'Two Vessels' by Hellen Fuller
Object No. 2022/65/2
The Australian ceramicist Helen Fuller (born 1949) works from Adelaide, South Australia, where she makes highly original stained-terracotta pots and assemblages inspired by unusual seed pods, leaves and nuts found in the Australian bushland. Striking examples of Fuller’s idiosyncratic ceramic forms so distinctive of her practice, the pots in the ‘Two vessels' group intrigue with their hybrid forms, dazzle with richly textured surfaces, with the patterns and colours on the larger piece alluding to modernist abstract painting. Since her first exhibition in 1977, Fuller has traversed disciplines to work across painting, sculpture, installation and more recently ceramics. Only a year after studying ceramics, she won the 2010 South Australia Ceramics Award from the South Australian Potters Guild. More recently Fuller was celebrated as the 2023 SALA (South Australian Living Artists) Festival Feature Artist. Fuller has been a medical illustrator, a high school teacher, graphic designer, and archaeological illustrator. She was a lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane and the School of Art, Adelaide. An early art residency in Hangzhou, China led her to experimenting with Chinese rice paper and gouache, which may have influenced the chalky textures of the oxides and slips used in her ceramics. Several major public and private collections hold Fuller’s work, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the National Gallery of Victoria and Artbank, Sydney. Eva Czernis-Ryl, Curator, and Eileen Lim, Volunteer, 2023
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Summary
Object Statement
Ceramic group, 'Two Vessels', hand-built terracotta / oxides / porcelain slip, designed and made by Helen Fuller, Adelaide, South Australia, 2022
Physical Description
A pair of hand-built (coiled) terracotta vessels of irregular rounded forms, displayed as if in conversation.The larger vessel of hybrid jug-form applied with short branch and hollow spout-like protrusions in places, with a generous pouring lip. Body stained with black oxide and painted with white/brown/pale yellow/apple green concentric patterns below a broad neck in black. White interior. The smaller piece is in the form of an oversized brown/black standing gumnut with two holes on one side, its white ‘neck’ extending into a T-shaped black tubular protrusion.
DIMENSIONS
Height
265 mm
Width
255 mm
PRODUCTION
Notes
These objects are representative of Fuller’s preference for hand-built unglazed terracotta coil pots. Using clay from South Australia, Fuller rarely pre-plans a form, choosing to roll the clay sausages, coiling as she goes, making and altering the form as she coerces a shape into being. As she works, she sources inspiration from the native leaf litter, seed pods and other found materials she has collected and that’s lying on her workbench. The object’s texture is often the result of impressions made onto the clay’s surface with this organic detritus’ or with a sharpened chopstick or blunt pencil. Her pots’ recall the natural plant world, where holes eaten by bugs can become, for example, orifices for positioning ikebana.
HISTORY
Notes
Made for and acquired from 'Off Road' exhibition, Samstag, Adelaide, 2022
SOURCE
Credit Line
Purchased with funds from the Barry Willoughby Bequest and Powerhouse Foundation, 2022
Acquisition Date
31 August 2022
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