Melbourne-based ceramicist Zhu Ohmu is among 15 artists, craftspeople and designers in a first-time collaboration between the National Gallery of Victoria and Craft Victoria.
It’s not that ceramic work defies description. It’s just that it attracts so much of it that makes it difficult to succinctly put into words what the Melbourne artist creates.
The sensual lines of the coiled works that informed Ohmu’s commissioned piece for ‘Melbourne Now’ are an interplay of “the 3D printer, the wasp, and the way I make”.Some viewers see a bodily, almost feminine, form, others something more edible. An Instagram post from a showing of her work in Paris a few years ago drew wild comparisons. “All these French people were asking, ‘Is that a hat? The Michelin Man’s wife? The Leaning Tower of Pisa? A dildo? A baby [in swaddling]?’ ” Ohmu laughs.
“It’s an inversion of biomimicry, when humans copy designs and systems of nature,” Ohmu explains. “I looked to the machine to make my work with my hands.”At the same time, she points out that the slow, intimate way she works – intuitively building coils of raku paper clay using a caulking gun extruder – contrasts with that of the programmed printer. “I respond to the clay and it responds to me,” she says. “It’s that kind of dance with the material … seeing how far I can push it.
Some of the traditional tools of Ohmu’s trade, with samples of colour-matched clay. But she is also experimenting with new technologies like 3D printers., the piece she spent most of summer toiling – or should that be coiling? – over forShowcasing the work of 15 artists, craftspeople and designers, the exhibition explores the vessel in today’s world – from everyday forms used for social or cultural occasions to interpretations more historical, ancient and spiritual.
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