“Assorted potion pots foam and pool, crust and curdle in veined swells and creamy glazes, a lavish yet uncomfortable excess which highlights the ill-effects of unsustainable dairying.” —Tessa McPhee, 2023 Ōhinehou Lyttelton-based ceramic artist Cheryl Lucas grew up on a farm in Central Otago, she remembers her father borrowing jugs from the kitchen to mix farm-related concoctions, invariably rendering the jug incompatible with further kitchen use. The bubbling surfaces of Milkstock combine this memory with the swollen and chapped udders of over-milked cows. Here Lucas comments on the uneasy relationship between our ‘clean, green’ national image and the reality of intensive dairy farming practices and their impact on our land, waterways and native flora and fauna.

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)