Assemblage gallery wall sculptures

Shigaraki Cultural Ceramic Park artist in residence

Just spent a month in Japan at the Shigaraki Cultural Ceramic Park. The town of Shigaraki itself is well off the tourist track but just over an hour from Kyoto. I worked on Oribe style sculptures and functional ware. Furuta Oribe was a revered tea master 400 years ago and introduced more idiosyncratic and relaxed forms of tea ware for court tea ceremonies. He unfortunately fell out with the shogun and was asked to commit harikiri. Oribe style is now associated with a white body clay, freestyle brushwork and a green glaze. See my Instagram feed for more photos @louise.fulton.studio

a life less ordinary

I have recently opened my Etsy shop LouiseFultonStudio online to show smaller art work more suited to retail spaces rather than galleries. This is one of my most favourited items. It is 32 x 22cm.

Byron Arts Classic

This is my piece for the show, it's 60cm long with some wicked greens and blues using either chrome, copper carbonate or barium in the glaze mix.
Byron Arts Classic
Exhibition opening Wednesday 1st April through to 8th April 2015.
69 Jonson Street, Byron Bay

5 favourite sculptures at ICSHU

Walking around the International Ceramic Studio at Kecskemet was like looking at the roll call of the best of the world's ceramic artists. Every space, shelf, nook, cranny and alcove had sculpture to look at. These five works were amongst my favourites from the many that I could have picked. I love the retro numbers on the metre square terracotta work by Csulgal Ferenc.

Pod series made during residency at ICSHU

ICSHU Kecskemet Hungary

Made lots of sculpture and some great friends at ICSHU, the International Ceramic Studio while there as artist-in-residence. The studios are very spacious and the staff and accommodation were excellent. The black incised surfaces related to the embroidered costumes which my grandmother wore when she was a cabaret dancer. The pointy sprigs are based on nipples - a reference to my Hungarian mother. The sculptural shapes are influenced by various forms including WW1 grenades, seedpods and acorns which I came across in Kecskemet at a Cifrapalota exhibition and at the Kecskemet Arboretum.

Pieces of Eight, NRCG

Coming soon to Northern Rivers Community Gallery in Ballina is our new exhibition, 'Pieces of Eight' with Sue Fraser and Ruth Park. Inspired by the exotic history of the Spanish Silver Dollar, we have responded in different ways to the title of the show. In colonial Australia, the Spanish Silver dollar was brought in to replace rum as currency. The dollar was punched out, making both the Holey Dollar and the punch. The donut shape of the Holey Dollar is the same form as the Chinese 'bi disc', also a form of currency in ancient China. This was the starting point for my version of 'Pieces of Eight'. You can see in the image the turquoise glazed bi disc. Our launch event is on Thursday 28th August from 5.30pm to 7.30pm. NRC Gallery is open Wed - Fri 10.00am to 4.00pm and Saturday - Sunday 9.30am to 2.30pm.

woollahra small sculpture prize

Have entered this piece into the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. I'm interested in etymology. I have been learning Hungarian for the past nine months and it has heightened my awareness of my primary tongue, English. In this sculpture, words and numbers combine and transmute into more complex meaning. Unless you grow up in a culture, you can't really recognize the hidden implications in a simple phrase. The piece is called 'Ordinal', and the face is stamped with the word, BORN.

Crawl glaze - 1100 Celsius

One of my favourite glazes is a white crawl which matures between 1080 and 1100 degrees Celsius.

Frit 4113 75 Ball clay 12.5 Neph syenite 12.5 then add magnesium carbonate light 25% (eg. 250gms to 1kg of mix - let the MgCO3 soak in water first)

conversation between artists

I went to the 2013 graduating TAFE student show in Lismore last week. There was a signature piece by Leila Page, a 1.2 metre stylised ceramic figure, sandy coloured with hundreds of daisy-like flowers on the surface. I discussed the piece with a friend, saying that, for me it reminded me of a Linde Ivimey piece.  For me it had the same overall look and surface qualities, a basic shape with tiny details.  I think it was attractive to me because it was similar to a lot of my own work. My friend didn't see the likeness.  If you look at Leila's, Linde's and my work, I think you can see a conversation between artists with a similar aesthetic. When you look at an artwork, are you looking at the materials used or at the overall effect? How do we decide the connection between artworks?

barrier reef bommie

This piece is based on a coral bommie with an anchor point and small piece of dead coral attached. In the end it turned out a bit like an animal with its four legs. It was part of my 'Hide nor Hair' show at the Tanks Arts Centre. I used paperclay as it is so easy to use even if it dries out and you can make very fine attachments. The barnacles on the bottom were made as sprigs then attached. I have several glazes including a magnesium one that becomes like foam.

Tanks Arts Centre

'Hide nor Hair', artwork by Louise Fulton at the Tanks Arts Centre Cairns, Queensland, 2 - 16 August 2013. Sculpture and drawings on the story of Eliza Fraser from the artist in residence program funded through Cairns City Council.

Artist in residence house

The Tanks Arts Centre residence on Collins Avenue is an elevated timber house and has Saltwater creek on one side(the occasional crocodile has been spotted) and the Flecker Cairns Botanic Gardens on the other side. The back veranda is wonderful on a hot day.

Hide nor hair drawings

'Hide nor hair' launch on 6pm Friday 2 August at Tanks Arts Centre Gallery, adjacent to the Cairns Botanic Gardens. These are some details of drawings that I have been working on at the artist-in-residence house on Collins avenue over the past fortnight. I was thinking about the poignancy of Eliza giving birth on board a lifeboat and the baby being resigned to the deep. I used canavalia rosea vine, also known as Beach bean as the vine most likely to have been used by Eliza to cover her loins.

Hide nor hair pre-exhibition

My new exhibition, 'Hide nor Hair' will be showing at the Tanks Arts Centre Gallery from August 2 - 16 at the Cairns Botanic Gardens. I will be one of their artist's in residence for July and August. I've been making work based on the story of the heavily pregnant Eliza Fraser who was ship wreaked on the Great Barrier Reef in 1836. She had a baby boy in the lifeboat in front of 11 sailors. The baby died and was buried at sea. At sea for six weeks, they finally landed on Fraser Island (named after her husband, Captain James Fraser). They swapped clothes for food with the indigenous people. Eliza lived with the aboriginal women, helping collect fire wood and food for two months before a party from Moreton Bay came to find the missing ship's crew and passengers.

grafton regional art gallery

Two of my submissions for Grafton Regional Art Gallery were selected for their Accessible art collection. Jude McBean has asked artists to respond to two dimensional works within the larger collection that can be accessible to people with disabilities such as visual impairment. The work in this photo shows Godwin Bradbeer's moody 'Man in a squared space" and my touchable version for blind visitors to the gallery space. My other work selected responded to a drawing of a netsuke hidden in a riverbed of pebbles by Darren Chard.

Doppelganger

This drawing is called Doppelganger and continues the theme of conjoined twins, evolution and humans place within the natural world. It won a Works on Paper prize at the Coraki Art Prize recently

.