Exhibition Period: May 9 - June 30, 2015
Koru Contemporary Art announces an exciting exhibition of ceramic sculpture. Works in a range of forms but all created by New Zealand ceramicist, including the work of Cheryl Lucas, Rick Rudd & Merilyn Wiseman.
Cheryl Lucas marries two disparate disciplines into this collection of works, the creation of ceramic sculpture, and drawing. By using clay to create three dimensional works, but utilizing artist made ceramic pencils and chalks to draw onto the surface of her ceramic pieces, she adds a two dimensional element to each object, and in the process creates a hybrid - drawn ceramic or ceramic drawing, depending on your point of view.
After training in lithography in London, Cheryl Lucas taught drawing and ceramics in Christchurch, New Zealand for several years, but since 2005 she has concentrated on her own practice, working from her studio in Lyttelton, New Zealand.
Rick Rudd is by self-definition a studio potter, in the 30 years he has been domiciled in New Zealand he has earned himself a significant place within ceramic art achievement in New Zealand.
Rick's work is hand-built, the majority pinched and coiled, a technique of adding thick coils of clay to the piece and then pinching, squeezing and shaping the clay as it is extended. Once the forming process is completed the work is scraped and the form refined. The making process being relatively slow necessitates several days work being spent on some pieces. Rick's shapes evolve rather than begin as separate ideas and whole new works often link back to previous pieces but take on a new dimension.
Merily Wiseman was born in Auckland in 1941. She completed a Preliminary Diploma at the Elam School of Art in 1959 and continued her studies at Goldsmiths School of Art, University of London, graduating in 1963 with the National Diploma of Design, and in 1964 with the Art Specialist Teachers Diploma. However, while on a working holiday in a small country pottery in Ireland, she became more and more interested in working with clay. Merilyn said "I'd spent three years at Goldsmiths specializing in painting....and then I watched someone throwing pots on a wheel ..amorphous lumps of clay, two hands, a little water, and a slowly turning wheel....It was like watching a dance in slow motion....I was hooked"
Merilyn returned to New Zealand and in 1976 built a two chambered wood kiln at her home near Albany. She has worked as a professional ceramicist since that date. She was selected to participate in the National ceramic symposium held in Dunedin in 1989, and in the First International Ceramics Symposium at the Canberra School of Art in 1989. She has received several QE11 Arts Council grants, and her work has been recognised with many awards, including the Fletcher Challenge Pottery Award, and the Premiere Portage Ceramic Award in 2005 for Arctic Rim. In 2002 Merilyn's Pacific Rim, a white earthenware clay piece, was featured on a special edition of stamps issued by New Zealand Post and Sweden Post called ‘Art Meets Craft.'
