Where the rivers run was my childhood environment. The Campaspe, Loddon, Goulburn and Murray spread their meanders and billabongs to the anabranches Edward and Wakool, when the paddle boats with barges of red gum thrashed and hooted their way to the sawmills. My octogenarian story is similar. The range of my creative energy since RMIT in 1960 meanders its current through Geelong and Jeeralang Junction to Brighton and Moorleigh Co-op, via Heusden in Holland, the Leighton Artist Colony in Banff Alberta to Boise Idaho, Goldsmiths College University of London and Japan. Many meanders and billabongs have contributed to an artist’s life now encapsulated retrospectively and currently.
I have not fired familial or repetitive “Hedley pots” at these far flung addresses, but have enjoyed the freedom to be inspired at every horseshoe bend, finding new ways of seeing, feeling, thinking and firing soft clay into hardened objects and statements. I have been privileged to draw, paint and fire whimsical thoughts of fun and action, yet also witness and respond with compassion to the harsh-life realities of the vulnerable and speak without reproach in a society where you may disagree with me, but you will jealously guard my right of expression.
There are two of us involved here, the clay and the artist. In 1960 at RMIT I struggled to control the clay. It was like a Dickensian factory basement where a row of great heavy clunky pottery wheels operated by flapping drive-belts, strung up to a noisy ceiling driveshaft, the machinery asserting total authority. Years later I discover the mind of the claywhen set free can dominate when I allow it to surprise me, and I am amazed. Also amazing is the groundbreaking creativity that emerged from that basement changing the story of Australian clay.
What’s it all about? Many of my sources will be quite obvious in my exploration of narrative figuration, which is simply anchored to the Australian culture in which my life has occurred. But I don’t want to sound too ponderous; making art is such good fun that one can’t be always serious. Even when making heartfelt statements, there is still a total tactile enjoyment of the material. I hope we can laugh together sometimes! There have been major changes over these eighty years and I am a person of my own time and place. There are trends and fashions I have avoided and influences that were unavoidable. But mostly it has been an idiosyncratic personal path I have chosen, only unified by an absolute engagement with the plethora of expressive opportunities available in clay. My hope is that my clay will be readthoughtfully to uncover the wide ranging content and references and my intense enjoyment of the medium. Hedley Potts, July 2016.
“Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it, while they are deciding, make even more art”.[1]