John Parker: Celebrating a Half Century of Innovative NZ Art

JOHN PARKER: CELEBRATING A HALF CENTURY OF INNOVATIVE NZ ART

Image credit: John Parker, Clear and Present Danger (detail), 2016
Installation of 200 porcelain white grooved cones under different lighting conditions
Lighting design: Phillip Dexter, MSc; Photo: Haruhiko Sameshima

Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery presents
CAUSE AND EFFECT
New Exhibition and Book Launch

2016 marks 50 years since celebrated West Auckland artist John Parker started making pottery. To mark the occasion, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery in Titirangi is presenting a major exhibition and launching a new book, both titled John Parker: Cause and Effect, to survey his extraordinary 50-year career of breaking rules and redefining what it means to make pottery in Aotearoa. Cause and Effect is exhibiting now at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery until13 November 2016.

Parker is one of New Zealand’s most consistently innovative potters, always seeking fresh ways to push the boundaries of clay production. He takes inspiration from art-house cinema, Wagner, Beatles albums, commercial potteries such as Crown Lynn and Wedgwood, and even the manufacture of power pole insulators. Cause and Effect explores the different ideas and experiences that continue to influence Parker’s work, often recurring in cyclical fashion over periods of time and leading him in surprising new directions. This includes exploring the relationship between the otherwise estranged worlds of handmade craft and machine production, experimentation with fiction and narrative themes, but always through a love affair with surface and materiality – he enjoys treating his finishes as a kind of clothing that can reveal or conceal the sensuous, highly worked forms beneath.

Cause and Effect features an ambitious new work, Clear and Present Danger, an installation made especially for the exhibition. Produced in collaboration with lighting designer, Phillip Dexter, it features 200 white grooved cones made from porcelain.

The book is an impressive volume, with contributors from around the world, including internationally renowned writer, Garth Clark, who studied with Parker at the Royal College of Arts in London in 1974 and 1975. It will be lavishly illustrated with newly commissioned photographs by Haruhiko Sameshima, design by Derek Ward and with further essays by Jim Barr and Mary Barr, Andrew Clifford, Grace Cochrane and Douglas Lloyd Jenkins.

Clark became reacquainted with Parker in 2006, during a lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand, and was impressed by the predominantly white works Parker was making at the time. “These sleek, manicured pots are designerly and restrained with their power coming from a limited but highly resolved form language,” he says. “Their volumes evoke the form, mood and pure proportions of vessels from Classical Greece. The use of line, precise sharp silhouettes and rings drawn into the clay rise up the belly of the pot to the shoulder with measured geometric grace and take us into a contemporary and abstract realm.”

Parker held his first survey with Te Uru (in its former incarnation as the Waitemata Arts and Cultural Centre in Lopdell House) in 1990, and has continued to work with Te Uru as a curator, exhibition designer, contributor to group exhibitions and regular participant in the Portage Ceramic Awards.

“It is a pleasure to reciprocate John’s support and welcome him back to the gallery” says Te Uru Director, Andrew Clifford. “His ceramic work is without comparison in this country, demonstrating a powerful rigour and a distinctively conceptual approach to production that continues to challenge assumptions of what constitutes ceramic practice.”

Parker is also well known as an award-winning theatre and exhibition designer with strong interests in opera and film, all of which influences his pottery. He curated the New Zealand Country of Focus exhibition at Faenza, Italy in 1991 and co-curated Mau Mahara: 150 Years of New Zealand Craft in 1989. Among the many honours he has received, John was made a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2010.

Please visit www.teuru.org.nz or www.facebook.com/teurugallery for the latest information on artist talks and events.

John Parker: Cause and Effect runs at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery from 10 September – 13 November 2016, opening Saturday 10 September, 6pm

The exhibition and book are generously supported by Creative New Zealand.

Hours: 10am – 4.30pm daily
Address: 420 Titirangi Road, Titirangi, Auckland
Website: www.teuru.org.nz

Te Uru presents a diverse programme of contemporary exhibitions, events and activities that include art, craft and design. As a destination gallery, Te Uru operates from an award-winning, purpose-built building in the recently re-opened Lopdell Precinct, situated at the entrance to the Waitakere Ranges and en route to Auckland’s famous west coast beaches. Te Uru is home to the Portage Ceramic Awards, New Zealand’s premier ceramic event.

Te Uru receives core operational funding from Auckland Council through the Waitakere Ranges Local Board.

About the artist:

JOHN PARKER is one of New Zealand’s leading studio potters. He was born in Auckland in 1947 and began working in clay in 1966. After graduating from Auckland Teachers’ College, he went to London in 1973 to study at the Royal College of Art. He was awarded an MA degree in Ceramics in 1975 and returned to New Zealand in 1977 where he continued his significant involvement with the ceramics community as director of the Auckland Studio Potters Centre.

John has exhibited extensively in New Zealand and internationally. He has shown regularly in both solo and group exhibitions at Avid Gallery in Wellington, Form Gallery in Christchurch, Masterworks Gallery in Auckland and Milford Galleries in Dunedin. He has also been included in many exhibitions at public institutions including the Dowse Art Museum, Fisher Gallery, Objectspace, Suter Art Gallery and Te Papa. He curated the New Zealand Country of Focusexhibition at Faenza, Italy in 1991 and co-curated Mau Mahara: 150 Years of New Zealand Craftin 1989. A major retrospective exhibition John Parker Ceramics was presented by City Gallery Wellington in 2002 accompanied by a significant publication.

His work is represented in many private and institutional collections including Auckland Institute and Museum, Dowse Art Museum, FuLe International Ceramic Art Museums, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, Northern Arizona University, Pennsylvania State University, Te Papa and Waikato Museum of Art and History Te Whare Taonga o Waikato.

John is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics (Geneva) and was made a Life Member of Auckland Studio Potters in 1999. He has participated in ceramics gatherings in Icheon, Paris, Dublin, Santa Fe, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Alongside his work in ceramics, John is well known as an award-winning theatre designer.

Among the many honours he has received, John was made a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2010.

John lives and works in West Auckland. He is represented by Masterworks Gallery, Auckland; AVID Gallery, Wellington; Milford Galleries, Dunedin and Queenstown; Piece Gallery, Matakana; and Form Gallery, Christchurch.

www.johnparker.co.nz

© Scoop Media