B.

The McDougall Gallery is delighted to receive, through the services of the N.Z. Art Gallery Directors' Council, a prestige exhibition of the works of 38 leading Australian ceramic artists. Funded and organised by the Crafts Board of the Australia Council in association with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, the exhibition will travel to the U.S.A. and Canada after leaving New Zealand. It will be opened at the McDougall on May 14 at 7 45 p.m. by Christine Ross, executive director of the N.Z. Crafts Council.

The seventy-eight pieces being shown reflect great diversity of technique, imagery, scale and temperature range, and many move out of the realm of craft into that of fine art. The exhibition represents "work that could have been made in no other country and at no other time" according to Kenneth Hood, deputy director of the National Gallery, Melbourne, who made the selection.

The flavour is unmistakeably Australian, with the use of Australian landforms, bird and animal life, and satirical comments on Australian society. It is an important indication of how far Australian ceramicists have gone in the last decade, a decade when Australians have begun to assert their cultural identity.

Names which have been synonymous with Australian ceramics for some time contribute to the exhibition. They include Les Blakebrough, Joan Campbell, Marea Gazzard, Milton Moon and Peter Rushforth. A number of the works by younger ceramicists particularly John Johnston, Maggie May and John Teschendorff are quite outside the normal traditions of working with clay. Tertiary education courses, Crafts Board grants, journals, exhibitions and conferences have all contributed to the larger number of people involved in Australian ceramics. Its growth since the early seventies has been vigorous, with many highly organised ceramic groups now working throughout the country.

('Contemporary Australian Ceramics', Bulletin, No.27, May/June 1983, p.2)