Australian Ceramics of the 80s

Australian Ceramics of the 80s

THE CERAMIC ART has not a long indigenous tradition in Australia as the aboriginales did not practice this art and practically the only traces of their output are rock paintings. The initial period of colonization did not bring anything new in this field but as time went on, around the mid-19th century, trained potters would appear more and more frequently and small ceramic workshops were opened, though filling exclusively utility functions. It was only at the turn of the century that ceramic production gained momentum and began to answer also the prestige and aesthetic needs of the public. Among the variety of styles, techniques, materials (including porcelain) and glazes, reflecting the complexity of international trends of period, also an anti-import tendency came to the surface, accompanied by attempts to assert national identity by producing articles now highly valued in ceramic collections. The development of art education leading to a system of colleges functioning in every state, created the basis for a comprehensive art movement, with a good deal of space allotted to the ceramic art.
Contemporary ceramic Australian art of the 1980s reveals a variety of trends and influences. The strongest was that of the classical European ceramics, making use of painterly glazes and balanced shapes, far from all eccentricity, and the Japanese influence radiating from Tokyo, a powerful nearby centre. The effect of those is noticeable in the styles and even more in the refined sober floral motifs and sophisticated nuances of glazes. Other trends reflected in the ceramic art are pop art, conceptualism and the revival of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. The most interesting and aesthetically significant trend, however, is the creative urge to draw from native motifs; hence the absence of glaze and stress on the plastic quality of naturally coloured (mainly bright red) or dyed clay; where glaze is used, it is mat, while the shape of vessels is refined but discreet. The intense colour scheme and the specific qualities of Australian clay provide a fascinating and so far not fully penetrated area of artistic research. This trend also embraces the attempts to render the local flora and fauna in ceramics, frequently undertaken throughout the 20th century.

The Colombial Bienal de Arte of 1981

The Colombial Bienal de Arte of 1981 

THE COLOMBIAN BIENAL DE ARTE in Medellin is the second biggest artistic event in South America, after the one in Sao Paulo. It is organized by Leonel Estrada, art critic and collector, and financed by banks and private firms. The Biennale opened on May 15th 1981, and was attended by over 500 artists, mostly from South and Central America, with other parts of the world represented by individual artists.
The overall image of the Biennale depended largely on the personal preferences of Leonel Estrada, the soul of the undertaking, who invited artists he knew or who were recommended to him critics. Jasia Reichardt and Pierre Restany were among his European advisers. Of all contemporary art, Leonel Estrada seems to be most interested in painting, hence its prevalence at the biennale, though, in my opinion, it by no means prevails in the present world. I missed drawing, photography, film, video, environment, action, i.e. fluid, border-line forms, represented by only a few artists. This is not intended as criticism of Estrada's concept, in fact, quite a number of critics believe painting to be on the rise again. Like elsewhere in the world, painting in South and Central America is varied: figurative and abstract, constructivist and hyperrealist, surrealist and expressionist. I am not going to lengthen the list but all those trends, in addition to many more, were present at the Biennale with no one striking as particularly noteworthy, though the most recent, neo-expressionism. represented in Medellin. among others, by the Berlin painter Salome Cichlarz, was attractive for its novelty and bright colours. Besides the quantitative domination of painting, no prevailing trend could be traced in Medellin. Hence remarkable individuals stood out all the more strongly. The spatial composition by Liliana Porter, a Colombian artist who lives in New York, was a poetic reflection on art as a gallery of imagination where the hand and the eye complement the few surviving details. That is why her arrangement evoked associations with a model from a historical or archaeological museum built as a setting for selected objects, with a sketch of a tomb providing the frame for a vase on a shelf, and with the story of a detail from a boat or a net hinted at by the schematic drawing of fishermen or the sea made up of a couple of lines and colours. In Liliana's gallery, as sophisticated as Borges's prose, things are accompanied by their images, blurred signs and inscriptions; her hand with a pencil or a brush between the fingers emerges as a memento of the artist's continuous presence.
Lydia Okumara, half-Japanese, half-Brazilian, likewise living in New York, built in Medellin an exceedingly pure, serene constructivist interior in which the tradition of twentieth century European art combined with Japanese order, with the neat Zen Cosmos. At the private view, the Argentine artist Marta Menujin, who relishes the spectacular, set fire to a dozen-odd-metre long puppet: a cotton-filled metal framework meant to represent Gardel, the famous tango singer of Medellin, who died burnt in an aircrash over the same town of Medellin. One-third of the participants in the biennale were women. Using the techniques of assemblage, environment, photography and collage, some of them carried out research into the essence of woman's existence, presenting the variety of dress and moods, looks and behaviour. To sum up the contribution of the South American artists mentioned before: they are some 35-40 years old; they seem to work with a dictionary of twentieth century art in their hand; they combine elements of various trends into heterogeneous wholes which evade classification; they transform and deepen the heritage of the past. Though somewhat eclectic, they seem to have a good deal to say.

 ENRIQUE GRAU (Colombia). 'Noche obseura del Alma', assemblage

 LILIANA PORTER (Colombia). 'Parable of a Palace', fragment of a spatial composition

 MANUEL CAMARGO (Colombia). 'From the Gonzales series', crayons

 MARTA MENUJIN (Argentina). Gardels earthenware puppet

PATRICIA BONILLA (Colombia). 'Dream', photo-composition