ceramic displays. But Chamberlin sees more in these "diverse similarities" - resonances with wider art discourses; laborious repetition for its meditative and contemplative qualities - something ceramicists can identify with.
As for his challenge to the usual structure of the awards, Chamberlin hopes this continues, but with two judges. "Another opinion is useful, perhaps one from offshore with someone from here visiting potential entrants in the studio. Difficult but not impossible in a country this size."
Moyra Elliott is a ceramics writer and curator. Her latest book Cone Ten Down, written with Damian Skinner, is on the history of studio ceramics in New Zealand.
