Jeff Mincham is one of Australia’s most successful and influential ceramic artists. His work can be found in significant public and private collections in Australia and overseas. He has lived and worked for thirty years in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia.
Beginnings
Mincham grew up in the Milang district of rural South Australia on his father’s dairy farm, planning that he would attend agricultural college and then return to run the property. Seeing little future in the land, Mincham’s father encouraged him to go and train in an alternative profession.
Having discovered an aptitude for painting during school, Mincham wanted to go to art school but to appease his father – a career in art not being a ‘real job’ – he enrolled teacher’s college, in a program that was based three days a week in art school. A chance discovery of a demonstration by a visiting English potter captured his imagination and he applied to do his final year in ceramics under Milton Moon.
The early seventies was the height of the Craft Movement in Australia and production pottery was at the peak of its popularity. Mincham and his contemporaries were trained by endless repetition to churn out quantities of identical objects, a foundation that, to this day, he credits with giving him a solid understanding of basic techinique.
He spent the year after graduation in Tasmania with Les Blakeborough, another traditionally trained potter, who had spent many years in Japan, absorbing the Eastern aesthetic then transmuting it in his work into something distinctly new. Mincham left Tasmania intending to make a career in production pottery.
A Sense of Place
A groundswell of change was one factor in Mincham’s change of direction, combined with his own growing sense of a need to express himself as an artist. Feeling that there were things to say that needed a different method, he made a decision to move away from wheel throwing and production pottery.
His early endeavours were slab and coil build stoneware, followed by a long period working with raku firing. Ultimately, via the raku clay body he was using, he moved into the mid fire range, developing a process of multi-glazed and multi-fired mid temperature ware.
The work was centred on the environment around him, and on the remembered environment of his childhood. The Murray River, Lake Alexandrina and the Coorong, all in the state’s south, have increasingly become the fuel for vigorous debate and dissent at the highest levels of government due to water use along the course of the river. Ultimately, the degradation at the end of the once mighty watercourse has been profound.
Much of Mincham’s work reflects these changes, the pots becoming his canvas for the remembered landscape and a means of commenting on the changes wrought by government policies and environmental change.
Methodologies
Mincham’s works are constructed by coiling, the strongest hand building construction method. It is a deliberate choice, as it produces pieces that can withstand the sequence of firings and surface treatments Mincham utilises to produce his trademark richly layered and patinated glazes. After they reach the leather hard stage, some pieces are then carved and heavily incised. Others are allowed to dry completely before the initial firing and glaze application. Mincham then evaluates each piece, sometimes discarding them for a while and then revisiting them. Between glaze applications he abrades the surface back with grinders so that the surface will take additional glazes prior to refiring, sometimes up to four firings in total.
Living Treasures – Masters of Australian Craft
Mincham is the fifth recipient of the Living Treasure title, following in the footsteps of potter Les Blakeborough, glass artist Klaus Moje, jeweller Marian Hosking and textile artist Liz Williamson. He joins an illustrious group of master craft practitioners whose contribution to craft and design in Australia spans over thirty years.
The Living Treasures travelling exhibition will travel to twelve venues around Australia over the next twelve months, beginning at Sydney’s Object Gallery. Running concurrently is his solo exhibition at Sabbia Gallery, Paddington, In My View. The latter is a deeply intimate collection of works, produced alongside the work for the Living Treasures show.
- Living Treasures – Masters of Australian Craft. Object Gallery, 21 November 2009 – 17 January 2010.
- In My View. Sabbia Gallery, 25 November – 29 December 2009.
Karen Finch - Karen is a Sydney based freelance writer, artist and musician. To learn more, click on her name to read her profile.
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