Salute to Oribe

As a South Australian artist, educator and advocate for the arts, Jeff Mincham and his practice will be familiar to many. A contemporary ceramic artist, Mincham has been working in the medium of earthenware for over fifty years, discovering a passion for creating with clay while studying at the South Australian School of Art, later going on to study under fellow South Australian artist Milton Moon and subsequently with the significant ceramicist Les Blakebrough.

Over the intervening years, Mincham has become a significant figure in the Australian arts scene, continuing to teach, create and exhibit prolifically. In 2009 he was named Living Treasure – Master of Australian Craft. He is inspired by the landscape of his childhood in the Coorong, as well as by the natural environment surrounding his studio in the Adelaide Hills.

On display in gallery 6 is a newly acquired work, entitled Salute to Oribe. Created in early 2022, this piece is the latest step in Mincham’s investigation of the Japanese oribe ware ceramic tradition. First developed in the sixteenth century, oribe ware ceramics are typified by their blue and green glazes and decorative patterning. Inspired by this tradition, Mincham uses these timeless techniques to create impressions of the Australian landscape on vessels such as this one, his style continuing to evolve as he explores new glazes and firing  techniques.

This piece demonstrates the ongoing influence and appeal of the Japanese oribe ware tradition, adding to an unfolding story represented through objects in both the Asian and Australian Decorative Arts collections, objects ranging from a seventeenth-century Japanese tea bowl to works created in recent years in both Australia and Japan.

Salute to oribe is part of a larger body of work produced by Mincham in early 2022. He has written eloquently of the work created and subsequently exhibited around this time:

An unexpected but very welcome visitor recently appeared in our
garden, a Sacred Kingfisher (Halcyon sanctus). It was an immense
pleasure to see this beautiful creature darting about the rose garden

and I was reminded of the ancient Greek belief that the kingfisher’s

appearance was regarded as a portent of better times and
times of plenty. It awoke in me a deep sense of longing, tinged perhaps

with nostalgia, and, despite these very difficult times, a curious hopefulness.
These thoughts have now been transferred into the making of the
works in this exhibition.

Inspiration for my work has long been sourced in the landscape
and the natural world, with the drift towards greater degrees of
abstraction being almost irresistible. Some recent significant

developments in my repertoire of glazes and surface treatments,
along with my continuing exploration of form, have helped this
along the way.

In this exhibition I have drawn on the rhythms, patterns and

myriad events taking place in the natural world; its moods, contrasts,
even dangers and tragedy, beautiful mornings of hazy blue light,
wild storms that threaten and vistas that comfort and reassure.
This is my way of expressing hope and coming to terms with a
deep sense of longing for better times – even a better world – for
halcyon days!                          Jeff Mincham, 2022