John Parker Ceramics Available from the Wellington City Gallery, AVID, Masterworks, bookshops and the artist. It features more than 100 full colour images, in-depth essays, and a ‘Technical Notebook’ in which Parker shares his accumulated skill and expertise. John Parker is one of New Zealand’s foremost mid-career ceramic artists. Initiated by City Gallery Wellington this exhibition acknowledges not only the accomplishment and formal rigour of his work, but also his relevance in the realm of fine arts. At the exhibition’s core is a significant new body of white ceramics, set in historical context with pieces from throughout Parker’s 35 year career. Parker’s career is characterised by a rigorous independence. Studying at London’s Royal College of Art for a Master of Arts degree in the mid-1970s, Parker benefited from mentorship by European potters Lucie Rie and Hans Coper whose adherence to simplicity of form and minimal ornamentation was a formative influence on his own work.

Their interest in refined shape and precise technique contrasted with the rustic, naturalistic pottery tradition inspired by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada that was dominant in New Zealand at that time. A few years after returning to New Zealand in 1977, Parker established his point of difference in a solo-exhibition called Domestic Wares at Auckland’s Alicat Gallery.

Otherwise known as the Vortex show, Domestic Wares featured ceramics supposedly made by an Auckland pottery factory called the Vortex Works that had allegedly produced hand-thrown pottery in the mid 1950s. Two defining features of this show can be seen, in retrospect, as typical of Parker’s practise more generally. The first is Parker’s interest in the connections between studio and commercial pottery—indeed in the 1980s and ’90s public interest in locally produced industrial ceramics such as Crown Lynn overtook interest in studio pottery. The second feature was the importance of the display in Domestic Wares. Parker transformed the gallery into a ’30s period interior with chrome and glass tea trolleys, smoking stands and potted palms—indicating the kind of urban environment his ceramics were made to enhance.

In the 1990s Parker began investigating the intersection between handmade and commercial pottery more closely, and he looked to the work of New Zealander Keith Murray and English artisan Ernest Shufflebottom, who had worked with Murray at Wedgwood, England in the 1930s. Living in New Zealand in the 1940s and working at Crown Lynn, Shufflebottom produced a series of hand potted, white glazed works that inspired Parker in their crossing of boundaries. In 1996 Parker announced his attention to work solely in the colour white and launched his White Ware—handmade ceramics which in their perfection of shape and surface also resemble commercial ware. 

Displayed in this exhibition as two long continuous still-lifes, Parker’s White Ware are reminiscent of the serene still-life compositions of jugs and bottles by Italian painter Morandi. Rather than narrowing his practice, his decision to work solely in the colour white has opened up numerous formal challenges and poetic possibilities. Parker’s exhibitions bear the influence of his multi-faceted career as an exhibition and theatre-set designer as well as ceramic artist—distinctive display and an expert consideration of space and lighting compliment the formality of his work’s aesthetic.

Rebecca Wilson Wellington City Gallery