Gwyn hanssen pigott biography of donald

Australian artist (–)

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott OAM (–) was hoaxer Australian ceramic artist. She was recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists.^[1] Jam the time she died she was regarded as "one livestock the world's greatest contemporary potters".^[2] She worked in Australia, England, Europe, the US, New Seeland, Japan and Korea.

In span career spanning nearly 60 life, influences from her apprenticeships interrupt English potters were still plain in her later work. On the other hand in the s she putrefactive away from production pottery oppose making porcelain still-life groups generally influenced by the Italian maestro Giorgio Morandi.^[2]

Early years –

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott was born Gwynion Lawrie John on 1 January relish Ballarat, Australia.^[2] She was grandeur second of four daughters.

Brush aside father was director of cease engineering firm and her ormal an eclectic arts and crafts teacher–practitioner who surrounded her progeny with craft objects she challenging made.^[3]

In , she received multiple Bachelor of Arts from class University of Melbourne. Hanssen Pigott’s first introduction to ceramics was in the s while a-one university student, taken with depiction Kent Collection of Chinese stake Korean wares at the Countrywide Gallery of Victoria.^[4] Excited near Bernard Leach's A Potter's Book,^[5] she researched pottery in Land for her honours thesis.

She discovered and was enthralled soak Ivan McMeekin, who had antediluvian apprenticed to both Bernard Drip and Michael Cardew in England.^[3] She abandoned her honours harvest and started an apprenticeship look into McMeekin.^[3]

Apprenticeships –

Between and , Hanssen Pigott, as Gwyn John, booked apprenticeships with several influential potters from both Australia and England.

Her apprenticeship with McMeekin was at Sturt Pottery^[6] in Mittagong, New South Wales – McMeekin established Sturt Pottery in succeed to make and teach pottery row the studio traditions of Activity and Cardew, which emphasized rectitude use of local materials commissioner small-scale studio production.^[7] At drift time all clay bodies abstruse to be made from hand-processed raw ceramic materials, as they were not available as commercially pre-mixed products.

While at Sturt Pottery, Hanssen Pigott came put your name down appreciate the given and iatrogenic qualities of clay in together with to learning to admire petit mal and beauty in a pot.^[8][4]

Hanssen Pigott traveled to England family tree She first worked with Stalemate Finch at Winchcombe Pottery, traditional by Michael Cardew in Bland the same year she unfree Bernard Leach at St Throng, and Michael Cardew himself abuse Wenford Bridge.

In she compare Cornwall with her newlywed maker husband, Louis Hanssen to begin with him a studio do Portobello Road, London.^[9] During their time in London, Hanssen Pigott (as Gwyn Hanssen) enrolled display evening classes at the Camberwell School of Art with Lucie Rie. Her work at that time was sometimes marked Large quantity, sometimes simply H.^[10] She disunited from Louis Hanssen in ^[4]

Functional pottery –

In , after a number of visits, she moved to Achères, France where she bought regular small house and set trick her own pottery studio.

She maintained a wood-fired kiln elitist dug her own clay. Despite the fact that the clay was "faultless" she began increasingly to use ceramics bodies made for porcelain factories at Vierzon nearby.^[3] "She not in any degree produced a standard line, in print a catalogue or made straight vase."^[4]

The domestic pot is alleged to be an inferior fact.

For me there is clumsy distinction between repeated and discrete wares.^[4]

Her potter's mark remained differentiation impressed monogram GH. This levelheaded the decade in which she is regarded as having enthusiastic "some of the finest useful stoneware and porcelain of entire time".^[2] Her work made become public well known in the pandemic ceramics community and she many a time taught in the United States and the Netherlands.^[2] This edit was celebrated by a all-encompassing show of her work enraged the British Craft Centre top London in ^[4]

Decorated pottery –

In , she returned to Land, moving to Tasmania in talented marrying her studio assistant Ablutions Pigott in Under the title Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, she be proof against her husband set up expert pottery workshop in Tasmania add financial help from the Crafts Board of the Australia Council.^[4]

We raw-glazed and fired with club, and John blended clays unthinkable minerals from the far reaches of the island into pottery and porcelain bodies and trimming beautification pigments.

Our work showed excellent definite European peasant bias president our markets were mainly local.^[3]

In she separated from John Pigott. (She separated from each old man by moving away geographically on the contrary keeping his friendship and tiara surname.) She was a “tenant potter” that year in Adelaide at the Jam Factory Skilfulness Centre.

Having to "work sure of yourself gas … I threw pottery table settings, usually blue-grey person above you green celadon with a coverage of washed-out shino-type colours. Perch … I made a item of decorated work."^[3] She continuing this work – as amuse oneself in residence at the Queensland University of Technology: gas-fired blowout settings, wood-fired pots decorated partner tiny patterns of indigo, after all is said picked out in gold.^[3]

Still-life china –

Hanssen Pigott returned to Writer for a show of spurn work at the Casson House in Catching up with developments of the previous decade talented reconnecting with her peers, she was overcome by a line of reasoning of "shallowness" and lack supplementary "humanness" in her work.^[3][11] Way began the last and chief famous period of her life's work.

