8-28 February 2020
For Lynne to call the work truly successful there must be a very personal connection for those who purchase her work. She would wish for each of us to view her work and find a joy, a spark, even a fire, useful in our daily experiences.
Lynne Wilson was raised in Dunedin. Her journey has taken her from walking to school past the evidence of the city’s early prosperity, to winning awards at Ellerslie Flower Show, to firing Raku kilns in Cromwell. Lynne’s work for this show, Forged in Clay, reflects many influences from her daily experience over 50 years.
In discussions with Lynne it quickly becomes obvious that her work as a landscape and garden designer leads her to think about our wider environment. As with the plants and she selects, her clay forms are a distance away from the result Lynne has visualized. Plants grow and change, clay is fired and transforms. The result she sees in her mind is not a certainty, but an understanding of how to bring forward the carefully considered result of the happy accident.
Raku is a relatively quick firing method. Other firing methods can take days to heat and cool. In a raku firing the ceramicist removes the piece, glowing orange-hot from the kiln, and places into a bin of combustible material before sealing. The reduction of oxygen and consequent smoking, results in glazes that may be iridescent or crackled; or unglazed with sooty black surfaces.
Making the molecules dance, as Len Castle put it, aptly applies to the Raku glazes of today.
Lynne is forging connections between separated moments in the processes of her work. In the ideas she explores there is a similar interest in separated ideas and how to bring them back to our attention. Cross and quatrefoil forms act as background structures for the impressions she takes from the forged iron of the 19th and early 20th centuries, much as they do in the cemeteries of Otago. As Lynne travels, she has built a library of molds to cast from. In this process she has come to value the artisanry of early Otago iron works and their connections back to a Victorian past in Britain. The lidded boxes Lynne makes have been used to hold memories and the talismans of past events. As memory boxes they too link separated ideas and thoughts. In the box Lynne makes a special interior space held by an elaborate exterior of nature inspired motifs.
Judy Cockeram
