Jamboree Clay Workshop
For Jerry Wedd home is where is the art is.
This man celebrates the everyday...the things that are literally in the backyard...from the family dog to the family car.
Much of it's about scratching away the pretensions that layer so many artforms...and in Jerry's case the technique matches the artist's philosophy.
"What I'm doing is I'm putting down a slip which is clay mixed with colorant which will withstand high temperatures in the kiln and then I scratch through it and basically draw....and so sgraffito....it even sounds like what it is scratched through".
"It sums up all the work I do because I've never been able to draw properly so I learned that technique in kindergarten where you put down layers and layers of crepah and then you scratch through it and that's how I started drawing on pots".
Jerry's laconic and self-deprecating style has won him many fans including those behind that most unique of Australian fashion statements - Mambo.
For this seven-time South Australian surf championdesigning Mambo fabricswas a natural progression. The irreverent wit....the love of Australian beach culture and a keen eye for the mundane....have earned him a place as the only Adelaide-based artist in the Mambo team.
"I think that the local is universal really. I did these surfing posters for Mambo about surfing history and I based them on my own teenagerhood or whatever and wrote about characters who hung around the beach".
"There's that view of Australia's surfers as being like bronzed gods...and so it seemed like a really obvious thing to do to turn them into Ulysses and Atlas going down the beach. So in some ways you're poking fun at the whole thing...the whole subculture".
Hence the Trojan Dog complete with skateboard...and Odysseus in search of the perfect wave. Jerry's pursuit of the everyday as art...often finds its way into the everyday kitchen.
"When night becomes light....that the blue hour. What does that mean?"
"Uhm....a lot of work particularly the exhibition work has been based around domesticity...and different aspects of that and so again I steal lines out of singsand that's a line from a song. And it's just....I mean there's a sad couple here in their underwear...well not really sad but they've got a one bar heater....it's really just looking at that whole problem trying to share a life and that sort of thing....and the fact that this kind of work is referred to as domestic ware."
"A lot of the time I'm just indulging myself...this is just Rover playing possum....just so that people don't look at it and say that's so bad that you have to say what it is underneath. Is that a pig? No it's a dog it says so..."
The Jamboree Clay Workshop also features the work of fellow potters Lincoln Kirby Bell, Lesa Farrant and Louise Ramsay. It's open weekdays and you can contact the workshop on 8346 6999, and is located at 1 Way Tce Welland Open Mon to Fri 9.30 to 5.00pm
For more information you can email info@postcards-sa.com.au
