Barbara Campbell-Allen | The River Runs Deep

"My making and firing are a reflection of the processes of nature, sometimes life giving, sometimes destructive."

‘The River Runs Deep’! How does this relate to a contemporary ceramics practice? As it turns out – it has everything to do with both the individual works and their groupings, in this extremely engaging exhibition. For many years Barbara Campbell-Allen has responded to inspiring environmental experiences through making what are hand-built, woodfired ceramic works, with forms and surfaces brought together to reflect her observations and perceptions of travelling through a range of different landscapes. A well-acknowledged ceramic artist with an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) and other awards, and a Masters Degree, she has taught, exhibited and curated exhibitions consistently throughout her career, and was president of The Australian Ceramics Association in 2005 and 2006. 

Before she started working in ceramics in the late 1970s at East Sydney Technical College and later at the Gippsland Centre for Design and Art, she had studied geomorphology, a science that researches the origin and development of landforms (such as hills, valleys, sand dunes, caves and rocks), and how they combine to form landscapes. Inevitably, these directions came together in her work, through related materials, forms, surfaces and textures, and consideration of geological formation processes involving water, heat and erosion. Hand-forming with buff or white stoneware clay, and porcelain and earthenware slip surfaces, she has used wood-firing anagama kilns since first building one in 1988, usually firing in long four-day sessions.

Now, in her fourth solo exhibition at Rochfort Gallery, we can join her in a further experience: this time a nine-day rafting journey down the Franklin River in Southwest Tasmania, now a world heritage wilderness area of temperate rainforest. Along the way she was reminded of various histories of the Franklin River, including its geological history as a Gondwanaland split followed by ice ages with glaciers; its geomorphology with fluvial erosion sculpting the canyon as it transitions from quartzite to limestone; its Indigenous history over 25,000 years; colonial, convict and logger history from 1815; and environmental activism, including ‘the blockade’ experience in 1982/3 to stop the damming of the Franklin river, and the subsequent establishment of the World Heritage Wilderness Area.

Each work demonstrates her impressive skills in both designing and making ceramic works and in expressing what she is aiming to interpret. In arranging the installation, she has grouped each work in sequences experienced across those days, reminding herself of such as the contrast of turbulence of rapids to the stillness of pools, of large boulders to shingly pebbles, and high canyons to river flats. She hopes that in working our way round the exhibition, we might also recognise the sequence of her journey which she describes as a ‘metaphor for the experience of life’.

• Exhibition dates: 5 March to 12 April

• VIP preview: Wednesday 5 to Friday 7 March, 10 am to 6 pm

• Opening party: Saturday 8 March, 1 to 3 pm