THE ALCHEMISTS: NORTH COAST WOODFIRE Bill Brownhill, Bob Connery, Geoff Crispin, Suvira McDonald, Dennis Monks, Malina Monks, Tony Nankervis, Kerry Selwood, Geoff Stirling, John Stewart
During the 70s, the North Coast of New South Wales became known as a hub for woodfiring, a process of ceramic art production that involves continuous firing, sometimes over days, feeding timber into a handmade kiln. The reason for this convergence is difficult to pinpoint, but it may have had something to do with the price of land, abundant local timber and clay, the presence of likeminded people, and the attraction of the area to the romantic hearted. The process of woodfiring is one of trials, tribulations, sometimes elation and much hard work. A combination of passion and stubbornness is essential to progressing with it. The Alchemists brings together 10 artists who did, master woodfirers who emerged from this flourishing in our region. They have each spent over 30 years in the area and with clay. Their practices, though they involve the same basic combination of elements (clay, heat, wood, ash and time), could not be more diverse. Woodfiring is an ancient method of firing clay. Oil, gas and electric kilns are new in the long history of ceramics. However, in the 1960 and 70s, woodfiring became an area of intense experimentation: in kiln design, duration and temperatures of firings, packing of kilns, use of timbers and clays, and of course, exploration of ceramic form. Electricity and gas enabled clean, controlled, predictable firings. Woodfire artists were increasingly drawn to the qualities firing with wood could bring to their work. They were not so concerned with clean, perfect surfaces, but with marks of heat, ash and the movement of flame. Woodfiring became an aesthetic and philosophical choice. It matched ideologies around being off-grid and using materials such as wood, bricks, and clay that could be sourced easily, affordably, and often locally. Unlike traditional woodfiring, where losses in the kiln were to be avoided, and outcomes of firings were more or less known, in Australia in the 70s, losses for some were a sign that you had pushed the firing to an area of interest and learning. The outcomes you were chasing were something that had not been seen before. Mary Nankervis recalls her husband Tony Nankervis saying, “if I can just get one pot out of this firing. One good pot. Then I’ll be happy”. For Mary, after Tony’s months of toil: building the kiln, digging clay, throwing pots, and then days of firing, one pot was not going to cut it. They had two young children, and money was tight. However, this was the spirit of experimentation of this time, and for Tony Nankervis, this one good pot was more exceptional than good. Nankervis had begun learning ceramics from Malina Monks (then Reddish) in Sydney in 1972. After some years working in agricultural economics, he remembers that as soon as his hands touched clay, he felt a rightness, like he was doing what he was meant to do. As Nankervis continued to work, and his ceramic work was supplemented with the economic security of a lecturer position in Visual Art at Southern Cross University, 1 he came to see his practice with absolute clarity, although no less serendipity was required to realise it. The ultimate pot followed the simplest, least adorned form, but was a fundamental expression of the stuff of clay and the process of woodfiring. For him, the perfect vessel “dances”, a term he applies to refer to the movement of clay when it is pushed on the wheel, and where it sways between holding its weight and swaggering out of balance, and into collapse. His Vessel 2003, thrown with temperamental, “unthrowable” hand-dug New Zealand clay, which a potter friend, Chester Nealie, had challenged with him. The little vessel “sticks its hip out”. This loose attitude and freedom of clay was then married with being taken through the test of firing. As his career progressed, Nankervis was interested in extreme, long, hot firings, with slow coolings, firing for up to five days and often putting work through multiple times. The Northern Rivers has long been a magnet for people seeking an alternative lifestyle, and who want to live according to their own rules and values. Mary and Tony Nankervis settled in the area in late 1974. A few months earlier, driving along what was then the Pacific Highway and is now the Hinterland Way, they passed Knockrow Pottery. There was Kerry Selwood, a local potter and teacher who had recently trained in ceramics at the East Sydney Technical College (now the National Art School). Selwood had just received an Australia Council grant to establish woodfire kilns at Terania Creek. The two got talking about it. Selwood had a bit of experience with Raku and pit firing, but both had done most of their work with oil kilns. Artists like Milton Moon, Peter Rushforth, Alan Peascod, Col Levy, and Ivan McMeekin, amongst others, had brought attention to the potential of woodfire ceramics, but it was still largely uncharted territory. Selwood invited the Nankervises to join he and his family at Terania Creek Road near The Channon where there was cheap land for sale. The Nankervises bought the old 1
