by Ken Ford
Published in Ceramic Art and perception
Issue 34/1998
Myriad
of international artists/students in search of the ultimate creative experience.
For the international traveller, it is a city that offers quiet relief,
unequalled beauty and an easy access to nature and wilderness. The Tasmanian
School of Art in Hobart is often the catalyst that draws this wealth
of talent, all too ready to ingest the magic that southern city has to offer and
torn it into an inspired body of work.
One such traveller is Vipoo Srivilasa from Thailand who has come to Tasmania as a candidate for a Masters degree in ceramics. Ocean Fantasy, held at Side Space, Salamanca Art Centre in June 1998, was an exhibition of ceramics that contributed to a tradition that considers the vessel as a sculptural genre: container, body.
Living in historic Battery Point and walking the well-worn trail across the dockside waterfront to the art school is a visual treat that could escape no well-worn trail for aesthetics. There is a treasure house of motifs here to be consumed and interpreted in so many new and exciting ways.
The starfish, jellyfish and shellfish that inhabit the foreshores of the Derwent River inspired creativity within Vipoo Srivilasa. He made an instant correlation between these strong forms and the friendly nature that he perceived as the Australian personal city, the "bright, friendly people" he met.
Ocean Fantasy is an evocative collection of ceramic pieces, objects of a mythical under-sea world that combine the inspirations of the fauna and flora of the Tasmanian coastline and aspects of Thai traditional costume. The biomorphic brightly coloured vessels are assembled from two simple moulds combined to make a unique variety of assembled forms.
"There are an infinite number of forms but simplicity has come slowly, I could keep going, going, going...and I have Penny Smith, my supervisor, to thank for helping me to maintain my focus."
Development can be seen from Srivilasa's previous body of work that featured the Mardi Gras and Thai costumes on assembled bottles. In the new work, the costumes assume simplicity to a point where the elaborate head-dresses have been replaced by shellfishes, as in White Scallop Vase, a sensual, figurative bottle with a broken blue glaze and white scallop-shaped stopper. Sea Lady is another curvaceous feminine form inspired by barnacles and sea stones in which the mastery of surface colour and texture is most effective. The hybridised cultural mix results in figures reminiscent of either mermaids or Thai deities. This mix of sensuality and religion adds to the unique euphoria of the work and offers at the same time a certain freedom that may come through working in a culture outside one's own.
Mermaid's Pet and Mermaid's Container are titles that evoke the presence of a mythology indicative of the language that the work invents. These objects of metaphysical domesticity leave our imagination whirling in anticipation of a glimpse of their mystical overseers, involving us deeper into an imaginative world of nature, creation and representation that is both evocative and prescriptive. Vipoo Srivilasa's works seem almost to be moving in procession in the Octopus' Garden) Mermaid's Pet combines the motifs of starfish, octopus and scallops while Mermaid's Con tamer uses octopus and jellyfish as its starting point. Based on simple pot forms these vessels are alive with freshness and sensitivity.
The fake diamond studs of Scallop Vase are signifiers of the softness of the Thai culture that Srivilasa wishes to portray to his Australian audience. The post-firing additions may well be lingering memories from his two years as a fashion accessory designer before beginning his BA in Ceramics at Rang-Sit University, Bangkok in 1991.
Queen of Corals features a more complex texture over a simple form that uses barium glazes and gold lustre to represent the vibrancy of coral outcrops. Srivilasa considers this to be one of his more successful pieces; there is an intrigue and mystery about the underlying form placed on a three-tiered base reminiscent of more traditional Thai sculpture. The connection with the homeland is most evident in some of his vases which show a combination of elegant feminine forms with Thai patterned wings and rock textures. The mixing of gloss and dry glazes is inspired by the algae covered rocks of the seaside.
Vipoo Srivilasa is influenced by the work of US ceramist, Adrian Saxe, who successfully combines European and Asian styles symbolising multicultural society, like Australia. But it is the styles of Australia and Thailand that Srivilasa combines in such a way that neither stand outs as separate but intermingles to produce a new and exciting hybrid.
The vessel can be seen as a metaphor for the human body, the container of our spirituality, thoughts and emotions, spirituality that is often concealed within or under the surface, hidden as a secret language, held in by aesthetic pleasures that the surface provides. In the work by Vipoo Srivilasa the vessel as body is both symbolic (literal) and metaphorical and the spirit surfaces as superb ceramic aesthetic that is nothing less that inspirational.
Endnote:
1. As in the song by the Beatles the 'Octopus' Garden' from the album Yellow
Submarine..
NOTE:
Ken Ford has been a ceramist for 25 years and is currently studying printmaking
in Hobart.
Picture: Mermaid's Container, Earthenware, 14cm/H
Photos by Concept.
Relate topic
