Vault
Installation image
Courtesy Auckland Studio Potters
Installation image
Courtesy Auckland Studio Potters
Auckland Studio Potters Collection
28 January 2010 - 20 March 2010
Auckland Studio Potters (ASP) is a long standing professional association that has long been the region's ceramics hub. Especially instrumental in training, the centre offers short term recreational through to diploma courses. A major international art award in its time, The Fletcher Challenge Ceramics Award (1977-98) was an initiative of the Auckland Studio Potters and from the outset the Award was predicated on having an international judge. Judges were selected for their ability to jury what became one of the world's most prestigious ceramics awards, while at a local level they contributed to the professional development of ASP members leading studio workshops at the ASP Centre whilst staying in New Zealand. As workshop leaders they added works to ASP's rapidly growing ceramic collection.
This Objectspace Vault installation - a collection of ceramics largely made by visiting ASP tutors, some of whom were Fletcher Challenge Award judges - showcases the products of these brief (often one day only) and intensive workshops. The works on display are not ‘finished' for the simple reason that there was no time for the maker to complete the work during the workshop.
The ASP collection is a hard working reference collection easily accessible to students and visitors. For instance, at the Auckland Museum, visitors can view a ‘finished' Takashi Yasuda work (behind glass). ASP visitors by contrast are able to closely view and handle a number of incomplete bisque fired Takashi Yasuda works made at about the same time. In the last years of the Fletcher Challenge Award five day workshops were sometimes held, which enabled works to be finished, as in the case of works made in 1998 by Torbjorn Kvasbo from Norway.
The collected works on show at Objectspace are neatly emblematic of an initiative that has always focused on excellence, internationalism and professional development and has contributed a great deal to local community development.