Sunday 3 September 2006

Tesch demonstrates his hands on approach

Melbourne-born Andreas Tesch returned home after more than twenty years absence. For the past two decades, Tesch has been in Berlin, where he has established a strong reputation as a ceramicist of substance. Despite this wiry physique, Tesch is capable of great physical invovlement and had no trouble showing the audience at his artist's talk about to lift his large pieces. The evening turned to be a moving affair, with many friends and collectors who had been following his career over the years finally able to see his work at home. An article in the The Age featured some of Tesch's reflections on work:  

I love the process, I love the medium," Tesch says. "It's really natural, it smells really good. At the art school (in Berlin, where he was head of sculptural ceramics for five years), some of the students in the studio next door were working with polyurethane and all that. I don't like any of that stuff.

"I love that sort of skin-thing ceramics get; there's a proper skin that belongs to the clay body. I fire them to a really high temperature (and) they sound like bells when you touch them.

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