Pottery Best Part Of West Coast Exhibition

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31953, 2 April 1969, Page 9

Pottery Best Part Of West Coast Exhibition

There is little of profit that can be said about much of the painting in the West Coast exhibition at the Society of Arts Gloucester Street gallery. It is claimed in the catalogue that Toss Woollaston has influenced the work’ from some areas and indeed there is a Woollaston colour quality about some paintings. But Woollaston’s theories of space and composition are woefully absent. M. Archer’s painting, “Reefton," has in parts a primitive quality in the trees and water but unfortunately it breaks down in the rest of the picture into a bad recipe for painting rocks. The paintings of A. R. Sansom are the most technically competent in the exhibition but three small flower studies, Nos 13, 14, 15, all painted in water Colour, are the only really successful ones. Where larger paintings have been attempted by this exhibitor weaknesses in drawing and composition are immediately apparent, as in “Nude 2,” where the figure floats instead of sits as intended. Certainly many of the con-

tributors are not scared of their media, which has fieen applied in many cases with scant disregard for the cost of oil patnt. The pottery section of the exhibition is an entirely different matter, particularly when it is considered that most of the potters represented are relative newcomers to the craft. The influence of Yvonne Rust is to be seen in the vast majority of work but S6,' too, is the emerging of individual styles. Most of the work is utilitarian ware and considering this, prices are modest. Nan Bunt, Hardy Browning, Jean Craze, Brent Hesselyn, Bob Thorn and Pen Manning all exhibit pieces simply formed and glazed and emihently suitable for the function they were designed for. Stanley Waller is the only potter to vary his glazes from the predominant browns. To Yvofine Rust must go unstinting praise, for not only has she encouraged the work of so many others but her own entry occupies 40 places in the catalogue and is wide in the variety of intended uses—from storage pots for vegetables and vine-

gar to a delightfully exotic cider jar. An example of a native scree garden, a schist rock fireplace, some pleasantly carved gourds by Peter Hughson and several excellent pieces of ‘‘West Coast jade” jewellery also carVed and designed: by Peter Hughson complete a worth-while venture.

The exhibition wijl close on April Hi —G.T.M.