A Reimagined Vessel – VAS by Anchor

The Anchor studio plays with surface structure and form in a way that builds bridges between art, design, architecture and craft. VAS – A Reimagined Vessel showcases the relationship between the studio’s practice-based research and making processes. Running from December 3, 2022, at The Front Room gallery in Richmond, Melbourne, the exhibition is the result of two years of material exploration.

The interdisciplinary creative practice based in Melbourne takes a unique approach to traditional ceramic design processes. Led by Founding Directors Bruce Rowe and Claire Hatch, Anchor applies design thinking and practice-based research to the way they create with clay. These methods combine conventional ceramic techniques, digital technologies and unconventional contemporary tools and approaches inspired by architecture and building techniques.

“Literally, VAS is a vessel in that it holds many things – water, ideas, care, our practice, design thinking, material research; it is a container to both test and hold a multitude of exploratory research streams,” Bruce explains.

Clay waste is a central focus of the exhibition, seeing unusable offcuts repurposed. “Clay is a finite resource, but because it is ubiquitous people forget the geological timeline that it takes for clay to form,” says Bruce. The limited series of 48 pieces was designed to test four streams of ceramic enquiry – repurposing material as structure, the making of large extruded forms, repurposing material as surface, and methods of joining forms. Claire says, “we set about reclaiming, rediscovering and repurposing different studio clay offcuts. This led to new engobes and the realisation of the VAS forms.”

The surfaces of each vessel were informed by qualities of the south-eastern Australian natural landscape, reflecting a sensibility to place. Each of the 48 vessels is distinctive in finish, made through an inventive kinetic glaze application technique. The resulting finishes palette includes rich monochromes and combinations of engobes and flux washes in Wattle, Banksia and Iron ore. The exhibition also takes a conceptual approach. “Literally, VAS is a vessel in that it holds many things – water, ideas, care, our practice, design thinking, material research; it is a container to both test and hold a multitude of exploratory research streams,” Bruce explains.

Clay waste is a central focus of the exhibition, seeing unusable offcuts repurposed.

VAS reflects Anchor’s design processes more broadly. The exhibition is an artefact of practice-based research – the product of exploration into the possibility of creating new work from the reclaimed offcuts of the studio’s making processes. In this sense, VAS is also a container of Anchor’s practice, reflecting how the studio blurs the lines across art, design, architecture, art education and craft. “VAS holds much more than its literal, physical volume suggests – it is a container for the sum of its diverse parts, seen and unseen, that are far greater in combination than in isolation,” says Bruce.

VAS – A Reimagined Vessel opens on Saturday 3 December at The Front Room Gallery in Richmond, Melbourne.