susan ostling, patsy hely, toni warburton
Over the years, Susan Ostling, Palsy Hely and Toni Warburton's ceramic table-talk between Brisbane, Lismore and Sydney has created a conference call so prodigious that Peter Reith's Ministerial Telecard comes to mind as much as any elegant mirror image. 'Mirror' is the latest conversation between these inter-disciplinary ceramicists. Three antique oval dining-tables are set for spatial histories and geographies of the home, studio and the bush, speculations on the processes of art and memory, systems of translation from one set of knowledges or forms to another, and on how ceramics might provide an analytic tool in a discussion about history, geography, feminism and aesthetics. Palsy Hely's installation offers a suggestive start for ongoing research. Tableware has traditionally supported floral or bushland decorative motifs. Hely pointedly asks, 'Inside, do we need to keep the outside always before us?' The delicate cup and saucer, beaker and bowl, grouped on a mantelpiece above her table, wear a demure blue and yellow flower motif. Decorative floral transfers are fused on the unglazed pieces, accentuating their abrupt borders and arbitrary placement. These formal disruptions offer a quiet yet critical distance from the feminine gentility of the tradition. There is just enough hinted slippage in the floral motif to suggest all is not well in the garden party below. Hely's table is no bush picnic. Aesthetically it is uncomfortably reminiscent of the colonial grotesque, as elaborated by art historian Bernard Smith from Marcus Clarke's oft-quoted thoughts on the 'weird melancholy' of the Australian bush. The dining table is abstractly laid: it could be a theatre stage-design, or a home-made version of the children's detective board-game, 'Ciuedo?', or be set for an (unhealthy, Dickensian) meal of sorts