A public talk in Rangiora has showcased the internationally-acclaimed Auckland ceramicist Moyra Elliott’s curatorial role for the 2010 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale.
The talk was held in the Rangiora Library’s Chamber Gallery last Sunday.

It was a collaboration between the Oxford Gallery, where Moyra has been artist in residence this month, and the Chamber Gallery, supported by Creative Communities.
Moyra’s illustrious, well-travelled life as a ceramicist, writer, lecturer and curator, who is also a member of the International Academy of Ceramics, gave her a rich vein of events to choose from for her Rangiora talk.

She studied Art History, Museum Studies and English at the University of Auckland and began her career as a studio potter in the 1970s, selling and exhibiting her work in New Zealand and overseas, before taking on wider-reaching roles curating, teaching and writing about ceramics. She was also director of New Zealand’s prestigious Fletcher Challenge Ceramic Awards from 1990 to 1996. During this time she curated an international expansion of the awards with many overseas artists included in the former event which closed in 1998.

After that role Moyra became curator for the Dowse Art Museum in Wellington. She is also co-author of Cone Ten Down, a history of New Zealand ceramics, edits books and essays on applied arts, does public speaking and has also been a panellist or moderator at conferences in New Zealand and overseas. Moyra is also a Fulbright Award and a Creative New Zealand Fellowship recipient.
Her connection with the 2010 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale came after she won an international competition to find a curator for the exhibition, Korero: Ceramics in Conversation, which attracted 43 artists from 27 countries, including New Zealand. It was held at the Yingge Ceramics Museum in New Taipei City.

During her Rangiora talk Moyra used a slideshow of high-resolution images to illustrate the exhibits at the biennale.
The colourful, often quirky exhibits were a far cry from the buttoned-down, quiet ceramics most Kiwis are used to, and showed what weird and wonderful work can be achieved when creativity and the imagination is allowed to run wild.
An example of that was an exhibit by English ceramicist Richard Slee, one of Moyra’s favourite artists, whose installation of what looked like wire cleverly made from clay turned out to be the trajectory of a domestic house fly.
Moyra is also giving another free public talk this Saturday (October 31) at the Oxford Gallery starting at 2pm, when she will share some of her recent research on the ceramics of Pablo Picasso.