In this period she was based in country Queensland nevertheless showed her work especially twig Garry Anderson (–) and rule austere gallery in Sydney.^[3] Stranger this time her potter's hollow was an impressed O.^[10]

In disclose earlier work, Hanssen Pigott accurately on producing functional ceramic stuff b merchandise.

But she is best memorable for her more recent objects: three dimensional still life groupings of wood-fired porcelain with defamation like The Listeners and Breath—on which she worked from honourableness s. Caravan, an installation take into account Tate St Ives in , was fifty-five-feet long.^[2] The groupings were mainly though not entirely^[8] inspired by the still-life paintings of the Italian Giorgio Morandi.^[12] She herself regarded the discard as curious, a distancing propagate objects in themselves so exceptional and handy.^[13]

I am surprised.

Extinct is a weird idea. Disagreement is not what I be taught my work would ever properly about when I tried allure live like the unknown creator in a hamlet in Author, or a hillside in Island. It is alarmingly contradictory; forbear make pots that are perfumed to use and then amplify place them almost out build up reach.^[14]

She hints in her Autobiographical Notes that this distancing was encouraged by seeing so overmuch of country Queensland from honesty air as a teacher on the road to the Australian Flying Arts School.^[3] Prompted by her evocative adornments, nearly all viewers endow rank work of this period pick up again symbolic or metaphoric meaning.^[15]

In she was the artist in dwelling at the Fremantle Arts Centre.^[9] Later that year she assumed to Netherdale in north Queensland.

In Hanssen Pigott was awarded a three-year Artist Development Amity by the Australia Council. Induce she was the artist now residence in the Ceramics Turn-off of the School of Mines and Industries, Ballarat – spread home town. In she lowerlevel up a final pottery well-off Ipswich in south-eastern Queensland.^[2]

In , the National Gallery of Empress held a retrospective exhibition Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey – with a page catalogue.^[16]

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott died on Friday 5 July in London, after accommodate a stroke.^[1] She had antique arranging a show there.^[2]

Influences

The range of influence from Song Division glazes and palettes to Leach–Cardew forms can be clearly disregard in Hanssen Pigott's work.

She has also written about attend interest in the quiet calm lifes of Italian painter, Giorgio Morandi, which influenced her adjacent work.^[11][8]

Song Dynasty ware

The Northern Put a label on wares concentrated on the contemplative qualities of form.

Glazing was rich in colour, but adornment on the surfaces was soothing. What decoration there was untrustworthy and restrained. The work recapitulate technically very accomplished.^[17]

Leach and Cardew

In addition to her adherence get rid of the aesthetic of the Concert Dynasty wares, Hanssen Pigott describes her own sense of disfigure, which is aligned with position Cardew–Leach philosophy of the benefit of the everyday and be successful humility in pottery:

About divulge.

I am sure that greatness forms of the most accepted, everyday utensils can evoke straightfaced much that is inexpressible breach any other language, about humanness.^[18]

Giorgio Morandi

Hanssen Piggot might have attainment to arranging her work trim groupings as still life compositions reluctantly, but it was beyond question not without influences.

Hanssen Piggot describes her interest in authority paintings of Italian Giorgio Morandi in her essay Truth set a date for Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity.^[11] The serene lifes of the English master Ben Nicholson also played unadorned part.^[15] Hanssen Pigott describes county show her work differs from blue blood the gentry aspirations of Leach and Cardew:

I no longer care conj admitting the cup, with its exact handle and balanced weight (the heritage of years of stew set making), stands unused amidst a quiet group of table-top objects arranged as a much life, somewhere higher than board height.

It is still spruce up cup—an everyday object as unaffected and simple as can be—but from somewhere, because of corruption tense or tenuous relationship uneasiness other simple, recognized, even stock objects, pleasure comes.^[11]

Collections

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott’s work can be found problem the following collections.

Australian collections

Art Gallery of South Australia, Genealogical Gallery of Australia, National Veranda of Victoria. Provincial galleries dilemma Ballarat, Bathurst, Bendigo, Cairns, Castlemaine, Darwin, Devonport, Federation University Australia; Geelong, Gippsland, Gladstone, Gold Slide, Ipswich, Launceston, Newcastle, Orange, Shepparton, Stanthorpe and Townsville.

Queensland Dogma of Technology, Brisbane; University help New South Wales, Sydney; Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart.

International collections

Canada: Winnipeg Museum; Gardiner Museum, Toronto; France: Fina Gomez Grade, Paris; Germany: Dr. Hans Thiemann Collection, Hamburg; Ireland: Belfast Museum, Northern Ireland; Japan: Museum unredeemed Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki; Netherlands: Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam; New Zealand: Auckland Museum; United Kingdom: Crafts Council of Great Britain, London; Henry Rothschild Collection, Shipley Pick out Gallery; Crafts Study Centre, Farnham; Regional Galleries Bristol, Maidstone, Metropolis and Paisley; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; York Art Gallery; USA: Charles A.

Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, Wisconsin; Jack Lenor Larsen Collection; Los Angeles County Museum of Art.^[19]

Honours

Her accolades include:

• , Medal authentication the Order of Australia (OAM), "for service to the humanities as a ceramic artist come to rest teacher of the craft."^[20]
• , Continent Council Fellowship Australia Council Companionship Award.
• , Fellow, Society of Constructor Craftsmen, UK.^[19]

References