Focused Workshop Thursday Evenings: Richard Penn.

Members Only.

workshop

6.30pm - 9.30pm weekly, Term 2 Thursdays: 1 May - 26 June (9 Weeks)

Price: $310

Enrollment date: Open now

Tutor: Richard Penn

About:

This is a course for people who want to learn new hand building skills as well as techniques with which to enrich their creative practice. We will examine the work of a wide variety of artists working with clay.

We will discuss their practices and techniques and use them as learning tools to expand our visual vocabulary and attempt new ways of working. There will be intense and immediate outcomes for most classes as well as a more focused final outcome pursued over the last few weeks. This is a course that not only encourages experimentation and risk taking but insists on the value of process over outcomes. The ability to take risks and to embrace the possibility of failure is a characteristic that will provide the creative edge for any ceramic practice whether sculptural or homeware.

At least half the first class will be a presentation and discussion of the South African artist, William Kentridge and his Norton lecture series on studio practice. This provides the ethos and spirit of the course as we move into specific tasks. Most classes will begin with a short video and discussion and a task for the evening (some may span two weeks). These will include the creation of an improvised slab sculpture, a textured slab, a bisque press mould, a geometric slab-built vessel using templates etc. The final three weeks will be up to the participants to find their own direction.

 About Richard Penn:

Richard is a South African artist living and working in Auckland, New Zealand and was awarded the Premier Award for the Portage Ceramics Prize 2022 at Te Uru Art Gallery in Titirangi. He has had numerous solo exhibitions and exhibited both locally, internationally, and was the South African representative at The Rybon International Artists’ Workshop in Tehran, Iran in 2012. In 2014 he took up the Ampersand Fellowship to New York, USA. He is represented in private, corporate and academic collections throughout South Africa and internationally and has shown consistently at both Johannesburg and Cape Town Art Fairs.  

In December 2020 he and his family relocated to New Zealand. In 2021 he was awarded a three month studio residency at Auckland Studio Potters as well as a month long residency at Driving Creek Potteries in the Coromandel in February 2022. He has taught sculpture at both the Otago Polytechnic and at Elam School of Fine arts at Auckland University and is the curator of exhibitions at Auckland Studio Potters.

Please note:
Please bring food for a shared evening cup of tea.
Clean up times are within the hours allocated for class time
If a workshop is unable to go ahead on the planned date we will reschedule these events to a later date. Refunds will only be possible if no suitable alternative date can be found

By purchasing a place in this class, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Health & Safety Procedures.