Terania School (a one roomed school) close by. Soon after Selwood and Nankervis built their first Bourry box kiln. What followed was four productive years of firing by Selwood and Nankervis on that property. Malina and Dennis Monks also purchased land next door to Selwood and the Nankervises and arrived in the area in 1977. They built their own wood kiln, and quickly established themselves when they arrived. Working in such close vicinity, and with such respect for each other’s work, it was the perfect storm for creativity. The group sparked off each other and facilitated one another’s ideas. Born in Murwillumbah, Selwood’s work followed a Japanese aesthetic, not in terms of replicating traditional form, but through philosophies around how the fire reacts with the unglazed clay and moves around the kiln (as seen in traditional Bizen, Iga and Tamba ware). Selwood made fine and sensitive vessels, with skill, repetition and control. He saw these forms as a canvas for the woodfiring process to leave its marks, surrendering to “whatever might happen”. Selwood and Nankervis fired together in the 70s, and although they were drawn to the unpredictability of woodfiring, they were certainly directing the process. They made careful tests and controls in firing and worked to a process that was part science, part trial and error, and a large part intuition. They packed their pots densely to encourage flashing (colour caused by heat and flame), ash deposits, and variations in surface, and used wadding and slips to bring out variations in colour. Selwood was particularly interested in the process of salt firing, introducing salt into the kiln at peak temperature to add flux to his surfaces. Salt creates a distinctive pattern caused by sodium reacting with the clay body. Malina and Dennis Monks’ practices were very different from Selwood’s and Nankervis’s, although there were crossovers with their interest in firing with salt. Malina Monks completed her Diploma of Art and Post Diploma of Ceramics at Glasgow School of Art and immigrated to Australia in 1969. She had studied under Alex Leckie. Leckie had a hands-off approach to teaching and great connections in Australia, “he didn’t teach us much about ceramics from a technical perspective, but what he did give us was an attitude that we could do anything”. Soon after arriving in Australia Monks approached Peter Rushforth, Head of Ceramics at the East Sydney Technical College, and asked him if there was any work going. Though young and inexperienced, she was obviously already showing talent with clay. After helping him in preparation for a firing, she was offered a bit of casual work at East Sydney, and she also began teaching privately out of her Sydney studio. Monks was always a reflective and conceptually driven artist who combined a sense of the materiality of her work with powerful philosophical ideas. To listen to Malina Monks discuss her work is to tap into another, philosophical way of thinking. Her abstract wall works speak about the world, energies and changes in life. The process of making is always important, and for her, the clay coils that journey down and then up to fold over one another, form metaphors. Sometimes they refer to water, in the body, on land, and that which surrounded her childhood home at the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. She says “I think about the coil going up and I think of Lewis and the weather all around me. I send the coil down to shelter”. Her work Cycles and seasons 2003 was gifted to her daughter-in-law, Jasmine Scheidler, when Scheidler was carrying her first child. The work shows a diamond form representing Scheidler, full of fertility and potential in the centre. On either side Monks (or as she refers to herself humorously “the old crone”) is supportive. She has experience fertility (which Monks equates to water and weight) on the left, but is now more open to heaven and earth (the spaciousness of post fertility) on the right. The coils in the third form follow a different flow, without the boundedness of fertility, but full of the wisdom of experience and life. More generally, this work refers to this intergenerational relationship between women, as it has existed across cultures and over 1000s of years. This salt glazed work, with its characteristic pinks and silvers, was fired over 36 hours. Malina’s husband, Dennis Monks, was also an artist whose work traversed the edge of innovation and abstraction. He pushed himself, his materials, and firing processes, sometimes going beyond the limits. Monks is one of the most extreme and experimental artists in this exhibition and was some kind of a magician with clay. He was originally from Adelaide, where he studied at the Adelaide School of Art, as part of his teacher’s training, before spending some formative years at Basso’s Farm, a property he owned at Alice Springs. Basso’s was a rambling place and a craft community where life and art merged. He met Malina in Sydney in 1975. Nankervis recalls hearing about this man who “could do incredible things with clay”. “I’d never seen anything like it. Delicate work. Very much about the clay itself”. Monks’ work shows a tendency towards the baroque, and he has made highly 2
original pieces where clay stands up, proud, playful and handsome.
