ConVerge is the culmination of three years of planning and preparation by artist/curators, Geoff Crispin and Bob Connery, and Cath Fogarty, Project Officer of Arts Northern Rivers is presented by Craft Australia as part of a regional arts focus. The exhibition was opened in association with Verge: 11th National Ceramic Conference in Brisbane in July, 2006 and will travel to fourteen galleries across Queensland and New South Wales. The catalogue essay by Grace Cochrane is republished by Craft Australia as part of a regional arts focus.

Maps of the northern coastal region of New South Wales show highways and winding roads making their way in through timbered hills and open plains from north, south and west. Famous and spectacular rivers twist and join to flow their sometimes meandering, sometimes turbulent, way to the equally spectacular and famous coastline.

For many years people have converged on this particular part of Australia as both a place to live and a place to play, escaping the expanding cities in the north and south, or relative isolation in the west. But what it has meant for both life and leisure has changed dramatically between early holiday camping trips or the migration of those seeking an alternative way of life in the 1970s, and the expansive coastal building developments of the 2000s. Where once so many sought to leave the city for a more meaningful life in the bush and hills or near the beach, new residents now bring with them many more expectations for sophisticated services and facilities and, generally, the resources to ensure them.

Not surprisingly, there is a large population of creative people working in the region, and among them, a large number working in ceramics. The twenty people in this exhibition come from workshops in centres from Murwillumbah near the Queensland border, south through Grafton and Lismore to Coffs Harbour. Many are isolated and dispersed; they tend to work alone or in small partnerships, and some are, or have been, involved as staff or students in the various regional teaching institutions. Despite their diversity, all are united by their location and the fact they have chosen to live here. Often distant from the centres that still offer many of the facilities, like galleries and publications - and the associated recognition of value - that they need, regional artists also develop their own individual and collective support strategies. One is the mounting of an exhibition that brings them together as a collective identity.

The ceramics made in this region reflect its specific history while being, at the same time, a significant part of the broader Australian ceramic story from the 1960s. These people are part of a bigger cultural picture of aspirations and life choices, and education, travel and communication opportunities. And this region is not necessarily the only place where their particular patterns and responses occur: similar narratives might equally be identified in Tasmania, Queensland or Western Australia. In fact regional development is a significant characteristic of the post-war ceramics movement: the extended activity round the Boyd family at Murrumbeena, the Sturt workshops in Mittagong and Potters Cottage at Warrandyte, are a few early examples. Potters societies emerged across the country, providing not only a local framework, but a part of a national whole. In many ways, ceramic activity followed an earlier industrial pattern, where potteries were built in almost every town or city where clay could be found.

Some of the potters in this exhibition arrived here in the 1970s, seeking not only a different way of life, but also the availability of wood to fire their handthrown pots and the absence of restrictions that would inhibit them from carrying it out; the 'North Coast woodfirers', in fact, have been significantly identifiable throughout Australia over the years. Amongst them, in this exhibition, were Geoff Crispin who set up a studio at Whiteman Creek, Bob Connery who established one at Stoker's Siding with Laine Langridge and Andrew Stewart who built a pottery at Upper Crystal Creek - all in 1978.

Many studied ceramics from the outset in well-recognised centres elsewhere in Australia, at courses in the region, or in local apprenticeships, yet there is an impressive number who have abandoned other professions, often to incorporate those experiences into their ceramic work. And while on the one hand Garth Lena at Fingal Head, a Midginbil speaker from the local Bundjalung tribe, also with South Sea Islander origins, and Bevan Skinner in Grafton, from the Gumbayngirr tribe, can identify their links to the land in this area over many thousands of years, it is notable that so many from very diverse origins and experiences have also found their way to the region.

Suvira McDonald, for example, trained and performed in a variety of theatre forms, while Margaurite Josephson-Buivids studied Indian classical music and dance in New Delhi, India. Bob Connery was originally a science teacher; Geoff Crispin trained initially in industrial arts. Bevan Skinner has a background of working in hospitality and Aboriginal health, and as a teacher and gallery assistant; Avital Scheffer trained in Israel in homeopathy, architecture, townplanning and fashion. Áine was born in Kilkenny in Ireland, home of the famous craft workshops so influential in Australia in the 1970s, while Malina Monks, from the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, trained in Glasgow in the 1960s. Jasmine Scheidler from Kentucky, and Merrill Orr from Illinois, were both born in the United States and started their studies there.

