COWBOY CLAY
the ceramics of Anna Culliton

Scroll right to view Anna's work

As the heat of Australia Day sweltered on, the call of the rodeo proved too strong for Anna Culliton to resist and she found herself some distance from home, indulging her "quiet obsession with cowboys and country music," sitting in Taralga’s arena as Clay Bush's name was announced over the loud speaker. A rodeo legend and master of quarter horses at only 20, the handsome cowboy burst into the ring and forever into Culliton’s art: Cowboy Clay was born.

 

Sister of Lucy Culliton and self-taught ceramic artist, Culliton's eclectic clay figurines display a technical mastery coupled with cartoon impishness. Her first solo exhibition, Miss Molly's Ceramic Circus at NG Art Gallery last October, featured nearly a hundred girly bowls, pots, tiles and characters of Miss Molly, the trapeze artist from the local circus. Having now travelled to rodeos all around New South Wales and found inspiration in the prestige, mateship and excitement, Cowboy Clay, now her muse is a recreation of those feelings of mateship and her boy version of Molly.

 

Although rodeos are a controversial sport in Australia, Culliton appears disinterested in the politics behind her subject. For her, the rodeo is about a symbiotic relationship that develops between cowboy and horse; one where the horse doesn’t need to be steered or pushed.

Culliton's exhibition, Cowboy Clay, again features an array of domestic functional pieces superseded by decoration and a mastery of colour. Using a brown wash over all the ceramics, the dust and grit of life in the rodeo is palpable. Although a less glossy and flashy colour palette than Miss Molly, Culliton cites her range of tones as important in this exhibition. In the rodeos everything is dusty, from scuffed boots to tarnished belt buckles, the grit of life is definite.

 

Like all of Culliton's works that air of whimsical innocence still resonates. Whether it's a group of friends boot-scooting on a tile or just Clay and his dog, that same sense of fragility still springs forth through all the ceramics. In Cowboy Clay Culliton has experimented with her figurines' forms. Feeling no pressures of the city or art world at her studio in the Lithgow Pottery Centre, Culliton has created an exhibit about what makes her smile. As Culliton says herself "everybody loves cowboys!"

Previous works by Anna Culliton

For further information, please email ng@ngart.com.au