Crustacean 1994 was made from a local clay and fired for 48 hours with a local black slip. Monks says, “it was hard to do much else with”. Looking at the complex form with its mass of interwoven coil, it has to be said, he has done a fair bit. The work’s organic form is such that nature might have made it, or it may have been sent to earth, twisted and formed by the forces of the universe. It is a beautiful, contemporary ceramic work. John Stewart was from the region originally and returned having studied at East Sydney Technical College in the mid 70s. He began to take ceramics seriously in his final year at Richmond River High School. The school did not have the equipment he required to make his work, and in true Stewart fashion, he made his own wheel using a gearbox from a car to reduce the engine from 8 to 1. He also built a wood kiln, using a trusty reference, The Australian Pottery Book - Harry Memmott (1970). This inventiveness has stayed with Stewart throughout his life. After art school, Stewart quickly realised that, for economic reasons (rent costs) and access to materials, an urban ceramic practice would be difficult if not impossible. He returned to the family farm at Clunes and set up studio in the bails, which was no longer in operation. After returning to the Northern Rivers, Stewart built a two chamber kiln with the first chamber being wood and the second salt, and worked like mad on domestic ware before switching to working at TAFE to draw his income (TAFE from 1983). Although teaching was its own major commitment, it freed him up to explore his expressive work. Showing different techniques brought a tremendous diversity to Stewart’s practice. “Nothing teaches you like teaching” he says. He worked experimentally, threw, slip cast, made large woodfired sculpture, and production ware. Stewart sought a diverse practice and to do “things with clay that had not been done before”. Whether this meant pressing the clay with an old gate hinge (this is the tool he used to make Fan), changing uses of a pugmill into an extruder, or pounding his clay body around an electrical conduit impregnated form-ply mould (as with Brick). He worked between process and responding to what was happening in the work. He was (and still is) the king of adapting his tools to make them work for him. This also went for woodfiring hours and he built his kiln (and some at the TAFE) to reduce the marathon in these. Innovations included oversized fire boxes and being able to get a lot of wood in quickly. Community and sharing of knowledge was important to the Northern Rivers woodfirers and many of them were involved with education. Stewart’s contribution to ceramics in the North Coast was not only as a maker, but also as a teacher. He worked at the Lismore TAFE for thirty years and was Head Teacher of the Creative Industries there for twenty. Kerry Selwood started the ceramic department in the 1970s and was Head of Art and Design at Lismore TAFE from 1976-95. Stewart says; “He really was the father of ceramics in this region”. In addition to his own hard work, Selwood was attuned to what professional potters could bring to students, and when he had the opportunity, he employed Stewart fulltime, and other potters, including the Monks, Geoff Crispin, Bob Connery and Tony Chinnery 2 on a casual basis. By the time he left TAFE, the section was delivering the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics – the highest qualification in TAFE NSW. According to Stewart, Selwood had “both the vision and character to develop the section into what I still believe is the best ceramics department in regional Australia.” Stewart played an equal role in this, steering the school through significant expansion of resources and facilities, and advocating for the visual arts in a system that required increasing administrative burden. Southern Cross University was also strong in woodfiring. Nankervis was there from 1994-2004 and from 1984, when the university was the Northern Rivers College of Advanced Education (CAE). During his tenure, Nankervis established ties with American universities, and in particular, Utah State University, due to his connections with Professor John Neely. They established an exchange program for SCU students and students from Utah. There were a number of kilns built at the TAFE and SCU and students were involved in this process as part of their curriculum. Kiln designs varied from shorter firing kilns to Japanese Anagama and Nankervis’s long firing tunnel kiln. Daniel Laverty from South Coast NSW was invited to SCU to build his kiln with its protruding bricks designed to encourage flame turbulence. Bill Brownhill, Suvira McDonald and Geoff Stirling were three of the many fortunate beneficiaries of these for3
