Becky Richards | Impossible vessels
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Kiss Me, Hardy! (but not like that) installation view featuring: Becky Richards, Cosmic Thoughts for Tuesday Afternoons, 2020-2021, stoneware paper clay, glaze, pigment, iron oxide, timber, paint, sand. Photo: John Paul Pochin
Becky Richards’ vessels are impossible.
They tower, cluster, hold onto her maker’s hand and are interested in pushing the boundaries of clay as a material. They remain organic, almost creature-like and alive, while also flirting with function. The uneasy relationship of art and craft is part of a long-running debate with passionate proponents on both sides - one arguing that art and craft are one and the same, the other that they represent vastly different approaches to making. Like many difficult quandaries, there is no easy answer to this, the continued debate is a useful tool for artists and makers to think about their ways and reasons for making. It necessitates deep thought and reflection, something we as humans do not often excel at achieving.
Becky’s works, in existing in a liminal space as not quite functional but still retaining some nods to the ‘useful’ origins of their design, force us to consider the distinctions that have been built between use and beauty. Something can be both, or one, or neither and that does not mean that they are better or worse than each other. Clay is something we live with as part of our daily lives - primarily in our kitchens as dinnerware and mugs. Things that often fade to the background, until they break and we replace them with another $2 version from the local big box store. We are beginning to realise the dramatic impact our overconsumption of goods is having on the world and climate, and while Becky’s organic vessels do not, and cannot, give us a simple solution they do remind us that nothing is merely one thing - they are alive, inert, functional, decorative, craft and art.
Artist Profile
Becky Richards is an Aotearoa New Zealand artist who works across ceramics, sculpture and installation.
Also a writer and educator, Becky is the current editor of Ceramics NZ magazine. In 2020 Becky co-started Mud Studios Limited; a shared ceramics studio based in Auckland, New Zealand. She currently works as the studio director, alongside a team of dedicated female makers working in clay. Becky holds an MFA from the University of Auckland. Her work has been exhibited in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.
