Members: Louise Dentice, Hilary Kerrod, Judy Meehl, Helen Perrett and Judy Rae
The Urban Archaeology Collective was founded in 2005 and acts as a forum for it's members for the generation of ideas and experiments. The group are all keen fossickers and makers of clay objects who met whilst participating in a course of the same name taught by ceramic artist Bronwynne Cornish.
The Urban Archaeology Collective engages with the imaginative realm, constructing histories, dialogues, directions and experiences when creating objects with clay. While their group dynamic might be nomadic, porous even, they do value some core principles which guide them through their making.
For this group, the theme of urban archaeology is a starting point, a way to view objects that exist in a world of energy and diversity.
The experience of clay objects and their potential histories in an urban environment seems initially at odds with the long established clay tradition in New Zealand, where remote lifestyle blocks, bare feet, rough sawn wood and hand built kilns dominate the heroic mythologies. In the city, where this collective was formed, we live with the swirling detritus of everyday objects, a layering of modern flotsam that dominate our environment. It is, as described by Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, an “unholy jungle of gadgets.”
(Some text taken from the essay by Sue Gardiner "The World Within/The World Beyond: The Urban Archaeology Collective".Click here to read the full article.
