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Overview
Her voice :;;;;)))) is a ceramic tile installation by the New Zealand artist Kate Newby, handmade from wood and gas high-fired stoneware, porcelain, mason stain, and glaze. Her voice :;;;;)))) is a single pillar of clay tiles that reaches a height of around 9 metres.
Newby has been making these ceramic tile works since around 2018, although she has been working with clay for considerably longer – as shown in her 2012-2021 installation SHE’S TALKING TO THE WALL, in Te Papa’s collection. Newby grew up around clay and kilns – her childhood home at Te Henga (Bethell’s Beach) was part of an old artists’ studio used by Warren Tippet, Don Binney, and Jeff Scholes – and her father potted. UGH MAGIC (also in Te Papa's collection) and Her voice :;;;;)))) were began in late 2019, while Newby was staying at her childhood home at Te Henga.
Newby’s practice is highly site-response, often drawing on materials found around the site of making. UGH MAGIC and Her voice :;;;;)))) bear the textures and indentations of her mother’s house – her brother’s wooden benchtops, her mother’s gardening shed, the concrete floors of a space used as both a workshop and pottery studio at different times. As Newby describes, ‘I threw clay on the workshop table and the concrete ground. I walked around the house with slabs of clay and tried to capture texture where I could. I emptied our shoes out after we had gone for walks down to Lake Wainamu and embedded the sand in the clay. I wrapped a tea towel around my niece Ava to create a makeshift apron, and together, using clothes pegs, we pushed and prodded the slay tiles with the sand.’ (Kate Newby, artist statement)
The works were wood-fired in Paeroa by the potter Duncan Shearer over nearly 12 months. Newby used mason stain to colour the tiles blue, pink and yellow, along with several New Zealand clay bodies.
Newby says: ‘I want to create these works because I love that each tile, not huge on its own, becomes a towering work when fixed to the wall piece by piece. Scale becomes something different. It's work that can be packed in a box, but it's also work that can stretch up far above our heads. And they talk to each other. By repeating the same form but using color and texture, there is a material narrative and poetry.’ (Kate Newby, artist statement)