Over one’s long career as a visual arts editor you see many exhibitions, so when one stands out – indeed, resolutely knocks you off your feet – you take notice.
Showing at Campbelltown Arts Centre, on the fringes of Sydney, Lynda Draper’s survey exhibition Glimmer is a cracker. I would give it six stars if I could.
Lynda Draper’s Glimmer review – quick links
The wow in Lynda Draper’s ceramics
Based in Thirroul in coastal New South Wales, Draper has been making, and teaching, ceramics for four decades. Her reputation precedes her as one of Australia’s most innovative practitioners in the medium, and this survey exhibition is testament to that consistent voice and command of her material.
But it isn’t just the work in and of itself that makes this show great; its curatorial presentation within the space tips it into another level, and that relationship between artist, curator and gallery can’t be underestimated.
The exhibition is clustered into tight chronological groupings that are easily navigated through changing wall colours, which move from soft pastels to a bold deep green. Designed by Youssofzay Hart, this colour palette is extended with custom display stands like mushrooms or lily pads stacked in tiers, making viewing easy.
With object-based exhibitions of this scale, it can be a challenge to push beyond the linear, vitrine tradition and keep the displays fresh. Hart has done a fantastic job at marrying the spirit of Draper’s making with its presentation. It’s equally quirky and elegant.
Whimsical but highly technical
Viewers encountering Lynda Draper’s work for the first time at CAC will immediately connect with its whimsy and playful character. There’s a sense of childlike discovery, like entering an imaginary world of sugar castles, pearlescent skylines, lacy crowns and fantastical characters. At times there is the hint of a souvenir or a domestic object; both familiar and strange.
Others more familiar with the ceramic medium are likely to be blown away by Draper’s independent visual language and persistent technical push and polish – and the volume! The show is massive. I need to say it again – a prolific outpouring of work.
Pieces have been loaned from major institutional and private collections, making this a rare moment to consider the depth of Draper’s oeuvre. In the main central gallery are works from 2011 to 2018, which are mostly domestic in scale and reveal the origins of her play with colour.
Essentially still lifes, they grow out of memories held within an object, and the sense of humanity held within the surface – the impression of fingers, the slick dribble of a glaze, the carefully placed pop-punches of colour.
It is fantastic to see these in conversation with works made a decade later, presented in the adjacent largest gallery. This is arguably where the weight of the show is held, with an expansive body of work made from 2018 to 2023, dramatically staged against an unconventional deep green setting.
These works have a liveliness, animated in the light with their pearlescent surfaces. Many were inspired by a ceramic residency at the Palace of Versailles in France, and it’s easy to imagined bejewelled crowns, lacy filigree or fondant on those famous Royal Versailles ‘cakes’.
Many stand tall, teetering on spindly legs. We’re witness to Draper’s ease moving between coiling, pinching and hand-building these pieces. One starts to understand how form is always front of mind for Draper.
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These two bodies of work are connected by the rear gallery, which is painted in a soft yellow, and presents some of the earliest works in the show, made in the 1980s and 1990s. They are more weighted structural works and are easily identified by their painterly surfaces, providing an anchor to these neighbouring chapters.
Two galleries sit off to the side and complete the story: in a blue gallery, there is an intimate cluster of refined and detailed porcelain works, dated from 2006 to 2010; while in the project space located towards the front of the gallery there are works with an earthy, paper-pulp consistency, made from the 1990s through to 2006. Here, pieces move across scale, from large totem urns to a flotilla of small clustered forms placed along a soft lavender shelf. Both bodies of work are largely void of colour, and yet one can draw the threads of connection across the decades – the testing, refining and seeking out of self.
The exhibition is completed with a handful of works created in the last couple of years, which pair porcelain with glass elements and demonstrate the welling of a new direction for Draper.
Triggered by a residency at Canberra Glassworks, the forms again change dramatically, demonstrating Draper’s mature command and knowledge of how far she can push her materials – one hands-on (clay) and the other hands-off (molten glass). These new pieces feel animated – they have personality – and yet they are also architectural in form and hark to a future era.
Perfectly conceived and presented, Glimmer is a must for anyone interested in the ceramic medium or curatorial practice.
