01 – 09 of October 2022
Whakatū (Nelson), Aotearoa
The panel discussion will consider the state of contemporary ceramics. It will focus on factors such as education, community building, advocacy, exhibitions, and a reflection on Nelson Clay Week.
Tribal Affiliations: Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Whātua
Practising artist since 2000, her series of ceramics works are inspired by Atua, wahine toa and her whakapapa of Māori and European descent.
A member Ngā Kaihanga Uku - Māori Clay Artists Collective, former director and now committee member of Auckland Studio Potters, Carla has participated in national and international projects fostering worldwide connections with indigenous artists.
In 2020, she curated “NUku" - an exhibition of Māori ceramicists - at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, hosted an online ceramic class project “Make a cup” (sponsored by Arts out East and Te Tuhi Art Gallery) and collaborated with weaver Beronia Scott to create “Ka Mua, Ka Muri”, a large scale art installation at the Cordis Hotel in Auckland.
Carla is selected as the 2022 Touring Potter by the Ceramic Association of NZ. The programme “Coil Aotearoa” funded by Creative NZ has Carla teaching her coiling techniques in large scale sculpture workshops, artist presentations and community outreach programmes throughout Aotearoa.
[Photo credit: Tatiana Harper]
Fiona holds degrees in Fine Arts and Design and has taught in universities since her early twenties. She loves teaching as it allows her to work alongside artists as they seek to deepen their relationship to their own artistic practice and to those around them.
In the past decade, Fiona has also developed a pottery practice focused on the production of wood fired domestic ware. The social dimension of her public artwork finds a quieter and more intimate set of relationships through this practice of making cups and bowls for eating and drinking together. She enjoys focusing on the details of how these vessels function (the thousands of ways the rim of a cup can be shaped for the lip to rest on), their engagement with the body and the ways we use domestic objects. Shaping clay and vitrifying it through the heat of a wood fuelled fire is a process rooted in community, social history and the earth.
Fiona is currently acting head of the Elam school of Fine Arts.
Rick Rudd trained at Great Yarmouth and Wolverhampton Colleges of Art (England), attaining a Diploma of Art and Design, Ceramics in 1972.
In 1973 he arrived in New Zealand and has since then won several awards including the Fletcher Brownbuilt Pottery Award (1978), the Winstones Bowl Award (1981), the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Caltex Oil Award (1983), the Norsewear Art Award for Pottery (1995) and the Ballantynes Contemporary Tableware Award (2001).
Rick has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand, in solo shows and as guest exhibitor. His work has also been included in international exhibitions in Italy, Australia, Canada, USA, Singapore, Japan, Finland, Hong Kong, Guernsey, and Taiwan. His pieces are held in many museum and art gallery collections around New Zealand and are represented in several books.
In 2013 Rick established the Rick Rudd Foundation, a charitable trust, and in 2015 he opened Quartz, Museum of Studio Ceramics. In 2020, Rick was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.
Royce is well known as one of New Zealand’s leading potters. He qualified as a Master Potter in 1971. He is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics (Geneva) and in 1989 received an M.B.E. for his services to pottery in New Zealand.
At his studio in Brightwater, near Nelson, Royce produces a wide range of tableware, ceramic art pieces and paintings. Hand decoration and interesting surface treatments have always been a feature of his work.
Royce has won many awards and his work is held in numerous public and private collections.
Suzy first made a serious commitment to clay in 2008, when she began the distance Diploma in Ceramics through Otago Polytechnic, which she completed in 2011. Since that time, Suzy has worked as a pottery tutor as well as a maker, teaching primarily wheel-based skills, as well as glazing and wood/salt firing.
Her own work is based on vessel forms, and is usually functional. Suzy has been drawn to creating ceramic versions of vernacular metal objects, such as oil cans, railway lanterns, and even basic tin cans, to call attention to the beauty of forms and objects that are often overlooked. She works with a variety of clays and firing methods, taking the opportunity to wood and salt/soda fire whenever she can.
Her involvement in the New Zealand Ceramics community includes a term on the Council of Ceramics New Zealand (2012), five years as President of the Auckland Studio Potters Society (2013-2017), and her continued contribution to Ceramics magazine.
Sarah McClintock is taking on the role of Director of Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History in September 2022. She has been the Curator and Collection Manager at The Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū in Nelson and has a M.A. in Art History from Victoria University, Wellington.
Sarah has a special curatorial interest in contemporary craft, and has published widely through art-form publications, magazines and is a contributing writer to Ceramics New Zealand.
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