ward-thinking schools, resourced with strong ceramic teachers and departments. McDonald recalls that the energy, interest and commitment of the teachers was inspiring and infectious. They were “passionate master potters”. “Not making work for the public but for art and ceramics. Their work had integrity and the ultimate worth. Their influence was irresistible.” Bill Brownhill studied ceramics at East Sydney Technical College (1979-80) before completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Northern Rivers CAE, 1986-89. The CAE was located in the Lismore CBD, and as a keen and interested woodfirer, Brownhill also spent time at the TAFE working with Stewart and Dennis Monks, despite not being enrolled in TAFE. Brownhill’s large Floor Bottle 1998 was fired in the TAFE’s kiln. Its running ashy surface tells the story of where it lay in the kiln, on its side, deep in the fire box. This basic bottle form is recurring in Brownhill’s work. Brownhill’s forms are conscientiously unpretentious like the artist himself. He loved the firebox where he could get maximum ash, and temperatures that would push the work into distortion. Brownhill was always able to surrender to the process of woodfiring, which with so many variables, does not allow you to achieve the same results twice. He has a gentleness that means he could come to terms with mishaps in firing. Long firings require multiple shifts, and despite what you might do to control your end of the firing, stoking the kiln and keeping it to temperature, you cannot control what the person does on the shift while you’re sleeping. On top of this, variables like the weather, the time of year, the wood, they all impact results. Brownhill recounted “I always found I got the best results if it rained at the end of firing”. He was referring to the impact of thick humidity that is common in the Northern Rivers, but which can never be controlled. Brownhill was also shown local sites to dig clay with his teachers, including Norton’s Gap and Broken Head. He recalls “you could speak with the roadworkers and they would put the clay in a pile for collection”. Needless to say, it is not permitted to take clay from these sites anymore. A lot of this clay was difficult to use. It required mixing and brought a whole other level of unpredictability to the process. It was sometimes used as a kiln building material and as insulation on the kiln’s exterior. Suvira McDonald arrived in the Northern Rivers in 1991. He studied at both Lismore TAFE, where he received an Associate Diploma of Ceramics in 1993, and Southern Cross University, Master of Arts by Research (Visual Art) 2000. At this time, less restricted access meant students could spend more hours on campus and McDonald took full advantage of this. He studied under Selwood, Malina and Dennis Monks, Stewart, Crispin and Nankervis. McDonald took quickly to the world of woodfiring, which, partially due to the growth of ceramic conferences like The Australian Woodfire Triennials (one of which took place in Lismore in 1992) and the Gulgong Ceramic Conferences, had assisted a thriving international network in Australia. Invited artists at these conferences enabled ceramicists to learn from and make connections with leading woodfirers from all over the world. At the National Ceramics Conference, Canberra in 1996, McDonald worked as an assistant to acclaimed American kiln designer, Fred Olsen, building a three-day firing Ground Hog kiln, with its experimental castable arch. The kiln was built at Canberra’s Strathnairn Arts. Nankervis supported McDonald to build a kiln inspired by this design at SCU as part of his Masters study. Despite this strong beginning in woodfiring, after leaving his studies McDonald had to diversify his practice to make his living. He made tableware, sculpture, wall works, and taught introductory art courses at Byron Community College among other things. A sense of the earth and landscape, so much a part of woodfiring, remained intrinsic to his work throughout this time. During his 10-year hiatus he purchased a stack of sought-after Bexhill white bricks in anticipation of the kiln he would eventually build. In the last four years he has fired his traditional, Japanese style Anagama kiln, and woodfiring has returned to the centre of his practice. Having never left clay, he works with ease and skill, playing this knowledge off that randomness that woodfiring brings. With a small crew, he fires over 75 hours, stoking with Sallywattle, a local timber he chooses because of its availability and high sodium content. McDonald is less enchanted by the gruelling work of woodfiring than he was as a younger man, but he has never been more excited by the results. 4
