Tony Nankervis
Tony Nankervis, is a practising artist with a national and international exhibition profile.
Nankervis has exhibited in Europe, Japan and North America, and is represented in the collections of several major galleries in Australia, including the Queensland Art Gallery, the Tasmanian Art Gallery and Museum, and the State Gallery of Western Australia. He is also featured in several overseas galleries' collections.
Nankervis has been a pioneer of the long wood-fired ceramics technique in Australia:
He describes his work as being derived from his beginnings in ceramics as a maker of 'one-off functional table ware', which included highly-individualised everyday table items such as mugs, bowls, plates, jugs and teapots.
"Over the last 15 or 20 years my work has become less and less functional and more about the notion of a vessel, and its essence," he said. "They're rhythmic, free-flowing things that take into account the artist's own body rhythms."
Nankervis prefers the pre-Industrial Revolution method of firing pottery, involving heating the kiln by burning wood for five days, to the modern, quicker methods using gas or electricity. The distinctive surfacing in wood-fired ceramics is generated by the ash and volatile salts from the burning wood.
"Because the wood ash and salts blush the ceramic pieces in the kiln, the finished work tends to take on the nature of the firing process," he said. "One colleague has described the process as painting with fire."
