JOY

Thomas Baker, Andrea du Chatenier, Amelia Fagence, Elise Johnston, Cheryl Lucas, Tom Mackie & Zhu Ohmu

JOY brings together seven artists and makers from varying stages of their practice in a bountiful and generous-spirited celebration of objects. Set against a backdrop of contemporary furniture, intended to invoke a homelike environment, the works display a myriad of shapes and forms – from refined and pared back, to oversized, lopsided, wobbly and angular. Highly imaginative, the exuberant colour, unusual form and playfulness of several of the artists’ works belies the highly technical, complicated nature of the structures.

Painstakingly and thoughtfully crafted by artists working in fresh and invigorating ways, the artworks span ceramics and woodwork. They are not everyday objects, but their presence in your life makes the everyday more joyful. 

Thomas Baker

Thomas Baker is a full time ceramicist based in Nelson. His work teeters on the edge between function and failure. Knowingly working with traditional pottery forms and techniques, his pieces challenge familiar expectations. Conventional vessels are deflated, smooshed and slapped together. A sense of force emerges. You can imagine Thomas’ movements; where he has thrown, pushed and dropped. The end result are rounded, organic forms imbued with a softness and sense of humour, yet all achieved through impact.

In 2017 Thomas spent a year in Japan studying ceramics under master potter Seppo Iida and son Michihisa at Hokutoh Studio, Kanazawa. The influence of his time in Japan is evident in the refined nature of his work. After returning Thomas co-founded Hot Clay Gallery and Kiln Studio in Nelson, where he teaches and works as full time potter. Thomas has exhibited in multiple galleries across New Zealand and Japan.

Andrea du Chatenier

Andrea du Chatenier is a sculptor turned ceramicist with an extensive exhibition history spanning Aotearoa and abroad. Her work explores the tension between chance and problem solving; works are stacked and glued together with great lumps of coloured glaze and fired at an intense heat. Her empathetic understanding of the materials means there are expectations and specific choices, but no absolute outcomes can be predicted and an element of chance is invited into the process. The work acknowledges the state of entropy all geological structures succumb to.  Inspired by a love of nature’s vibrancy and colour, her work is driven forward by a sense of playfulness and joy in the making process.

Since completing the Tylee Cottage Artist Residency in 2004, Andrea has been based in Whanganui. Her solo exhibition ‘Eigenleben’ was presented at the Sarjeant Gallery in 2020. In 2022 Andrea was the recipient of the Dame Dorothy Blumhart Award.

Amelia Fagence

Amelia is an artist, designer and maker based in Tamaki Makaurau. She comes from a family of artists and grew up in a home nestled among lush native bush. Amelia creates her art pieces, sculpture and furniture in a range of scales inspired by the concept of play and balance. Her process is a journey of discovery – she finds fallen trees, uncovers the grain, and brings the timber’s unique qualities to the surface. Each piece of wood has its own story to tell and, created by hand, each work is unique.  Guided by playfulness, Amelia strives to blur the lines between traditional disciplines. Drawing on her formal training in architecture, her work traverses the boundaries between form and function; art and furniture; precision and fluidity. The resulting pieces exists at the nexus of object art, contemporary woodworking and furniture design.

The work exhibited in JOY are made entirely from two Nelson grown elm trees and finished with a blend of natural oils and wax.

Amelia’s work is courtesy of Public Record Gallery in Auckland. 

Elise Johnston

Elise Johnston is a ceramic artist from Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her work reflects her curiosity for the material characteristics of clay. In this new collection architectural features, botanical elements, liquid clay and molten glaze have been fused together to create multi-dimensional collages of texture, colour and emotion. From one perspective they may appear to be a cacophony of view points jostling each other, but on closer inspection each work contains moments of beauty and calm. Compositions are drawn from visual relationships glimpsed during daily travel through the city where elements, attitudes, and styles collide.

In 2019 Elise was the recipient of the Doris Lusk residency. In 2022 she was awarded the Premier award at the Forsyth Barr Pushing Clay Uphill Contemporary Ceramic Awards for her work 'Square Peg, Round Hole'.

Cheryl Lucas

Cheryl Lucas is a Ōhinehou Lyttelton based artist with a practice spanning four decades. Ceramics provide Cheryl a versatile medium to explore social, environmental and land use issues. Her work since 2019 interprets the amazing structures of native bifurcating plants uniquely evolved for harsh conditions and to fend off extinct browsers like Moa – something she likens to Aotearoa’s Covid response, dubbing her work “a metaphor for these modern times and an appreciation of our island status.” Inspired by the dazzle paint used to camouflage ships during World War I, the riotously coloured works in JOY are an exercise in engineering and optical illusion. Riffing off conventional ceramic forms she pushes the medium into uncharted territory creating works that juxtaposes colour and line in complicated constructions where no two vantage points are the same.

Cheryl has exhibited widely and received numerous significant awards including the Creative New Zealand Craft/Object Fellowship in 2019. Her work can be found in pubic institutions including Te Papa Tongarewa and Christchurch Art Gallery. In 2022 she was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery.

Tom Mackie

Tom Mackie is a Wellington based artist whose work operates in a liminal space between painting and sculpture; craft and art; waste and treasured object. He combines found materials with beautifully handcrafted woodwork. Taking discarded canvas material that is retrieved from dumpsters and re-purposed from his day job as a picture framer, Tom re-stretches the fabric and crafts sculptural, three-dimensional frames embellished with hand-turned wood loops and baubles. Challenging the high/low and craft/art divide, his work draws on notions of hybridity and is infused with a still, reflective quality. The absent or subtracted image, missing from inside the picture frame, flips the traditional painting hierarchy on its head. The “image” is no longer the most important aspect. The viewer is encouraged to slow down and reframe their perspective. You must search for your own meaning or moments of interest within the random mark-making found in the canvases and, instead, direct your focus to the timeless carved frames.

Tom studied at the Otago School of Fine Art in Dunedin and has exhibited broadly throughout Australia and New Zealand. His work is found in private collections across the globe.

Zhu Ohmu

Zhu Ohmu is a contemporary artist born in Taiwan. She graduated from Elam school of Fine Arts in Auckland and is currently based in Naarm, Melbourne. Her work investigates the resurgence of the handmade and the ethics of slowness in an age of mass production and automation. Interested in human relevance in the age of automation, her work imitates 3D printing. To create her works she lays extruded coils one atop the other by hand, without any preliminary planning. Vessels emerge intuitively – bulging, lopsided, wonky, human. Built through stacking, folding, and pressing, the vessel is dictated by the weight of moist clay pushed to its structural limits. Unlike a machine Zhu is able to detect the slightest change in the properties of the clay body under different environmental conditions and is able to create something asymmetric, yet sturdy.

The works exhibited in JOY – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber #14 and Organ Pipe Mud Dauber #15  – are named after a predatory wasp. This particular wasp utilises coils to build their nests. Interested in the entangled relationship between the machine, human and non-human ecologies, Zhu delighted in finding this parallel connection which reveals the intricately interconnected world we live in.

Zhu is represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert in Sydney, Australia.