Geoff Stirling had a purist’s approach to ceramics. He also spent time at Basso’s Farm. Stirling and his partner Polly arrived there and asked if they could stay. Dennis Monks, ever generous, welcomed them openly. When he first arrived in the Northern Rivers and settled near Nimbin, Stirling helped support his family selling ceramics at The Channon Markets. Broader ethics always important to him, he wanted to make his wares affordable to everyone. This meant having to keep up a rate of production that ultimately exhausted him. After this he developed a quieter practice, making functional ware, mainly for his family’s daily use. The time it takes for a kiln to get to a temperature to produce desired results means that the process of woodfiring is often collaborative. However, Stirling preferred to fire alone, with some help from Polly, and designed his process around this requirement. He preheated the kiln for ten hours, and it then took eight hours to reach temperature (1,000 degrees Celsius). Works were then plucked red hot from kiln and layered in gum leaves to smoke in closed metal bins to transform the glaze. Materials were sourced almost exclusively from where he lives at Lillian Rock. Stirling collected Norton’s Gaps red clay and mixed it with clay from the property at Lillian Rock. The work was slipped with terra sigillata using the same clay (terra sigillata is a very fine slip which gives the smooth, waxy surface and colour to the work). He fired with fallen flooded gum branches. Stirling’s practice is movingly humble and personal. His plates were slab built and his beakers, pinched and finished loosely to allow a sense of his hand. The lower temperature firing and colours inherent in the clay imbued the work with warmth and softness. Smoking delivered varying results, including a fine and exquisitely complex network of crackle across the surface of the work. Bob Connery is the least typical woodfirer in this exhibition, and some would say his inclusion pushes the conventional definition of the term. However, though Connery made his lusterware by firing with gas, wood was essential to his process and results. 3 Connery was a science teacher for 17 years before establishing the Stoker’s Siding Pottery in 1978 with Laine Langridge. His passion for ceramics began early when he had learnt Raku pottery from Shiga Shigeo in the 1960s and was further developed through working with Roswitha Wullf. Connery did not carry out a formal tertiary training in ceramics. He studied science at the University of NSW and obtained a Diploma of Education. However, once hooked on clay he developed a lifelong interest in it and became a career potter. He spent 1000s of hours on research and experimentation, and learnt from masters in Japan. From 1992, Connery started specialising in reduced lustre glazes, developing an international reputation, particularly in Japan, where his lustreware ceramics were given ‘signing rights’ by Grand Tea Master Sen Shoshits. This effectively guaranteed the quality of his work there. He was only one of two westerners to receive such recognition. 4 Connery’s expertise in reduced-lustre glazes owed much to his science training. Extreme accuracy was required in mixing glazes as well as fine control of the firing process to achieve results. To attain the lustre Connery worked out that bamboo blinds, conveniently out of fashion in the 90s, were a good fuel, and he fed these into the gas kiln, creating an intense reduction atmosphere. Despite the meticulous process involved to achieve lustre, Connery was an alchemist at heart, interested in the part of his process that was out of his control. Connery sadly passed away in 2013. In 2005 he wrote; “I am seeking to emphasise the play of fire over the pieces, as evidenced by the vapour and reduction effects on the glaze form.” He continued “Even after years of experience, a degree of uncertainty adheres to firing reduced lustre. This uncertainty produces both the heartbreaks and outpourings of great joy – however fleeting – that maintain my excitement and desire to go on producing new work”. 5 Geoff Crispin grew up in Grafton and returned to the region in 1979, setting up his pottery at Whiteman Creek. His early training was a mixture of arts and science, studying at the University of NSW under Ivan McMeekin. He completed a Bachelor of Science (Technical), Industrial Arts (Ceramics) 1969-75 and then a Master of Science (Ceramics) 1978-79. He also holds a Master of Education. Since his very early days at Whiteman Creek Pottery, Crispin has sourced his materials directly from the earth, creating complex mixtures of clays (including porcelain) and glazes from various local sites. More recently, since 2007, he has begun to incorporate some commercial supplies into his work, mainly because, after decades of doing it, collecting materials has become too taxing on 5
