Gwyn Hanssen Pigott

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott OAM (1935–2013) was an Australian ceramic artist. She was recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. She worked in Australia, England, Europe, the US, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. In a career spanning nearly 60 years, influences from her apprenticeships to English potters were still apparent in her later work. In the 1980s, she turned away from production pottery to making porcelain still-life groups largely influenced by the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi.

In 1954, she received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne. Hanssen Pigott’s first introduction to ceramics was in the 1950s while a university student, taken with the Kent Collection of Chinese and Korean wares at the National Gallery of Victoria. she researched pottery in Australia for her honours thesis. She discovered and was enthralled by Ivan McMeekin, who had been apprenticed to both Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew in England. in Mittagong, New South Wales 1955–1957. McMeekin established Sturt Pottery in 1953 to make and teach pottery in the studio traditions of Leach and Cardew, which emphasized the use of local materials for small-scale studio production. At that time all clay bodies had to be made from hand-processed raw ceramic materials, as they were not available as commercially pre-mixed products. While at Sturt Pottery, Hanssen Pigott came to appreciate the given and induced qualities of clay in addition to learning to admire form and beauty in a pot.

Hanssen Pigott traveled to England in 1958. She first worked with Ray Finch at Winchcombe Pottery, established by Michael Cardew in 1926. In the same year she apprenticed with Bernard Leach at St Ives, and Michael Cardew himself at Wenford Bridge. In 1960 she left Cornwall with her newlywed poet husband, Louis Hanssen to establish with him a studio in Portobello Road, London. During their time in London, Hanssen Pigott (as Gwyn Hanssen) enrolled in evening classes at the Camberwell School of Art with Lucie Rie. Her work at this time was sometimes marked GH, sometimes simply H. She separated from Louis Hanssen in 1965. She herself regarded the change as curious, a distancing from objects in themselves so personal and handy.

I am surprised. It is a weird idea. It is not what I thought my work would ever be about when I tried to live like the unknown craftsman in a hamlet in France, or a hillside in Tasmania. It is alarmingly contradictory; to make pots that are sweet to use and then to place them almost out of reach.

She hints in her Autobiographical Notes that this distancing was encouraged by seeing so much of country Queensland from the air as a teacher for the Australian Flying Arts School.

In 1989 she was the artist in residence at the Fremantle Arts Centre.

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott died on Friday 5 July 2013 in London, after suffering a stroke. She had been arranging a show there.

Leach and Cardew In addition to her adherence to the aesthetic of the Song Dynasty wares, Hanssen Pigott describes her own sense of form, which is aligned with the Cardew–Leach philosophy of the importance of the everyday and of humility in pottery:

About form. I am sure that the forms of the most common, everyday utensils can evoke so much that is inexpressible in any other language, about humanness.

Giorgio Morandi Hanssen Piggot might have come to arranging her work in groupings as still life compositions reluctantly, but it was definitely not without influences. Hanssen Piggot describes her interest in the paintings of Italian Giorgio Morandi in her essay Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity.

Collections Gwyn Hanssen Pigott’s work can be found in the following collections.

Australian collections Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria. Provincial galleries in Ballarat, Bathurst, Bendigo, Cairns, Castlemaine, Darwin, Devonport, Federation University Australia; Geelong, Gippsland, Gladstone, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Launceston, Newcastle, Orange, Shepparton, Stanthorpe and Townsville. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane; University of New South Wales, Sydney; Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart.

International collections Canada: Winnipeg Museum; Gardiner Museum, Toronto; France: Fina Gomez Collection, Paris; Germany: Dr. Hans Thiemann Collection, Hamburg; Ireland: Belfast Museum, Northern Ireland; Japan: Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki; Netherlands: Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam; New Zealand: Auckland Museum; United Kingdom: Crafts Council of Great Britain, London; Henry Rothschild Collection, Shipley Art Gallery; Crafts Study Centre, Farnham; Regional Galleries Bristol, Maidstone, Manchester and Paisley; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; York Art Gallery; USA: Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, Wisconsin; Jack Lenor Larsen Collection; Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Honours Her accolades include:

2002, Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), "for service to the arts as a ceramic artist and teacher of the craft." 1998, Australia Council Fellowship 1998 Australia Council Fellowship Award. 1963, Fellow, Society of Designer Craftsmen, UK.