Rowley Drysdale & Barry Tate

Opening Fox Galleries at it’s new location in Collingwood, Melbourne is Director’s Choice, a duo exhibition by Rowley Drysdale and Barry Tate. Both artists have known the gallery’s Director, Michael Fox, for many years, professionally and as friends.

Both artists are based in regional Australia, use ceramics in their practices and are teachers who share their craft with the next generation. Director’s Choice brings these artists’ works into conversation, inviting an exploration into their overlaps and remarkable differences.

With Drysdale’s two decades of mastery and influence from methods across Japan and Korea, along with his tendency towards perfectionism, comes the serendipitous meeting of form, function and chance. Several works on view offer elegant silhouettes draped in deep glazes of saturated iron and manganese crystal. Alluring pieces from his Oceana Series, 2016 employ a traditional technique where pots are fired on their sides atop seashells, providing subtle impressions of the organic forms. As Drysdale put it, “Ceramics is the art of earth, water and fire, and dealing in such a fundamental way with these elements… has the potential to become an invaluable cathartic experience.”

Tate’s practice leans towards heterogeneous experimentation. The Journey, 2016, a mixed media wall work with fibre optics and multi-coloured beads offers a near hidden glimpse of Tate’s father Jack, who passed away earlier that year. Other wall works made in 2014, Paradise Lost and Neo Nature, employ metallic hues to envision hyperreal landscapes while Cathedral transforms the inside of a church into a reflective portal. Tate’s sculptural works such as Exciting Times, 2016 resemble pots, urns, church spires and temple roofs, all pointing to the the meaning we imbue into objects, buildings and forms as sites to perform rituals, process loss and contemplate our existence.