Artist / Flutters
artist:
Flutters Zara Yerbury
location:
Magandjin (Brisbane), QLD
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attributes:
Feminine, earthy, soft & playful.
I’ve been working with stoneware pottery for ~4 years now and I still lose my mind every time i get to play with wet clay or open a kiln. My practice revolves around an endless obsession with femininity in all its imagery and manifestations. I look at the work of Ana Mendieta, Mel Arsenault, Miki Kim, Ida Lissner, Hito Steyerl, Latika Nehra, Lisa Meinesz and want to swallow it all whole. I look at their works and tumble into fixations with the forms of insects, spines, flowers, shells, swans, stamen, teeth, rings, rocks, of celestial and cellular bodies. And then I sit down with clay and hope to translate even just one of these things. In the studio, at Tafe or Clayground, you can ask anyone and they’ll share every process, story, clay type, glaze combination with you; clay communities can be so beautiful. Pottery has always been something I do for pure delight. I always hope that this delight follows the pieces I make to the places they go.
q&a
Tell us about your backstory! Any experiences that may have contributed to your evolution in your field?
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I’ve been working with stoneware pottery for ~5 years now. I started with weekly classes at Clay School in West End before moving to pursue a Diploma of Ceramics at NSW TAFE in Gymea. Alongside this study I’ve been working at other pottery studios as a teacher and as a technician. And I still lose my mind every time I get to play with wet clay or open a kiln.
Does your work aim to convey any messages? Are there particular topics/themes you explore you comment on thought your work?
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When I go to start making I don’t normally begin with a message in mind. I think I work more out of a compulsion to make, to sit in the process of making, imagining the ways in which the object would find purpose.
I’m so drawn to working in ceramics for its general functionality, alongside its tactility, vastness of possibility and its long process. For me, a key aspect of each work includes considering the sense of function within the piece - ensuring the glazes are safe for use, that the piece is functional and durable. I think i try to seek dual justification in pieces in this way: there are a set of (1) aesthetic decisions as part of a compulsion to make but they also serve (2) a function. In saying that, sometimes the “function” is just that it can be worn as a necklace, or it’s a bookend or a paperweight. Maybe it’s more about assigning a sense of context to the piece — a context that always involves a kind of co-habitation.
How does sustainability influence your design decisions, and how has your approach evolved over time?
My approach has definitely evolved over time and continues to do so. Something I always hold on to is ensuring to use only second hand materials for any components surrounding the ceramic aspect of pieces. For example, for the necklaces i’ve been making, all the strings and fixtures come from reverse garbage and all the beads have come from necklaces from op shops. It influences the designs of all the pieces since it means that my options are limited by availability/ chance and the fixtures are perhaps a bit janky but i think that this is a really exciting aspect of making, of trying to find solutions working with and around these. Ceramic artist Steve Harrison (who really is a blueprint for eco ceramic practices) writes about how local ingredients may not be the best or even good — but “it’s what happens here, with this stuff.” I think this perspective is really beautiful, holding making and sourcing as equally weighted roles in practice. I’ve been looking to his work a lot for how he uses local found materials like discarded cement and broken windscreen glass. The possibilities feel really never ending. More recently i’ve been in conversation with one of my TAFE teachers about alternative glaze making using glass cullet/ crushed recycled glass.
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What are some of the biggest challenges you face when incorporating sustainability into your work and how do you overcome them?
​I think sustainable practices in pottery are a really interesting and important topic! I get the impression that since clay comes from earth and is such an ancient practice, people assume that it’s automatically a sustainable or eco-practice but the contemporary process of obtaining clay is still one of extraction and many of the minerals or components come from mining and are ultimately non-renewable resources. Whilst the amounts of these minerals taken from mine sites which go towards ceramics is comparably minuscule in the scheme of things, I still think it’s really important to acknowledge this aspect and grapple with these implications.As a general practice I try to be mindful of how I use materials and careful about which pieces I fire. Clay can be endlessly reclaimed/reused before firing and i keep and recycle all of the trimmings, failed pieces etc. to be able to make and remake and cycle it through over and over. At the bisque fired stage, failed pieces can be smashed and sieved and integrated back into unfired clay to add gritty textures or additional body to the work (I’m very blessed to have a friend who enjoys this process and does this for me!!!!). And i keep all the flop glazed pieces too for my beautiful partner who has plans to smash them and turn them into a mosaic <33 Community groups like ‘Clay Matters’ have lots of resources on recycling at each stage of making. There’s definitely a lot of really exciting work that’s happening in the industry finding ways to be more sustainable and source materials more ethically.
Any people, artists, designers, movements, things that inspire you to make your art?
Yes!!!! So many!!! And the Gymea ceramics community is really the deepest well!! They inspire me the most through their endless sharing of knowledge, but also their pure delight, obsession, and drive for pottery.
I find any kind of practice that finds delight in playing across earthly and ethereal being to be really inspiring - like ceramicist Mel Arsenault’s translation of her awe with celestial and cellular bodies into ceramic butterflies that mimic pelvises forever sits in the back of my mind. I think often (and list often) Ana Mendieta, Mel Arsenault, Miki Kim, Ida Lissner, Hito Steyerl, Latika Nehra, and Lisa Meinesz as some key influences. I’m drawn to anything feminine, earthy and/ or speculative in a divine kind of way. Their speculative forms at the intersection of science/fiction show up in the tendrils, ringed ladders, spines and butterfly variations that i use to decorate my pieces.
But my partner Tait really is also a huge inspiration on so many fronts - his bio tech background & love for nature down to a molecular scale gives me so much guidance for thinking about the materiality of ceramics and the science in it all. Plus his enthusiasm and support keeps me joyful and motivated and excited for whatever is next.