Speech
New Zealand Society of Potters
Anneke Boren, President of the New Zealand Society, and Vera Burton, President of the Wellington Association, our three international visitors, Mrs Kazuyo Hiruma from Japan, Les Manning from Canada and Sandra Taylor from Australia, and all potters here assembled.
I suppose that in many respects pottery has an international idiom; but yet each national culture has its own distinctive features, and so I am sure the New Zealanders will be relishing the opportunity to meet and listen to and experience the work of those who have come from overseas. There can't be too much of this sort of international and cross-cultural exchange.
First, may I say thank you for the invitation to be here with you this evening, on this very important anniversary for the Society. For a person, forty years is I suppose the first of the "important" birthdays. By that time of life, an individual is supposed to have at least begun to temper youthful enthusiasm with the wisdom that age and experience are meant to provide. I'm sure that's the way it is with the Society. Or perhaps we may compare the Society's fortieth year to a pot coming out of its first firing. The basic shape has already been created. Now comes the time for applying the glaze.
The world, and New Zealand with it, has changed a lot, of course, in the forty years since your Society was founded. As well as the founding of the New Zealand Society of Potters, 1958 saw other events that may still be seen as significant. It was the year of Arnold Nordmeyer's "Black Budget", Murray Halberg became the first New Zealander to run the mile in under four minutes, and Simon Upton and Roger Sowry were born. Other forty year-old events that had or still have some, rather diverse, cultural impact were New Zealand's retention, that year, of the Bledisloe Cup, the founding of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, and the introduction of stereo recordings. Of more significance for the Society, perhaps, is that it was also the year the New Zealand Pottery and Ceramics Research Association sponsored a research programme into the fundamental properties of ceramic materials C although the Association was particularly interested in their industrial rather than their artistic qualities. And of course that is still an important scientific focus in which New Zealanders play a leading role.
Pottery of course is among the most ancient of the arts - it is pre-historic, quite literally - with its origins back in the era during which cave-painting and weaving were also invented. Some 9,000 year old earthenware was dug up in Anatolia in the 1960s, and hard-fired pots found elsewhere in the Middle East are about six and a half thousand years old. Mind you, biblical authority would have it that God was the first potter, fashioning Adam from the 'dust of the earth': clay, in other words, minus only a bit of moisture. You could go on to argue that this means that pottery preceded all other modes of artistic expression. On the same basis, you could argue too that pottery, of all the arts, has produced by far and away the most important body of work.
Like everything else in this country, New Zealand pottery does not reach back quite so far. I have the impression that until Helen Mason and Doreen Blumhardt began working with clay in the 1930s, pottery was not really seen as a serious adult art. Certainly the writings of Bernard Leach in the 1940s gave it a considerable impetus, and introduced us to the pottery of the East, Japan in particular, from which many New Zealanders have since found such inspiration.
Our comparatively short domestic history is, quite possibly, one of the reasons why New Zealand potters have so often in the past had cause to feel that their medium has been overlooked in the accounts of our country's artistic achievements. But New Zealanders at large have definitely begun to recognise the names of such potters as Len Castle, Mirek Smisek, Barry Brickell, Roy Cowan, Juliet Peter, to name but a few, and of course the doyennes of all, Helen Mason and Doreen Blumhardt. And with that recognition the profile of potting, and potters, in this country has become considerably higher than once it was. That potters' names are recognised by those who are not workers in clay themselves, is surely a sign that the art has come of age. Add to that the recognition our potters have received overseas, for example at the Expo in Seville, where some outstanding work was on show, and we can see how much has been achieved in the past 40 years.
Even so, I suppose potters still sometimes encounter the notion that there is a qualitative difference between the plastic arts and the representational or the performing arts On this topic, New Zealanders would surely be best advised by Doreen Blumhardt, who a few years ago now expressed the hope that we "will eventually come to realize art should not be valued according to the material from which it is made" - in other words, that it is the artistic value in and the values of any discipline that are the most important things about it. I believe we have come to realise that, that we New Zealanders do now truly appreciate the potter's art, just as you potters enjoy the opportunity to be not only creative but also appreciated artists.
Your Society's two-part mission - To celebrate excellence and to nurture creativity in clay - is surely an appropriate one.
It's the celebration of excellence, of course, that is the object of this 40th Exhibition, here at Te Papa. What a comprehensive show it is, including as it does, works from the Society's members and from the international invited guests; the "Then and Now" display of works from people who contributed to the Society's very first Exhibition; and works by ceramic art students from around the country, some of whom will surely become the recognised names in the medium in years to come.
And your nurturing of creativity is certainly bearing fruit too, judging by the work we see in exhibitions and in galleries and shows and shops all around the country.
Above all, the Society's Exhibitions have, over the years, been highly effective in spreading the news about what New Zealanders can accomplish in and with clay. They are shows which have given New Zealand artists the opportunity to be seen and heard, to be appreciated and acclaimed, as they deserve to be; and they have given the rest of us the opportunity to discover and enjoy and be proud of the outstanding work of our fellow New Zealanders. They have complemented the country's natural beauty with an increasingly rich cultural heritage, and so added greatly to the quality of life for all of us. To all those who have helped bring this about, thank you for the important contribution you make to our New Zealand community.
Members of the New Zealand Society of Potters, ladies and gentlemen: congratulations to the Society on its 40 years of achievement. I have no doubt that in the next 40 years it will continue to meet its immensely worthwhile goals. So without further ado, I am very happy to declare "Capital Clay," the 40th Annual Convention of the New Zealand Society of Potters, officially underway, and this outstanding exhibition, officially open.