Articles

This section contains a selection of my writings on ceramics, in the form of commissioned articles and other texts. Many of the articles relating to an individual artist’s work have been commissioned and therefore should not be taken as a rigorous critical analysis, which is not to say the content is inaccurate.

Most of my writing, however, is historical or general in nature, while some of the more deliberately polemical articles contain robust observations in areas such as ceramics education and the effect of certain styles and trends on the development of ceramics in the 20th and into the 21st century.

A subcategory to this section will be added at a later time, which contains teaching notes and work from my doctoral dissertation titled ‘In the Beginning was the Word: Bernard Leach and the development of Australian studio pottery from 1940 to 1964’.

Articles
  • An Echo of Butterflies (2007)
    A response to Garth Clark’s ‘Blunting the New’.
  • Bobbing for Apples in Brisbane
    A response to the appearance in Brisbane by Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio at     Verge the 11th National Australian Ceramics Conference.
  • Bowls, anyone?
    This essay was first printed in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition     Bowl held at khai liew design in Adelaide, 26 October to 9 November 2006.
  • Ceramics and the Haptic Lapse
    An open letter to Craft Victoria, in response to the 19 August 2002 forum about the closure of ceramics course at Victorian College of the Arts
  • A State of Flux: The Future of Australian Ceramics Education
    A follow-up to     Ceramics and the Haptic Lapse.
  • Cecily Gibson — Obituary
    Cecily Gibson (20/11/1930–02/05/2007) was at the forefront of the cultural exchange between Australian and Japanese potters in the 1960s, a movement which not only contributed to the development of Australian ceramics but added greatly to the burgeoning relationship between the two countries.