his body. Crispin’s work is of the place that he lives, but not in terms of being a kind of imprint of it, like Stirling’s, Crispin’s work is about transformation. From Whiteman Creek porcelain and stoneware he builds, throws and casts forms which are a contemporary take on early Chinese pottery. He creates raw ash, celadon, copper red, iron and chun glazes from rock and crude, raw materials and turns them into thick, glistening glazes with complexity, consistency and some strong colour. Geoff fires with minimal help, preferring to be in control of every aspect of his process. That is not to say he is not interested in the happenstance of woodfiring – he would just prefer to have the closest possible relationship to the work, and with all that goes into woodfiring, that mistakes and successes are his. Since 2003, Crispin has fired a two chamber Bourry box kiln up to cone 13 (1320-1330 degrees Celsius). Previously he fired for 36 hours. These days he fires for 18-20 hours but a gas burner is used overnight to preheat the kiln. He has always used variations on the Bourry box. His mentor, McMeekin pioneered this style of kiln in Australia.6 The kiln is aimed at minimal ash and efficient firing. Geoff has had help firing over the years from a number of people to help get through his firing hours, especially Steve Sawkins and Kerry Selwood. He fires with mixed hardwood (Eucalypts) obtained as sawmill waste, increasing efficiency and allowing a hot, clean firing. Crispin writes “The ritual of stoking and the sights and smells of the firing became ingrained in me, along with the sense of solitude or meditative space that surrounds the process. In later years these factors coalesced into a firm assurance that this personal interplay with technique was an integral part of my ceramic expression”. 7 The process of woodfiring is far removed from the modern world, with its noise, machines, electronics and materials made using complex, environmentally costly processes. What woodfiring enables is a close collaboration with elemental forces of nature, both through the act of firing and how this embeds itself in the results. The mentions of the ceramic artists in this exhibition only touch on their remarkable contributions to Australian ceramics. None of them were ever in it for the limelight, and their contributions to ceramics is in many ways overlooked. Historically in Australian art, quality and innovation was seen to come from the major cities, where there was easier access to networks, galleries, funding bodies and the art establishment, especially pre-internet. In woodfiring, the leading artists were regionally based (due to proximity to materials, and the overall ethos of woodfirers around connected to place and land). These artists were and are alchemists and pioneers. There is a lot more to be said about their work, and artistic and technical pursuits in their practices, and how they shared knowledge in their community.
Essay Kezia Geddes, Curator Lismore Regional Gallery
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Nankervis was employed CAE/SCU with clay experience but without ceramic qualifications. He received a Graduate Diploma, Visual Arts (Monash University Gippsland) and a Master (Fine Arts) 1995 (SCU), required for teaching. 2 It should be noted here that Tony Chinnery was also a very strong woodfire potter based in the Northern Rivers. 3 Furthermore, he did practice traditional woodfiring in his early days as a potter, firing small wood kiln, before switching to gas, both for health reasons and to hone his interest in lustreware. 4 https://www.echo.net.au/2013/12/vale-bob-connery/ 5 Connery in ConVerge : Northern Rivers touring ceramic exhibition, Arts Northern Rivers, Alstonville, 2006, p14. 6 Rye in The Art of Woodfire: A Contemporary Ceramic Practice. Mansfield Press, Gulgong NSW, 2011 7 https://www.graftongallery.nsw.gov.au/cp_themes/default/page.asp?p=DOC-IOA-52-15-56
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images: front cover: Dennis Monks, Crustacean 1994, black slip on local clay, 30 (height) x 57cm (diameter), Collection of the artist back cover: Malina Monks, Cycles and seasons 2003, salt grazed stoneware, 43 x 67 x 1cm, Private Collection
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A Lismore Regional Gallery Exhibition: 23 November 2019 – 26 January 2020 supported by
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