Owen Rye
Jars
Songs in Stone
MORAG FRASER AM
We all recognise that moment in music when technique becomes invisible and
masterly improvisation takes off—expanding the mind and delighting the spirit. It
can happen in a Miles Davis trumpet solo, a Mozart piano cadenza or in any phrase
sung by Ella Fitzgerald.
It happens in the works of Owen Rye. A lifetime of study and decades of
rigorous practice have so grounded this master of ceramic technique that he can
afford to play with fire—literally and metaphorically. His are works of calculated
risk. Perhaps that is what makes them so exciting.
It may seem paradoxical to talk of improvisation in works so still, so fixed
in time. Owen Rye’s vessels—grand and modest—have a monumental, archaic
quality, as though excavated rather than made. And they stand within a great
tradition of human making. I have seen their antecedents in the crammed
cupboards of Owen’s studio in the form of ancient ewers, perfectly preserved,
simply eloquent. But even within a tradition, eloquence is a product of risk—of
chancing the hand. The eloquence of the ewers is echoed in Owen’s work—close kin
in an art that endlessly renews itself.
But renewal needs its exponents, its tireless experimenters and educators.
Owen has long been one of the drivers of contemporary woodfire practice in
Australia, and an active promoter of this exacting art beyond our shores. His CV
is formidable, but his demeanour self-deprecating. It’s as if he knows that the
fire he plays with will unleash power beyond human control. A very Australian
understanding.
The works in this exhibition reflect that understanding, a creative humility in
the face of one’s materials—and nature. Owen knows his clays, his chemistry, the
idiosyncrasies of his great slumped whale of an anagama kiln. He knows how to
stack its tunnelled interior to control the passage of fire and the silting of ash that
will transmute into glaze. But he also knows when to let go. Take the creative risk.
And the results, the works you see in this exhibition—great jars that converse
with one another like Ents in a primordial forest—are works whose forms are
timeless yet always intriguing, whose surfaces have the textural variety of
eucalyptus bark or the gleam of a waxing moon. They are works to make you stop
and ponder male and female form, delight in the play of light on glaze, or peer into
cavernous interiors to hear the rhythms of the sea.
Owen maintains close connections with fellow potters in the United States,
so perhaps he won’t mind my invoking some lines by an American poet, Wallace
Stevens. Stevens’ The Anecdote of the Jar, has puzzled many, but these lines have
always seemed to me to capture the impact of great ceramic art:
2
Morag Fraser AM, MA,
BA (hons), Dip Ed,
is a writer and arts
commentator. She is
currently chair of the
Board of Montsalvat,
Australia’s oldest artists’
community.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall, and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
Owen’s ‘jars’ have that effect. Tall, and of a port in air. They take dominion. Modest
yet imposing, they command attention, and, like a great mountain face, they
reward endless looking. ■
33
Images
cover
Blue Jar 2003
Glazed stoneware
60 x 35 x 35cm
Owen Rye
Jars
18 February—23 April 2017
1
Round Shouldered Jar 2011
Glazed stoneware
62 x 39 x 39cm
3
Ash Run Jar 2013
Glazed stoneware
55 x 35 x 35cm
2
Winter Jar 2016
Glazed stoneware
58 x 32 x 32cm
4
Round White Jar 2013
Glazed stoneware
34.5 x 38.5 x 38.5cm
Collection Gippsland Art Gallery
A cataloguing-in-publication entry
for this title is available from the
National Library of Australia.
Owen Rye appears courtesy of
Skepsi Gallery, Melbourne
ISBN 978-0-9946464-1-5 (pbk.)
All works reproduced by kind
permission of the artist
www.gippslandartgallery.com
Gippsland Art Gallery
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64-66 Foster Street
Sale Victoria 3850
T +61 3 5142 3500
1
Gallery Patron John Leslie OBE
Gippsland Art Gallery is proudly owned and operated by Wellington Shire Council
with support from the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria