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- Title of Exhibit Proposal:
REFLECTING PLACE (Ref #194)
- Date:
- 26-10-2006 02:37:35
- Status:
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Accepted with revisions
- Rating:
- 6
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Details:
- Exhibition summary
? Reflecting Place ? is an exhibition of ceramics, photography and poetic writing from Tasmania, the southern island state of Australia.
It connects you to my immediate making and material environment, and documents the reflective process along with the making that results. It conveys both a place for making and my making from place.
Exhibition Framework
At the core of the long and rich history of craft making has been a response to the needs of culture expressed predominantly through the use of local materials. This expression of place-based making has resulted in an amazing diversity of utensils for daily and ritual use. Now the shift to globalization has increasingly fractured the holistic nature of craft making into a world of designers, global manufacturing and industrially processed materials. The sense of a localised or regional response through indigenous materials to culture is a way of clearly differentiating my work from placeless industrial design production.
This exhibition presents my making response to these forces and helps to give form and substance to the ideas outlined in my paper ? Reflecting Place - sustaining practice ?
This exhibition derives from research done as part of a Masters degree at the University of Tasmania finished in 2004. After 20 years of craft practice based on the use of indigeneous raw materials gathered, then processed and tested in my workshop, I felt the need to closely examine and challenge my thinking and making for relevance within contemporary culture. Post-graduate study for a Master of Art Design and Environment degree (M.A.D.E.) was a way of putting structure around those investigations. This exhibition gives an insight into my way of working, of gathering materials and ideas from my immediate environment and translating them into form. It connects using poetic writing and photography through into ceramic forms my path from stimulus to usefulness.
Exhibition Form/Space Requirements
It is hard to give form to an exhibition without knowing the space and presentation options that would be available. However the content of the exhibition would be in 2 parts
1. 10-20 ceramic pieces using local clays and glaze materials - these are all pieces that are intended for use however that use is not prescribed. Display of these pieces would be on plinths or similar wall mounted and floor display surfaces.
2. 30-50 photographs and journal poetics window mounted on 30 cm by 30 cm card ( the photographic images are small - 12 cm X 12 cm ) These would be wall mounted behind or around the ceramic pieces depending on the space at eye level - most likely in a continuous running strip or frieze.
In terms of space requirements
wall space - at least 10 lineal metres of wall display
floor space - depends on number of pieces and the shape of the available space
Craft Practice
My craft practice for the last 20 years has been in ceramics with the recent addition for exhibitions such as the one proposed here, of photographic and poetic writing elements. The inclusion of these other elements along with the ceramics allows viewers a portal through to the thinking, material and process influences that shape the clay.
Biography:
Ben Richardson currently pursues a professional practice in ceramics along with teaching commitments in the Visual Art and Contemporary Craft course at TAFE in Hobart. His professional practice focuses on the use of indigenous raw materials in a place-based approach to craft making.
He was born in Hobart in 1951and has a diverse professional and teaching background having completed a Bachelor of Economics at the University of Tasmania in 1972, and a Master of Art, Design and Environment at the Tasmanian School of Art (UTAS) in 2004. He taught in the Ceramics Studio at the Tasmanian School of Art in
Hobart from 1985 to 1995.
Contact
Ben Richardson
1466 South Arm Rd.
Sandford Tasmania 7020 Australia
www.benrichardson.com.au for telephone and email contact details
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Images: (Click on the image to view it full size in a new browser window)
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Reviewer Comments:
Public Comments:
- Comment left by Ben Richardson on 07-11-2006 07:08:38 #
- I just wanted to clarify the phrase sustaining practice that I have used in both the exhibition outline and the abstract as a response to some of the review comments.
While I do refer to issues of material and process sustainability, I am more addressing ideas around sustaining a making practice for both the maker and reflecting on how this supports what the maker takes into the marketplace. It also refers to the sustaining usefulness of the work - this is work that is experienced fully through using, not merely viewing, and so embodies a latent creative potency for the user.
In relation to whether it is an isolated practice - a place-based making aesthetic has different levels that it can operate on - it is applicable to a rustic rural retreat or an industrial urban setting - just the materials play a quite different role. - at home in place, the full vertical integration with local materials of that aesthetic is potentially intact, but when outside place it isn't in the same way or at the same depth.