In a career spanning over fifty years, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott was a leading figure in the studio pottery movement in Australia and internationally, and one of the most significant ceramic artists of her time.
Hanssen Pigott was born in Ballarat, Victoria completing a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne in 1954. From 1955–58 Hanssen Pigott trained under Ivan McMeekin at the Sturt Pottery in Mittagong before moving to England and further training with the ‘father of British studio pottery’ Bernard Leach, and leading ceramicists Michael Cardew and Lucie Rie. Hanssen Pigott established a studio in London before moving to Brittany, France in 1966 where she bought a small house and set up her own pottery studio. She returned to Australia in 1973, becoming well-known for her utilitarian ceramic wares in the tradition of Leach.
In the late 1980s, Hanssen Pigott began to create what was to become known as her ‘still life’ works, carefully arranged groups of subtly coloured ceramic vessels which were influenced by still life painting, and particularly the work of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, explaining that:
My reference points are the traditions of still life painting in England and Italy and those artists concerned with stillness of emotions; paring, simplifying, grasping at the essential…But in all this I cannot divorce my work from the constraints of usefulness. They are as much for contemplation as for use, I said. And they are as much for use as for contemplation.’ [i]
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott
1935—2013, Australia/England/France
Still life with blue bowls 1995
porcelain (seven parts)
27.0 x 37.0 x 20.0 (overall, approx.)
Purchased 1995 (CE 1995/0684)
© Family of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott
These works brought Hanssen Pigott international recognition, not only within the field of ceramics, but more broadly as an important contemporary artist. UNSW Art Collection holds two works by Hanssen Pigott, an early stoneware teapot from 1968 and Still life with blue bowls 1995. This latter work displays the quintessential forms and concerns of Hanssen Pigott’s still life arrangements, a practice she finessed for the next twenty-five years. Made from porcelain and glazed with soft hues of creams and blues, this work invites pause and meditation. The seven elements appear in a harmonious conversation; tall bottles, wide bowls and two beakers are precisely arranged and placed in subtle relationships. The two bowls which almost touch provide a strong horizontal element at the front of the composition, also creating a figure-eight movement. They appear as mirror images of each other with their colours reversed, blue on the inside of one and the outside of the other. The location of each element of the work has been carefully considered, and when displayed must be placed in the exact position as noted by the artist.
Hanssen Pigott exhibited widely throughout her life and her work included in major exhibitions around the world. She is represented in all major public collections in Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and many international collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2002 she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and in 2005 the National Gallery of Victoria presented the retrospective exhibition Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey 1955–2005. In 1965 Pigott was a visiting fellow in the Department of Industrial Arts at UNSW.
[i] Jason Smith, ‘Knowledge, form, usefulness and the art of the unknown: The art of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, in Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A survey 1955-2005, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, p. 33.