Four renowned artists have joined forces to share their interpretations of landscape using textiles and ceramics.
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One ceramicist at the Bermagui exhibition is Janetta Kerr-Grant, an ex-ABC journalist who stepped from the world of words to visual arts.
“I originally started as a painter, then I became a journalist,” she said.
“I got to a point where I thought if I wanted an arts practice again, I had to become serious and do it. So 10 years ago I devoted myself to ceramics.”
Describing her ceramics as a merging of imagery and form, her interest in using the landscape to influence her artworks began when she was living in Melbourne and going on long drives to Ballarat.
“I thought it would be a boring drive, but I found it weirdly mesmerising,” Ms Kerr-Grant said.
“There’s something really beautiful about driving with the early morning mists and fogs, and late at night that became a velvety blackness when I went home.”
All her works in the exhibition, titled Landscape, have been hand coiled or hand pinched, which she described as a slow, meditative process.
The inspiration for her work came from when she was on a residency in a small village in Finland.
Most days she would go for walks in the forest, becoming so surrounded by thick, tall trees it became dark, or seeing the silhouettes of the trees against the midnight sun as the sun never set while she was there.
“I take reference photos and try not to think too much about what I’m taking,” Ms Kerr-Grant said.
“I’ve got hundreds of photos of Finland.
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“It’s only when I go back home I start shifting the images around and crop them to something that suits me, so I’m imposing myself on the landscape in that way.
“By doing that I’m hopefully providing an alternate way of viewing the landscape.”
She will exhibit with artists Gail Nichols, Simone Fraser and Merran Esson.
Landscape opens at Narek Gallery at 5/3 Wapengo St, Bermagui on Saturday, November 17 at 6pm where the public can join the artists for drinks.
The exhibition runs to December 15.