Potter’s success in Aust.

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 19

Potter’s success in Aust.

A former Waimate potter has had a work accepted in Australia’s prestigious Blake Prize for Religious Art. The work is by Mrs Thelma Payne, now living in Toowoomba in Queensland. Only 60 works are accepted out of about 1000 entries each year and hung in the Blaxland Gallery in Sydney for judging, making the Blake one of the most prestigious art prizes in Australia. Her sculpted pottery piece, entitled Yoke, which has five narrownecked pots wrapped and suspended in khaki-col-oured muslin from a bamboo pole, symbolises beasts of burden. She said she had always liked depicting animals and vessels, and using subtle, earthy themes. Her first ceramics exhibtion was in 1975, in Otago, New Zealand. She has exhibited in New Zealand and taught ceramics at Waimate before moving to Australia. She returned to New Zealand during 1985 for an exhibition of her art at A.N.Z. Art and had a work accepted for the Fletcher Brownbuilt ceramics award.

Two other large works by the artist made last year are also in clay. “Fenceline” has slabs of clay rolled in a thick cylinder wrapped in copper wire. Five of these are grouped in a circle and hung with copper

wire. Red rocks in copper wire are hung inside the pyramid formed by the wires. Clay rods form a fence and five heads form the focal point, pushing up through the earth. The piece symbolises the dividing up of the landscape through repetition, the

potter said,

“Earth Clay Fire” aims to show that society ignores the outside world because . people are immersed in their own little worlds. It features unfired clay, and wax faces.