Master Makers is an exhibition at RMIT Gallery. I have work in the exhibition both made in and inspired by a workshop I did in 2005 with Peter Bauhuis called Casting the Vessel.
To truly understand the impact of Peter’s workshop on my art practice you need to cast your mind back in time to the world pre-Bauhuis and pre-Fritch, which may or may not be possible. Everything was different then. There was no social media: the library at RMIT and the art section in bookshops were the treasure troves of images, ideas and inspiration mined by us art students. And Gallery Funaki. And the lectures with the projector gently whirring in the dark as the slides double clacked through the carousel, revealing a wunderkammer of jewellery and many other things. As a visiting artist Peter prised our minds open to a totally new way of approaching making in the studio, intellectually and tacitly. A new way of seeing, feeling and experiencing materials and techniques. In the workshop we were exploring the vessel in every way and struggled to master the old centrifugal casting equipment. I was at that time researching botanical imagery in my work, and this little test piece I made that day was looking at the sexual parts of flowers that act as a vessel, in this case a poppy.
