On the theme "Antipodes" IV

This country has always impressed me as a very "geographical" land. Dynamic geographical features dominate. Agents of erosion are active, and movement and potential changes are evident. Skies, activated by two large oceans, put on a continuous show of powerful flowing images. There is a scattering of humans living on its surface, creating their hard surfaces and straight lines. The part of the overall theme given to me was "think Antipodes, think opposites". I immediately related. Ramarama where I live is almost the exact antipodes of Seville, and most of what I do in my art concerns itself with opposites and contradiction. In creating my ever-growing repertoire of symbols, images, surfaces, and glazes I have purposefully used complementary colours, lines and shapes that "jarred" against each other and surfaces that " didn't belong together". I have also worked freely with fire, allowing its "mishaps" to become important parts of my work. The fire has taught me to use such things as warping, splitting, sagging, boiling, crawling and creeping as natural and important design elements. I use Nelson clays and build the forms by pushing, sagging and stretching large slabs of clay into plaster moulds which are dried slowly before joining into more complex forms. For the first time I have included small amounts of paper pulp into the clay to make it stronger. I researched the technique the year before in Canada. All the surfaces have abstract geographical references - flowing fluid greens for New Zealand opposed by dry textured arid areas for Spain. Both sides are unified by rainbow references - as I made the works I thought of my home as the land of rainbows. Brian Gartside Treasures of the Underworld/James Mack and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Wellington, N.Z., Museum of New Zealand, 1993. p.23