Fiona Fell Snoring For Your Smile porcelain paper clay with mid-fire glaze 47 x 15 x 18cm, 2005
Smile! The experience of art is for oneself; it is an exploration teased out gently and with honesty. Perhaps we should be concerning ourselves with art that is quiet, provoking us to commune within ourselves, to find in the existence of Art the community of the human experience. The ceramic sculptures of Fiona Fell and Brian Doar are such 'quiet' works. They are snoring for your smile. These works are creative; full of activity, insight, humour and life. With years spent developing the ability to effortlessly express emotion and vision in the ceramic medium, Fiona Fell's and Brian Doar's latest sculpture emerges with a quiet sensitivity and a wry Aussie smile.
Twenty-three sculptures compose the exhibition Snoring for Your Smile ; fourteen of Fell's and nine of Doar's. Arranged around a rather narrow gallery space, usually devoted to hanging paintings, there is none-the-less a clear winding pathway and an easy visual flow through the room. There is space enough to view many of the works in the round and not to feel like a bull in a china shop. Brian Doar and Fiona Fell have been exhibiting together since 2003: in this exhibition both sets of work speak of intimacy, though in different ways. For the purposes of this small review I have chosen one piece by each of the artists to explore in detail.
On entering the gallery one first encounters Fiona Fell's sculptures so it is with her work that I will begin. "Pause (Paws) in Possibility", is a piece that is best seen in the round to appreciate the fullness of its meaning, though many of Fell's works can be positioned in a variety of ways. Comprised of two separate pieces, the smaller of the two is a blue-heeler dog's head which is fused to a similar reversed blue-heeler head to give the impression of a complete but stylised dog. It is an hour glass of sorts that can be turned over and over revealing the 'same' dog which waits at the entrance to the dark cave-like hollow represented in the second of the two pieces. This cave extends out from the right side of the body of a figure whose head is also cut away to reveal a dark cave-like hollow. As the work is viewed from behind it is discovered that the large cave structure is actually the inside of a head -a face being revealed and the standing figure's hand is resting on the larger head's ear. The porcelain paper clay is chalky-white and textured with a naive style of carving. Colour is used sparingly: there are blue dabs on the dog's coat, blue lining under the cut out eyes of the mask-like large head, on the body of the standing figure, and on the external edges of the hollows; a smokey black covers the interior of the heads; and a surprise of pink lightly paints the lips of the head that lays upon its stubbly cheek on the flat surface of the ledge.
The whiteness of the barely adorned clay gives the impression of intense exposure to light starkly contrasting with the shadows and black matte glaze of the interior spaces. This effect of stark whites with blue tinges casts one's mind to the spirit world, though the hollowed heads would seem to suggest a more interior experience-encountering a possibility externally and contemplating it internally. This sculpture seems to be saying, "How many are the hours spent in a fantasy of possibilities? The tick of time rolling over and over, and us paused in a place of non-action." Why is time and the object of possibility a dog? Perhaps because the sitting dog waits for attention, waits to be fed, waits for the ball, waits for love. Man's best friend, like our fantasies, accompanying us through the days and nights. A choice needs to be made, an action waited upon, but which is the right way?
Fiona's work captures this internal world with great symbolic clarity, one can see in all fourteen of the works her personal experiences working though various states. By using Art as a place of dialog she works though her own intimate questions, and through the processes of Art, exposes these internal experiences as universally experienced human conditions. In discussing her work, Fiona revealed her own perspectives and experiences of these sculptures, and so I became greatly aware of this transformation between the personal and the universal, coming to it as I did with my own set of personal experiences.
Brian Doar Two Legs Good, Four Legs Bad
porcelain paper clay with mid-fire glaze 52 x 18 x 16cm, 2005
A different sort of internal world is explored in the sculptural work of Brian Doar. Of his work I have selected "Two legs Good, Four Legs Bad". His sculpture seems to envision the world of illuminated cultural potential; an ideal, a desire and a possibility that Australian society might potentially be capable of. This reading however is hardly overt, rather it is woven within a framework of Eastern symbols many referencing the history of the ceramic medium itself.
Standing on a high plinth "Two Legs Good, Four Legs Bad", is a sculpture of porcelain paper clay coated in a dark green glaze that pools darkly in the shadowed and pitted areas. It references the lead glazes that would run down the vertical surfaces of vessels and sculptures made from the Western Han times (206 -c. 100 BC) through into the Tang dynasty (618 -906AD) when it was typically found in Sancai, or 'three-colour' ware. It is a distinctively oriental style, in that these wares were primarily used as tomb and funerary objects due to the glaze's toxicity, and the aesthetics may appear livid and uncouth by Westerner standards. (see Chinese Pottery and Porcelain: From Prehistory to Present Vainker, S.J., British Museum Press, London, 1991) This orientalism is taken further by the support, which is a detailed but crude version of the Chinese footed stands with the figures 'resting' upon a background of similarly 'carved' Chinese cloud forms, a device used in Asian Art to convey the spiritual realms. The green colour of the glaze also recalls the association of jade-considered a heavenly stone, though here in a much more earthy connotation.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the sculpture is of oriental origin as well: the two figures, joined at the hip and standing with one leg per figure, each have the head of an elephant or to be more precise the head of Ganesha - the Hindu divinity of wisdom, patron of sciences, arts and all creative activities and Remover of Obstacles. The other sculptures on exhibit here by Doar are also featured this way: one piece particularly places the Ganesha figure in a traditional pose so that one is instantly able to make the connection. Given that each of the figures in this sculpture has a third eye, it is very clear that the reference to this divinity is intended.
Like traditional forms of the Hindu deity the figures have several pairs of arms in various postures. In this case two pair of arms extend from the body and another pair of arms on the head emerge like bamboo segments coiling into the air on each of the figures, so that together there are twelve arms in total. And like the images of gods, the many hands express attributes and meanings to be in common with the divinity represented. This aspect is combined with the Western Art tradition of gesture, so that the figures contain the compound of gestural meaning. The four pairs of hands engage in the following: Philosophy and Discussion with the pointing hands (similar gestures can be seen in Leonardo de Vinci's "The Last Supper"); Mateship and Solidarity by the clasped hands in the centre; Intimacy and Concern with one figure's hand lain on the back of the neck of the other and to correspond a hand on the behind of the former; and lastly, Humour in the casual jocular interplay between the two characters: with one hand on hip, arm akimbo, with the other figure leaning in with an arm across the others shoulder; the trunks of the elephant heads are intertwined; the hair on their brows meet; the eyes are closed; the mouths open in close discussion; and the hands in the air twist and grow upwards to light and heaven. Together with the title "Two Legs Good, Four Legs Bad", the fat bellied figures are joined and supported by two thong (flip-flops) footed legs instead of four: they are in fact truly one figure, or rather the representation of an ideal of human community and intimacy-one might say an Australian divinity.
Depth of experience in their medium and the layered accumulation of knowledge distinguishes the work of the mature artist. This is true of both, Brian Doar and Fiona Fell. I have only scraped across the surface of their work here, however, though I hope it is enough to reveal the quality and sensitivity present in this exhibition, Snoring for Your Smile . The time I have spent in the encounter has awakened me to the possibilities of figurative ceramic sculpture. It is evident that Australian artists are using a visual language evolving concurrently with our own diversified cultural history and situation, forming valuable insights into ourselves and our possibilities if we but lean in and listen-I'm sure we would emerge with a smile.
