The 4 Men's Media Exhibition, "You prepare a Table...., and my cup overflows!"

I forgot to take photos yesterday at the opening of the exhibition in the Community Gallery in Dunedin, some of us are blessed with forgetful neurons, so I went back to Dunedin this afternoon on the bus, armed with camera, with the intention of making a record of my table full of pots, and taking a quiet look at the rest of the exhibition.

The Community Gallery is a space that is available for hire by individual artists, groups, and societies. Essentially it is an empty square shaped room, with a polished floor, white walls, some lights, and ... you do the rest. You find tables to display work on, you set up the show, look after it, and all that sort of thing. The basic cost is $200 a week, but then you have to keep feeding the power meter $2 coins throughout the day for the gallery lights, and you have to pay the Council lots of money for the privilege of parking the car somewhere.... so it all adds up quite quickly. It works best when you have a small group of artists to share costs. Louise Burnside from Gallery on Blueskin at Waitati, just North of Dunedin, kindly coordinated 4 of us to have the exhibition, and she and her friend Nicky Clarke (who works with her at Gallery on Blueskin) have been absolutely wonderful in giving their time to running the event.

My work was arranged on a long table. The array of work reminds me very much of how it all looks as the work comes out of the kiln. Some things are rather swamped visually in such an arrangement, but such a spread does have a festive look, rather like a table ready for a feast.

I have taken a series of photos that will walk you down the length of the table.

We won't stop and look at individual pieces, otherwise there would have to be an enormous number of photos, but we'll have time for a quick look at this bottle with poured glazes, and gaps of the toasted body of the pot showing through.

I tried to mass the basic colour groups together, with hot colours at one end of the table, and cooler ones at the other, but I did not stick rigidly to this idea.

So we make a procession through copper reds,

past some copper with some chun blue or violet,

on past golden shinos and iron browns,




past the odd hint of celadon green.


We stop for a cup of tea from an iron red teapot...


and slowly encounter the odd copper green, iron green, and chun.





An accent of strong rutile blue marks the nearness of the end of the table.

Then on to cooler blues at table's end.



On a small table in the window, are another collection of pots.

This sculptural pot with ash glazes that was from an earlier firing is by itself, nearer to where people come into the exhibition.

The other artists that took part, either made sculpture, such as this wall hanging by Jack Monaghan,

or painted. I am rather fond of the colourful pastels that Justin Morshuis has on show. Lovely colour, and interesting things going on.

Not many people through the exhibition today, but there were some more sales of paintings and a couple of pots. We are hoping for better attendance of the exhibition towards the end of the week when I am working at my wheel there.