Just down the road from their studio on Windsor Street, Altar Pottery have started an annual tradition, showing works by the collective of ceramicists, who house themselves in John Archer Hall, in Gallery 1889.
This year they worked to create whatever their imaginations landed on from the prompt in the exhibition’s title; earth and sound. Earth is pretty straightforward – it’s clay. But sound? Sound opens up a wealth of spaces to travel to. That clink of glazed earthenware against itself, the ring when it’s tapped.
I desperately wanted to see this outdoors, with the mobile being manipulated by the wind, but in the busy preview there was enough play and demonstration that the room was singing with those resonant chimes anyway.
Then, woven into to the ringing were these hard to distinguish thuds; percussive beats from drums, stretched over ceramic bowls, and low, warbling breaths from Chris Hering’s ‘Bird Warbling Vessel’. Rasping, shaky rolls backing it up as visitors played with ‘Rasping Nix’, a small dragon sculpture by Hannah Flory, that invited you to run a dowel along its spine.
The Eidophone, Pippa Marler ‘My Own Personal Eidophone’ pulls at art history, to create a visual sound machine from scraps and clay. Sharing more than music, and more than sculpture as the sand dances across the stretched drum.
The impact, from start to finish was a room filled with rhythm and play, where anyone could interact with ceramics in a way that strays significantly from the vast majority of exhibitions. This didn’t feel delicate. It felt like a game.
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Earth & Sound ran 4th-6th September at Gallery 1889
For more information about Altar Pottery’s workshop programme and courses, visit www.altarpottery.com
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith
