On 25th February 2008, the Australian Art world lost one of its finest young ceramic artists when Lex Dickson died suddenly from the unforeseen side-effects of the cancer therapy he had so recently and seemingly come through with success. Lex was born in New Zealand where he still has family (parents), and friends, and had travelled widely before settling in the northern regions of Sydney in the early seventies, first at Terry Hills and then at Clareville, where he and his wife Sharon built a studio, kiln and house overlooking Pittwater. That local area of the Sydney Northern beaches extending down the peninsula from Avalon to Manly was, combined with Lex’s continual re-assessment of his wider South Pacific origins, to find maturing artistic expression in much of his work of the last decade, as his potting practice moved into that of narrative and historical interpretation presented through ceramic art.
In his youth Lex had travelled in the South East Asian area, Africa and Japan, where he had encountered and trained in ceramics, notably with Tamura Goro in Hagi, Japan. From these Japanese wood-ash practices and in combination with the admired techniques of African styles and vessels, Lex developed his mastery of numerous glaze styles - above all fire ash techniques (shino, charcoals etc). He refined these skills during the early seventies working with the group of potters at Terry Hills and Kinko kilns, but finally went out on his own when he built his kiln at Clareville.
From the very earliest Lex’s work was always exquisitely finished and conceptually beautiful. As well as his handling of a beautiful lexicon (an accidental pun if you’ll allow it) of patinas, textures and colours, the early and middle period works in flatware, in vases, cups, bowls, and sometimes of curiously shaped ‘buckets’ were often literally marked by the presence of Lex’s hand. These markings often look Japanese but its aetiology is wider than just that. Maori and South Pacific heritage in which body scarring, tattooing and the bi-laterally symmetric animal carving styles are one ‘source’ area; certainly Sino-Japanese calligraphics are another - the hand as a pen, stylus, or quill marking and even scoring through the surfaces of the clay are significant characterising markers of Lex’s style in the 1980s through 1990s. The great living Spanish artist Antonio Tapies is of course another major source. Indeed more speculative but attentive research on Lex might well show how much the Catalans in particular from Spain might immensely inhabit Lex’s gestural vocabulary: Picasso of course, but perhaps more preferentially Miro, Gaudi, and Tapies allow that sweeping, excoriating ductile marking. So otherwise beautifully fluid and vitreous surfaces are scored and slashed at to show the layers of clays; indeed to expose the very process of the artist’s hand making the work -as-narrative; and therein we also see the very history of the firing. In a way this is most Japanese, also Catalan, and, obviously and finally, Dickson’s own amalgam: the almost perfect surfaces are sliced, cut, even flayed to display the piece’s underpinnings.
Many of his works in the 1990s are huge square-ish platters, for tables or sideboards, some are even slightly or semi-concaved wall tiles – memory pulls up the majolica dishes, plaques, and heraldic shields of Renaissance Italy: so massive and heavy yet they defy gravity as they almost float free of the walls and brackets supporting them. Their surfaces are mosaics of texture and vitreously smooth enamel - stripes here, fluid drops and spottiness there - diagonal crossings and quarterings (that heraldic effect again) on another here - most are luminescently, and vibrantly coloured. Contrapuntally, most are then ‘written’ upon with at times an antique ‘make-your-mark-here’ cross: a pictogram graph; an aggressively elegant aleph; a comforting exquisite zero; at times signs that suggest fossilised or alphabetical scrawls. What this does is to make formally functional vessels and plates into near-stories.
Even then in the nineties much of the work was hinting at other narratives - local and very topographic associations, vases, plates, and just plain geometric shaped objects hinted at peninsular feelings; Local Northern beaches landscapes feature magnificent headlands, where stratigraphy unfolds multicoloured rocks and soil layers in a range of earthy colours, sea-bashed scourings and textures from the febrile to the smoothly pebbled; surf and sand are complemented by the billowing fullness of sails and clouds sweeping across and above Pittwater. So the layering of texture and hue of billowed and cracked surface appeared in the fired clays. These pieces were self-contained mini-histories and micro-geologies and hinted at more extreme adventures to come.
The Manly Regional Gallery show Running on Instinct in 2005 marked the major significance and status of his work, culminating the previous decade or so with the accolade of a major solo show in an important regional space. And moreover it also marked the manner in which Lex’s trend to narrative had evolved into full blown ‘histories’, such as the important wall mounted ‘Whakapapa Staff’ and ‘Family Canoe’ pieces of the early 2000s, pieces recalling Polynesian-Maori heritage, while other similar narrative sets invoke personal family history, the life and topography of the Northern beaches, in particular the layered earths and rocks of the headlands, bays and beaches. Alongside these wall-mounted works at Manly and subsequently at major shows at Gibson’s Gallery (Surry Hills), and Stephanie Burns Fine Art in the ACT, among others, were a number of highly innovative free-standing ‘totemic’ poles. In their first iteration these took two forms; ‘table-sized’ or small poles, of no more than 1 metre height in groups of 2 or 3 or even singular poles; and 2 metre high sets or solos usually, but not exclusively, for the outside – perfect for a garden or courtyard. Both forms comprised one or more steel central vertical support-rods fixed into the ground or to a mount, upon which a number of near-spherical hollow bulb-like rings (to be scientific about it they are rings or plump donuts) are mounted. A small piece might have 5-6 fist-sized bulbs, the 2 metre out-door version some 6-8 head sized bulbs. Each of the bulbs would be patina-ed like a spherical version of the concave-curved plates; any one totem might have every bulb a different style of enamel, patina, or colour. And some of the bulbs had crystal-faceted surfaces rather than being smoothly rounded. Initially they appeared to be reminiscent of baroque columns, of Maori and other indigenous, or ‘Indian’ totem poles of the Pacific Rim. A clear enough memory of Lex’s own origins and interests; to this reflection added the developing sense of their Asian, indeed Tibetan and Japanese Buddhist nod, to prayer wheels. And it is very much true that these columns are at once dynamic and comforting, while serenity is their key effect. In groups there is a tremendous sense of movement in depth across and into the groupings, and a rhythmic undulating flow as we read across the edges or layers between spherical bulbous boundaries and the rhythms effected by the interplay of forms - spherical, faceted, nearly polyhedral for some globes - from one pole to the next and back again. It is said that one may not dance to architecture (often), but one can, should, sing Lex’s poles, I think.
Lex’s latest work in the mid to late 2000s was developing this narrative and totemic tendency further. He was still making exquisitely formal pieces such as the large platter/plaques and vases of his last show at Robin Gibson’s in December 2007, but he also presented an even more innovative set of significant ‘totem poles’. In (unfortunately for us all) these last examples Lex was combining the ceramic globes with other materials (woods and metals) into stunning works of art, recalling as before indigenous Pacific Rim totemic forms, Tibetan prayer wheels, and even iconic stupa or stellae from Hindu-Islamic traditions. The height of many of the totems had doubled and some of the groups of 3 poles range from 2-4 metres, and the very last top-most elements now resembled burnished metallic or burnt-wooden two-dimensional alpha-numeric graphs, banners, or flags. As all great art, these works have managed to transcend their materiel and their form and make new a container for an intelligence, an apprehension of something beyond the merely artistic: they are simply, quietly and elegantly spiritual. Controversial for some, the blend of non-ceramic elements and the continuing beauty of the Dickson ceramic formalities and surfaces, the totems’ horizons as art are immense, and extend our vision of their origins and meanings outside their own apparent physical limitations. The evolution of the maturing vision which these late works signal and the realisation of that loss are almost beyond comment.
By 2008 Lex Dickson had established a considerable professional reputation: was collected widely in major institutions from the National Gallery, and University of Technology, Sydney, to regional galleries, notably Manly, and held in important commercial and private collections from Japan to London; the beginnings of a body of critical work had recognised his importance and maturing vision, and especially the value of the shift into a genuine artistic narrative mode. In the last decade he had exhibited extensively in NSW, ACT, Victoria and more widely, and to increasing critical acclaim, and commercial approbation; his chief galleries are Robin Gibson in Sydney where he held more than a dozen solo and group shows, Stephanie Burns Fine Art, (formerly of the ACT, now Yass), Fusion in Brisbane, and numerous regional galleries around Australia and New Zealand.
The artistic loss to the region is incalculable. The most delightful, amicable, intelligent and integral artist, lover of the All-Blacks, surfing and sailing too (and yes these elements do not merely sneak into the locale and topography of the works they are instinct within it), above all Lex is and will continue to be mourned by all who met him, chiefly his beloved wife Sharon, their two children, their parents and the many many relatives and countless friends and colleagues. His artistic legacy will continue to grow, and as time unfolds the maturing vision will be seen as a most important addition to the narrative of Australian-Pacific art.
*This article will appear in Issue 47/2, publication date 17 July 2008 of The Journal of Australian Ceramics. Permission has been given to make it available on this website. www.australianceramics.com
All Ceramics by Lex Dickson :
Previous Page: Dishes, stoneware, various glazes
Top Left: Square Platter 2004, 22 x 22 cm
1. Totem group, 2005, photographer Michel Brouet, Lex Dickson at his Robin Gibson Gallery exhibition.
2. Dishes, stoneware, various glazes
3. Vase, 2007, shino glaze
4. Bowls,2007, turqoise glaze
5. Totem group installation, 2006
6. Teabowl, Shino and Tenmoku glazes
