looking with soft eyes: 2018

Friday 14 December 2018

Alicia Van Rhijn

A Sense of Being
gallerysmith Project Space

29 November - 8 December 2018

A substantial exhibition from this artist who complete 1st year ceramics at RMIT and in 2018, 2nd year ceramics at the National Art School, NSW. Evocative titles allude to personal events, memories, doubts and aphorism. Alichia's phenomenological investigations uses the vessel as a physical carrier of meaning. This surface is punctuated with small, whimsical objects that read as calligraphy or hieroglyphics, understood only by the artist but hint at a subconscious language.

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There's No Leaving Now, 2018, earthenware, porcelain, stoneware, oxides

Self Portrait (Open Book), 2018 terracotta

Ghost (love stain) & Escape (So Long and Far Away)

Only a Broken Light & All the Little Lights

The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy: ontology (the study of being or what is), epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of right and wrong action), etc.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/#WhatPhen

Saturday 8 December 2018

Bec Smith & Té Claire RMIT

RMIT School of Art Masters and Honours Graduate Exhibition

Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) (Honours) & (Masters)Building 2 (levels 2, 3 & 4) and Building 4 (levels 2, 3, 4 & 5), Bowen Street off La Trobe Street, Melbourne

Saturday 8 December to Saturday 15 December 2018

Featuring: Bec Smith (Honours)

Featuring: Té Claire (Masters)

Saturday 1 December 2018

Owen Rye

Grit & Grace

Latrobe Regional Gallery

3 November 2018 - 10 February 2019

A rare chance to see work of an artist spanning 1995-2018. Rye is a master of wood firing technique and these vessels display the play of wood ash with heat, clay body over form. In some instances vessels have been re-fired from one to thirteen years later. The trace of historical or technical advancement is not revealed in this exhibition installation. The placement of works is personal and formal, a harmonious parade of colour texture scale and pairings. What has Rye developed over this time frame is infinitesimal and illusive, subtle.

Girt and Grace begs the questions, 'What does the maker treasure in a work?' 'When is a work complete?' 'Has this ceramics practice changed or developed?'

Winged Form, 1995, wood fired with ash deposit 175cm, Collection of artist

Installation view of one wall & entry

Morewell Ceramic Treats

Opp Shop porcelain

Opp Shop Bendigo Pottery

Friday 30 November 2018

JOMON: 10,000 Years of Prehistoric Art in Japan

Tokyo National Museum (Ueno Park)13-9 Ueno Park, Taito 110-0007, Tokyo Prefecture (Ueno, Asakusa), Japan
November 2018

The Jomon period is thought to have begun about 13,000 years ago. Its people relied mainly on hunting, fishing, and gathering for sustenance, while exercising their ingenuity in daily life by creating a variety of tools full of vigor and mysterious charm. Under the theme of “Jomon Beauty,” this exhibition presents outstanding works of art created in diverse regions of the Japanese archipelago from the beginning to the end of the Jomon period, shedding light on the techniques with which these works were created and the spirit imbued in them.

Vessel with flame-like ornamentation, 3000-2000BC, from Sasayama site.

Dogum (clay figurine) know as 'Joman Venus', 3000-2000BC

Fertile periods of artistic endeavor are not hard to come by in Japanese history. Many would cite, for example, the Edo (1603-1868), Muromachi (1392-1573), or Heian (794-1185) periods. Few, however, would mention the ancient Jomon Period (10,000-200 B.C. )in the same breath.

Jomon artifacts have been discovered across the country, from as far north as Hokkaido down to Kyushu. The Jomon Period — which is actually divided into a series of smaller periods — lasted from roughly 10,000 to 200 B.C., although this exhibition also includes items from the Yayoi Period (200 B.C.-A.D. 250) that followed it.

Aside from sheer length, another distinctive feature of the period was its environmental and social stability. Coming out of a long ice age, the people of Jomon were blessed with a warm climate, and plenty of fish, game and wild fruit and vegetables. This meant they could continue with their hunter-gatherer way of life with no need to develop or adopt agriculture, or to go to war for resources.

They did, however, require food storage containers and utensils to eat with, and this exhibition begins with examples of the jars, bowls and other kinds of everyday objects they used. Many of these objects are decorated with the “cord marks” that give the period its name Jomon, meaning “rope patterned.” This technique of creating texture by pressing cords or ropes into wet clay before firing was particularly prevalent in early Jomon pottery, but continued throughout the period. Sometimes, a keen aesthetic sensibility is evident where the maker highlights a contrast between roughly textured sections and other undecorated areas that have been polished smooth.

The exhibition’s largest section is left to near last and looks at the religious or spiritual dimension of Jomon culture. Here, figures of animals can be seen, perhaps used to pray for a good hunt, or perhaps made out of a sense of awe at the animals’ strength. Other objects are described as connected to fertility, or represent women giving birth, and some show people in unusual poses that we don’t recognize today. With an understated sound design playing as a backdrop, this is perhaps the show’s most atmospheric room.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/07/24/arts/jomon-art-japans-prehistoric-charm/#.XBgyHi1L2i4