Thrilled to have the catalogue essay for the solo exhibition Country - ancient lands written by Peter Haynes featured in The Journal of Australian Ceramics.
Inspired by the international residency at the Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center in Tel Aviv the exhibition explored the notion of 'place'. While in Israel I traveled extensively from the northern borders of Lebanon and Syria to the Negev Desert in the south, collecting soils and clays that were used to showcase the colours and textures of the desert and vegetation. Country - ancient lands is about places in Australia and sites in Israel.
As Peter Haynes wrote:
“For (Amesbury) her place is not concerned with simple connectivity to a specific site but a layered and complex phenomenon that informs, provides and generates her conceptual, philosophical, aesthetic and imaginative ideas and practices.
Country- ancient lands is a beautiful and highly individual exhibition. The artist's connection with place as exemplified in the objects displayed is a powerful aspect of her life. Traces of memory, memories felt and experienced and possibilities for memories to come coexist within single objects and within the totality of the exhibition. That these are articulated through Avi Amesbury's exquisitely nuanced aesthetic and plastic senses and finely-tuned visual language result in an invitation for viewers to participate and be absorbed by the artist's motivations and to find our own connections with 'place''."