Judi Elliott explores the house in various ways
There's a lovely gentle irony about sitting in Judi Elliott's studio overlooking the Tuggeranong Valley, with light streaming in through glass windows on two sides as she says: 'People think of glass and light together. I'm looking for the form and concept, it doesn't have to have light coming through it, although it can.'
We're discussing the solid-looking architectural forms on a large work table. They are gorgeous pieces that look as if they are made from material more substantial than glass-rendered concrete maybe, or terracotta. But a closer look shows there are, in some, small dots of light showing through the layers of glass; a reminder of the magical process Elliott controls to achieve these pieces constructed of such a fragile medium into such structurally strong pieces. The combination of fragility and strength is a fascinating aspect of these works that will be shown in the Drill Hall Gallery later this month.
When I arrived at Elliott's home and studio I was privileged to be shown the process of creating these works: How three layers of differently coloured glass are fused; how the long second firing of up to a week from start to finish is carefully controlled for every second. There are two to three days firing then three to four days cooling down. It is a very slow and technically demanding process that has no hint of the randomness that pottery firing sometimes has. Elliott knows exactly what will come out. 'Glasswork is very demanding technically,' she says, 'It's all very controlled at every stage, and unless you can control it technically it can be a great disaster.' I venture to say to Elliott that to the outsider it's an almost a magical process, to have something go from a solid state, through fire, and to emerge in another solid state that is vastly different from the first. 'People are always fascinated by the process,' Elliot says. 'They want to come to see it. Glass-blowers in particular attract an audience as they work with liquid glass and fire, and people can see the change happening.'
The rigidity of glass is, it seems, a sort of visual deception, although one would have to live a very long life to prove it. 'Glass is a liquid in suspension,' Elliott says. 'Some people believe that glass [even as an apparent solid] moves. There's a story that in some antique windows the glass at the bottom is thicker than that at the top, and that this is caused by the glass, over 100 years or so, moving to the bottom of the frame.' Whether this is so or not, it is a different movement of glass that Elliott uses to build her pieces, one that is by fire, and that melts and melds the raw material into something new. 'I want it to move, to move and distort and [the three layers] to mix with each other and become something more than the separate parts.'
'I love the line that comes through, Elliott says in reference to one particular piece. 'At the end of the piece its beginnings are obvious, because they force themselves to the front. So the whole message is there. That's why I call it Writing on the Wall.'
And communication is what it's all about; for Elliott, it's what makes an artist: 'It's about communication-being aware of stuff, and feeling very deeply about things and wanting to communicate that urgency to other people. Once I've communicated that, I don't get precious about it. Once it's done, it's done, and can go.' This sentiment has not altered for Elliott since she first started her career in art, as a ceramicist in the 1970s.
How Elliott came to work with glass is one of those serendipitous things, as she already had a strong reputation as a ceramicist and was not looking for a career change. In the late 1970s Elliott did her postgraduate work in ceramics, at what is now the University of New South Wales. This was a period when, unlike now, the government supported art students through university, and Elliott received regular payments to study. When she graduated, the department handing out the support said that she had been overpaid and to please send the money back. 'I didn't have it,' Elliott said, 'and we couldn't work out how to sort it out.' While this was going on, Elliott moved to Canberra, and when the department told her to either enrol at an art school or pay the money back immediately she enrolled at the, then, Canberra School of Art. 'This was all very well,' she said, 'but I had no idea what I wanted to do.' Elliott checked out the available courses and didn't want to do any of them, and then she walked into the brand-new glass workshop. 'Klaus Moje had just arrived from Germany to open the glass department, Elliott says, 'and I was the first to lob in there. I always think of it as a destiny thing, as being taken from one thing and put into another. I was forced into it. I was meant to do glass.'
Not only was Elliott the first to enrol in Moje's course, she was the first to graduate-so the public will have two chances to see her work this month; at her curated exhibition at the Drill Hall Gallery Reflections on the Built Environment, and at the Australian National University, School of Art Gallery twentieth anniversary exhibition Seeds of Light.
Under Moje, Elliott developed the skills that are so apparent in her work now, but the central image has not varied since she first got her hands into clay, several years before she found glass-it has always been the house in various ways, with architecture in the landscape as a major theme.
When she started working with ceramics Elliott lived in the country, and the environment was reflected in her work: 'In the bush there was nothing around me and the work I did was horizontal and had to go on plinths,' she says. 'It was still to do with architecture, but to do with interiors mainly-still life and rooms. The work was either wall tablets or on a podium. They were container forms and were very graphic, but I was depicting houses abstractly in a roof-line and parts of houses. It was still architectural.'
Elliott's move to the suburbs of Canberra came some six years ago, and her work changed somewhat-we're not talking cute and kitsch here, but strongly vibrant images of various aspects of the house. For instance the pieces that will be in Reflections on the Built Environment are walls, but more the idea of walls than anything that is containing or enclosing. Strong and angular, the pieces look superb together, but also stand alone. 'I've always worked with architectural elements,' Elliott says. 'When I came here I was living amongst all these houses [instead of in the bush] and details switched to be very architectural. My works started to stand up. And when they began to stand up they became more powerful, more sculptural.'
Indeed, that architectural shapes are exceptionally important to Elliott is evident in her home that was designed in the 1980s by Enrico Taglietti, the Canberra architect renowned for strong lines in his buildings. Elliott says that as soon as she walked in to the house she knew it was hers. And there does seem to be a relationship between the angularity and strength of Taglietti's house and Elliott's current work. It was quite an experience for me, being in that house and looking at Elliott's exhibition pieces that are architectural elements of walls of houses and depictions of architecture in the landscape, and feeling that I am looking at miniature representations of some elements of her home, both physically and spiritually.
Elliott came to understand her preoccupation with the house when she read Jung three or four years ago, and realised that he too understood the house to be a representation of the self. 'It wasn't until I read Jung that I realised how important dreams are. I used to dream a lot about a house. After reading Jung I realised that the house I was dreaming, was myself. I discovered that Jung used to dream about houses too.'
I ask Elliott if she has always worked with the house, or if there had been other subjects. There's a long pause, then a rather surprised denial. 'Even when I was doing ceramics I was working with the house,' she says. 'Always with things to do with architecture and people.'
ARTLOOK #11, May 2005 www.artlook.com.au
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