Gwyn Hanssen Pigott
The Australian Art Resources Pack

The education resource pack follows Gwyn as she creates a series of porcelain wood-fired groupings of pots that are so highly regarded by collectors around the world. The works made during the films production were exhibited at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh between 8 August and 6 September 2008.

The education resource pack contains a series of five films that document the processes of making;
1. Interview: discussion between Gwyn Hanssen Pigott and Peter Hylands covering the philosophy of making, skills and the development of Gwyn’s work
2. Throwing, turning and altering
3. Glazing
4. Packing and firing a wood kiln
5. Unpacking a wood kiln and selecting final works
6. Selected works
Through her own journey, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott is strongly connected to the development and history of contemporary ceramics in the 20th century and still retains a remarkable presence in the 21st century ceramic movement.

The fact that the art of studio pottery is such an international affair is demonstrated by the career forging events that shape Gwyn’s life. This story probably starts many centuries ago with the development of the extraordinary ceramic art of China. The impact that Song and early Ming Chinese pots had on the young Australian, Ivan McMeekin, who was later to become a major figure in the development of Australian studio pottery, was a key influence in Gwyn Hanssen Pigott’s life.

Ivan McMeekin had served in the British merchant navy in China and had become a keen and knowledgeable collector of Chinese ceramics. Following the events of 1949, Ivan, decided to become a potter and made his way to England. Here, he met the British potter Michael Cardew and joined him at his workshop at Wenford Bridge, Cornwall. Ivan returned to Australia in 1953 and it was two years later that the young Melbourne University student, Gwyn John, visited him while researching her thesis on Australian artist potters. Immediately drawn to his work, Gwyn changed course and became apprenticed to Ivan for the next three years. Then following in his footsteps she travelled to England to further her potting experience and there she met and worked with Ray Finch, Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew.

While in the UK Gwyn had the opportunity to develop working relationships and friendships with some of the world’s most significant potters, who also included Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie, Dame Lucie Rie, Alan Caiger-Smith and Mick Casson. Gwyn went on to establish studios in London and Central France before returning Australia in 1973.

Today Gwyn lives in Queensland, Australia.

Alison Britton writes of Gwyn’s latest exhibition at The Scottish Gallery;
‘This new work presents trails and many smaller groups, trios of bowls, the transient and the still. There is less movement, more calm reflection; perhaps a sense of the pots facing an audience. The trails include more pauses, breaks in the rhythm, moments of silence. Titles such as Fade, Pause, and Slow evoke this quieter mood. For me Yellow Parade shows the essence of her beautiful work with its three cups and their lively handles, the shallowest of all bowls on stage left, and an interloper, a grey bowl, slightly off centre in the yellow array.’

In making the film over the last few months I have spent much time with Gwyn. I asked her about the groupings of pots.

Peter Hylands: When did you start making the still life groups?

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: During a visit to Paris I came across the huge 1972 retrospective exhibition of the artist Giorgio Morandi, who at that time I didn’t know anything about. He was a great artist of both landscape and still life. I just loved his work, I had never come across anything like this that I responded to so much. His still life groups were so very quiet, very intense, very pulled back.

I started looking more and more at Morandi’s work, but because of the pots I was making at the time, I didn’t connect Morandi’s still life paintings with my own work. They were just stored at the back of my mind. One of the things that I loved about Morandi’s paintings were the spaces in between the shapes and how these spaces were used; but mainly I loved his intense gaze, the way he could look at and grasp the essence of the objects he described.

Almost 20 years later I met the wood-firing potter, Heja Chong, who lived just outside of Melbourne. Heja had built a Japanese Noboragama kiln and she invited me to come and use it.

Several times I fired with her, at first I put in the shapes of pots that I would normally make but it seemed very obvious from the first unpacking that this was ridiculous as they were not the right kind of shapes for that firing method where glaze was redundant. I started thinking about bottles and of course thought of Morandi. Until then I had never made bottles. For this kiln I started making new shapes. The very first group that I called still life came out of Heja’s kiln. Very simple ashed shapes, with telling spaces between them.

Peter Hylands: I am thinking about surface and light, there is a kind of language, a kind of sound to your work?

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: Now that I have been working a lot with porcelains that are more and more translucent, the light is very important. Some groups I actually call Still life for windows, suggesting where they could be placed.
It’s lovely, for example, when you have a still life like Exodus, which is about vulnerability and ordinariness. The way the pots transform in the light is something very special for me, because this reflects what we are as human beings, ordinary but with the possibility of joy.

Gwyn continues to exhibit internationally, with exhibitions since 2000 including Galerie Besson London; Tate St Ives, UK; Garth Clark, New York; The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh; Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney; Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane; Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne and a major retrospective Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: a survey, National Gallery of Victoria. Public collections include the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.


Price $150 including GST