Since the early years of the Gallery’s establishment, but particularly during the 1970s, studio ceramics has been a significant force in Newcastle. The Newcastle Studio Potters group was among the early examples of such collectives formed in Australia and one of the few to purchase its own building, which still operates as a workshop and gallery. Given such an active, long-term engagement with ceramics in the local art community, the depth of the Newcastle Art Gallery ceramics collection comes as no surprise.
Most regional galleries to a large degree reflect the cultural and social interests of their communities, although during the seventies and eighties the Gallery played a leading role in establishing Newcastle as a centre of national significance in ceramics— even initiating and regularly hosting a national ceramics award exhibition.
The strengths of the Australian ceramics collection consists of works from 1950 to the present. However, the scope of the holdings are best illustrated by a comparison of the earliest Australian ceramic work, Beer jug with four mugs 1935 by Anne Dangar with a recent acquisition by Gwyn Hanssen Pigott At the gates 2003. Both of these works may be made from wheel-thrown clay but they are dramatically different in style and intention. The Dangar work is a classic example of studio pottery, functional ware whose claims to artistic merit were based on the form and decoration, in this case applied by Rah Fizelle. The Hanssen Pigott was made to be exhibited as a contemporary work of art, an installation of sculptural forms with absolutely no functional intention.
The divergence between these two works defines not only the direction of the development in ceramics since 1950 but also the great tensions and debates that occurred during that period, between traditional potters and ceramic artists, who argued for no distinction between art and craft. The resplendent non-functional clay forms by Marea Gazzard Mantel pot 1964 and Syros 1973 elegantly put the case for ceramic-based sculpture but many potters believed that the essence of the aesthetic appeal of ceramics was irrevocably dependent on its historical ties to the functional or domestic demands of cup, platter and bowl.
The joke among potters in the 1980s was that a pot became a work of art when you called it a vessel - and, of course, there was some truth in this. A beautifully formed bowl with a deeply lustrous glaze or one of unfathomable complexity and subtlety is a work of art whatever it is called. Les Blakebrough’s porcelain bowl, Southern ice 1995 is but one of many examples from the collection that could be chosen to demonstrate this. The collection contains many ceramic pieces by artists whose works are whimsically or formally sculptural, such as those by Jenny Orchard and Bernard Sahm, respectively, but by far the majority of the works in the ceramic collection confirm that the domestic or functional roots of ceramic practice can provide an inexhaustible source of sustenance for contemporary art. Leading contemporary ceramists such as Louise Boscacci, Victor Greenaway and Pippin Drysdale, with works like her beautiful Constellation I, II, III (Pinnacle series) 1995, also establish that symbolic reference and metaphor are all within the range of the potter’s craft.
The collection of Japanese ceramics in the Newcastle Art Gallery is one of the most significant in Australia. The foundations of the collection were established over thirty years ago at a time when most Australian studio potters were working under the influence of Japanese ceramic traditions.
Traditional Japanese potters always placed primary aesthetic value on the relationship between form and function. From the twelfth century, the development of Japanese pottery and other crafts is inseparable from the increasing importance of the Tea Ceremony as a contemplative ritual with spiritual overtones. Ceramic objects associated with the Tea Ceremony were appreciated for their tactility and simple functionality. Clay objects were beautiful to use and their form honestly expressed the origins of pottery in earth and fire. It was, and remains, a captivating aesthetic. Within the Gallery’s extensive holdings of Japanese ceramics, the Nagano Collection contains 27 prime examples of objects that rigorously maintained these Japanese ceramic traditions of quietude, exquisite subtlety and expression of material origins.
Shôji Hamada (1894 - 1978), the most celebrated potter of the twentieth century is well represented in the collection with eleven items, including Vase from 1970 decorated with a simple creamy-white rice husk glaze and the salt-glazed stoneware Serving bowl. Hamada worked in England in the early 1920s and became an important conduit for the influence of Japanese aesthetics on English and Australian potters but he was also designated as a National Living Treasure in Japan, as were several other potters in the collection.
The Nagano Collection contains representation by many of the great Japanese potters of the twentieth century. In 1985 these were complemented with the acquisition of the Blakebrough Collection. Among the 58 items from this group assembled by the Australian potter Les Blakebrough, while working in Japan during the 1960s, are outstanding works by Takeichi Kawai (1908 - 1991), Kanjirô Kawai (1890 - 1966) and Kentichi Tomimoto (1886 - 1963).
The third element within the aggregation of Japanese ceramics in Newcastle is The Sodeisha Collection. In the 1950s, at the very time when traditional Japanese ceramic attitudes and aesthetics were being embraced by Australian craft workers, young potters in Japan were in rebellion against the constraints of tradition. Yagi Kazuo, Suzuki Osamo, Yamada Hikaru and Kumakura Junkichi were among a group of potters who were seeking to use clay as an expressive medium in its own right without the need to conform to a functional aesthetic. To activate for change and collectively exhibit their work they formed the Sodeisha Group.
The Group expanded over the years in numbers and influence and in 1978 an exhibition of 54 outstanding works by thirty-two members of Sodeisha toured Australia. This exhibition had been organized from the Newcastle Region Art Gallery and on completion of the tour, in 1981, the Group made the decision to donate the entire Sodeisha Collection to Newcastle in recognition of the Gallery’s commitment to Japanese ceramics.
It is now possible to display the full range of Japanese ceramics from traditional to contemporary. The majority of works in the Sodeisha Collection are purely sculptural or non-functional objects that nevertheless express the particular qualities of clay and glaze. In contradiction to all traditional Japanese ceramic practice, many of the Sodeisha potters have taken the lead from other forms of contemporary art by giving titles to their pieces. Examples are: On the table 2 1978 by Hirokuni Katsuno, Message A from KK (I & II) by Rikizô Kawakami, Bridge by Rikichi Miyanaga, and Design plan (face) by Kazuo Yagi 1977. Even when the titles are seemingly descriptive of a functional form, such as Hikaru Yamada’s Semi-cylinder in earthenware, the actual object makes manifest its sculptural intentions. When the Sodeisha Collection toured Australia in the late 1970s it had a significant impact on liberating the attitudes of many Australian ceramic artists who were still under the spell of traditional Japanese functionalist aesthetics.
The cultural exchange between Australia and Japan over the last forty years can be plotted in its most condensed form in the ceramic arts. With the extensive combined collection of Australian and Japanese ceramics in the Newcastle Art Gallery it is possible to trace this rich interaction between two cultures and to appreciate the value of traditional and contemporary approaches to ceramic practice.