Particularly significant has been the example of the individuals who established workshops and maintained their practice over many years. Also influential has been the ceramics course that developed over time at what became the multi-campus Southern Cross University in 1994, and the many TAFE courses as they emerged along the coast from the 1970s, some of which remain at Murrwillimbah, Lismore and Coffs Harbour. A constant theme is the way these potters have expanded their study elsewhere, ranging from Bob Connery's attendance at a landmark raku workshop with Shiga Shigeo at Mittagong in 1963, to involvement in international exchange opportunities, like Tamasin Pepper's in Valencia, in Spain in 1993, and Jasmine Scheidler's in Korea in 2001. Andrew Stewart spent some time working with the legendary Yvonne Rust in New Zealand in the 1970s as well as in Japan in 2002. Many have extended their research through further academic studies in local institutions, as well as in some beyond the region. Some have moved to study here, like Virginia Jones who was previously in Toowoomba.

Though influences can be traced, in the appearance of their work these artists are not noticeably a regional group, yet each has the region in common. The ideas underpinning the works in this exhibition reflect responses to personal histories as well as, perhaps, to a current location. Functional vessels are exhibited beside sculptural forms, such as by Tamasin Pepper, Áine and Jasmine Scheidler; effects of woodfiring and salt or soda glazing processes are explored variously by, for example, Geoff Crispin and Andrew Stewart, and now Judith Martin and John Stewart. Bob Connery works with lustred surfaces. Others in this exhibition explore different clay materials, from porcelain to paperclay, and different processes such as slipcasting, like Liz Stops, or handbuilding, like John Mawhinney. Some decoration is boldly abstract, like Catherine Lane's; some ideas have their sources in plant life like Ishta Heidi Wilson's sawdust or pit fired vessels and forms, and Virginia Jones's leaf imprinted vessels; or landforms like Suvira McDonald's panels. Garth Lena and Bevan Skinner make contemporary references to their traditional cultures; and some works reflect memories of a place of origin or experience of a living somewhere, like the architectural pieces made by Margaurite Josephson-Buivids, Avital Scheffer and Merril Orr, or Malina Monk's woven forms, some of which draw on the structure of Scottish fishing creels.

Apart from the converging influences that bring these people together, there is also a pattern of dispersal and diaspora, where what has developed and grown in this region, has in turn made its mark on the wider world: many have taken their regional experience elsewhere. Most exhibitors are very much part of a national and international framework of conferences, workshops, publications and exhibition programs. Inclusion in events like the awards and exhibitions, international exchanges and residencies, workshops for students elsewhere, and public art and sculpture projects is part of what they do. Virginia Jones has set up installations in Japan and Korea; Suvira McDonald has participated in Sculpture by the Sea in Sydney; Catherine Lane worked in Japan and England, as well as on an archaeological ceramic project in Thailand; Connery and Andrew Stewart are among those who have hosted Japanese potters in their studios, and Connery has developed a strong market in Japan. And as well as helping Indigenous potters in the Northern Territory to develop workshops in the 1970s, and again in 2005-06, Geoff Crispin has worked over many years in countries from Africa and the Middle East to South East Asia, 'exporting a skill' to assist with ceramic and other small industry projects directed towards developing sustainable livelihoods.

The organisers of this exhibition point out that for validation, creative activity is often expected to pass first through metropolitan areas. As largely individual practitioners, supported by an active education network and strong regional arts organisational system, they believe, however, in the equal importance of communication directly between regions as well as with metropolitan centres. This northern coastal region, for example, identifies closely with neighbouring areas in Queensland, a state that is characterised by its large number of isolated regional centres, and where the exhibition will start its tour. Inspired by the objectives of the Verge ceramics conference of 2006, where the focus is directed towards the strengths that regions, or people at the 'verge' of the mainstream, can both gain from and give one another, the counter theme of ConVerge brings this particular group of people, their ideas and their work, together, and celebrates the contribution of those living and working in Australian regions, like this one, to a wider ceramic story.

Grace Cochrane is a freelance curator and writer, formerly senior curator, Australian decorative arts and design, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

Grace Cochrane, August, 2006