10th August to 24^th September 2024

Exhibition Opening 3pm, 10 August

Meet the artists and enjoy the exhibition

Two local artists explore the idea of connection through clay and printmaking. Ceramicist Jo Davies and printmaker Kate Herd pay testimony to the interdependence of, and within, nature and community. The artists are neighbours and both enjoy a longstanding relationship with the Yarra River landscape. Observing the micro and macro, human and non-human worlds in their river-side ‘backyard’ over an extended period, they consider the necessity of co-dependent networks – both social and ecological – for the health of our existence.

The artists see gardens as a locus for nature and community; Gardens both wild and cultivated provide stimulus for their artistic practice. For Jo and Kate, gardens are not just living places of refuge and regeneration, but also philosophically significant and symbolically laden landscapes of the mind. The works on paper and ceramic vessels might variously respond to the morphology of flowers, plants and wildlife, or the colours of foliage, fungi and seedpods, interspecies relationships or perhaps simply the play of shadows on branches.

In the Bolin Bolin Gallery space, Jo’s sumptuous ceramic forms complement Kate’s mostly black and white linocuts and ethereal etchings; With Kate’s images providing a graphic background to Jo’s richly-glazed organic bowls, bottles and assemblages. The forms of these vessels take on personalities and embody observations made in nature. Placed together, the small ceramic elements seemingly communicate with each other. When presented in groups the assemblages reconceptualize landscape and relationships. Nature; The light falling between trees; A family photo; Family; Table chatter; Connections and relationships –all fuel Jo’s creativity.

Kate’s works on paper – in the form of drawings, papercuts and etchings – reflect her love of flora and fauna and passion for gardens and the Australian bush. Her prints often feature plants, birds and animals and posit the garden as a site of delight and contemplation but also as a place where senescence and death might intrude. The interplay between human and non-human living things in Kate’s whimsical images is a means to explore the imaginative world of childhood, often referencing the rich symbolism of fairy tales and folk art.

Kate Herd

Jo Davies