Pottery is the new video

Maybe Grayson Perry was onto something when he cheekily claimed while collecting the 2003 Turner Prize that perhaps pottery was the new video. This years Primavera ,(a survey of recent works by artists under 35) at the MCA (that’s the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney) features the work of Honour Freeman, an artist who works exclusively in clay. Honour (like Lesa Farrant) draws heavily from the domestic sphere. Her pieces draw on the mimetic qualities of clay (think Marilyn Levine) featuring clay castings of quotidian kitchen and bathroom items. The objects are kind of re-aestheticised(if that is a word) through her subtle plays of colour and form. Whilst this may be news to the MCA, Honour has been playing with these notions for a number of years. While there seems to be an almost perverse interest in capital A artists using craft –based practices ,it is nice to see it viewed from a different perspective.