Popularised in Holland during the 17th century, Still Life paintings concentrating on everyday objects rather than life forms or scapes, have become widely accepted as a leading vehicle of style and expression only during this century.

Four internationally recognised ceramic artists come together at the Dowse Art Museum to exhibit their own renditions of Still Life in a different way - through the medium of clay. SINGULAR VIEWS provides a rare opportunity to view such diverse 3-dimensional works, and to examine their varying approaches, concepts, styles and processes side by side. The artists are Australian Gywn Hanssen Pigott, Swiss Dorothee Schellhorn, American James Makins and New Zealander Ann Verdcourt.

Gywn Hanssen Pigott is concerned with purity and simplicity, creating abstract vessels in gently tinted porcelain. Influenced by Bernard Leach in Cornwall, Hanssen Pigott worked for many years in London and Acheres (France) attracting considerable critical acclaim for her Still Life groupings. She describes her love on inanimate vessels: A straggling line of jugs and cups and tumblers becomes an assorted tribe journeying somewhere. A silent line of porcelain beakers waits in a window for the light to transform their ordinary beauty into radiance.

The work of Swiss ceramist Dorothee Schellhorn is redolent with historical illusions and pithy colour. She uses colour without shiny glazes, which she believes falsify the true colour. In her own words….I am above all concerned with colour in its own right which is like a dress that envelopes the form.

James Makins' work is expressive, vigorous and colourful. He lives and works in the quintessential urban environment - a loft in New York City. His environment is matched by the style of his work - vigorously thrown, energetically coloured. Tall stretched cylinders and bottles are set on trays as Still Life tableaux. His work is anything but still - each piece is balanced gravity.

Ann Verdcourt's work reflects a contemporary reworking of Still Life. The relative isolation of living and working in Dannevirke seems to have enhanced the imagery and imagination of this prolific potter, who constantly pushes boundaries. Possessing remarkable skill and vision, Ann Verdcourt produces active, interrogative work - pieces with a fresh approach to form, and implied content.

Each of these artists has been chosen for their highly individual contemporary slant on the theme of Still Life. Curator Moyra Elliott - herself an accomplished potter - is excited about this Dowse-initiated show. "SINGULAR VIEWS is a chance to view the work of a major New Zealand ceramist in the context of her international peers."

Images of work in the exhibition
Please click on the thumbnail images for further information about that work and the artist.

Gywn Hanssen Pigott
Still Life with Tall Beaker
1998

Ann Verdcourt
Glimpse - group with two blue jugs
1997/98

Photography by Justine Lord