Image: **Jino Jeong’s** Premier Award winning work Celestial Thread: A Tapestry of Sunshine and Spiderwebs. Courtesy of Te Uru. Photo by Sam Hartnett.

Te Uru is delighted to announce Jino Jeong as the winner of the 2023 Portage Ceramic Awards for his work Celestial Thread: A Tapestry of Sunshine and Spiderwebs. This year’s Merit Award winners are Yeuh Luo for Innerspace and Debbie Barber for There were no night stories in my head. That was ok.

The Portage Ceramic Awards is Aotearoa’s best-known survey of contemporary ceramic activity. Established in 2001, the award is now in its twenty-third year and celebrates the diversity of contemporary ceramics. The Portage Ceramic Awards exhibition opened at Te Uru in Titirangi on Friday 24 November, with the 47 finalist works on display to the public for the first time.

This year’s Portage Ceramic Awards judge was award-winning ceramic artist John Parker. Parker became Director of the Auckland Studio Potters centre in 1977, where he was made a life member in 1999. Among the many honours he has received, Parker was awarded a Waitākere City Millennium Medal for services to the community in 2000, and was a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2010.

Parker was impressed by Jeong’s skilful craftmanship:
“These meticulously crafted forms define volume through lines in space. They have mass yet allow light to pass through. Each has its own take on containing a shape. The five enigmatic pieces have an epic presence but an ambiguous scale. It is obvious how they were made and how long it would have taken, but you can't imagine the order of the difficult process or it actually happening—kind of like observing a spider as the ultimate 3D printer.”

Based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Jeong is drawn to experimenting with scale and glaze to create unique ceramic works. He was born in Seoul and trained in ceramics at Kyonggi University in South Korea. He then spent a year at the highly prestigious Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in China, the only dedicated ceramic arts university in China.

Image: **Yueh Luo**’s Merit Award winning piece Innerspace. Courtesy of Te Uru. Photo by Sam Hartnett.

One of two Merit Award winners, Yeuh Luo’s work Innerspace, made from stoneware and brass rods, encourages an exploration of the inner consciousness. The vessel references the mind filled with thoughts, while the delicately suspended orb symbolises focus amidst external pressures and distractions.

Parker praised Luo for her masterful pairing of clay and metal.
“Yeuh helped me come to terms with my suspicion of mixed media. The use of beautifully crafted brass gives the piece a tension but also a unity… This modest piece has an epic presence that raises questions. The matt blue form undulates as if it is alive. It could be a trap lying in wait with an attractive lime green sphere of bait. It could be a still from a sci-fi movie about a new law of physics.”

Luo lives in Tāmaki Makurau and her current work centres on identity, femininity, and the intricate abstract dimensions of the human mind. She employs carefully considered glazing surfaces and visual elements, such as texture, curvature, lines, and negative space, to convey their depth and complexity.

Image: Merit Award winner There were no night stories in my head. That was ok. by **Debbie Barber** (detail). Courtesy of Te Uru. Photo by Sam Hartnett.

Debbie Barber also received a Merit Award for her work There were no night stories in my head. That was ok., made from wild clay, commercial clay, found brick and rock.

Barber holds a BFA in Sculpture from Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury. Currently living in Tāmaki Makaurau, Debbie began establishing her own art practice in 2019 influenced by her mum’s journey with dementia and grounded in a reflective practice considering identity, time and memory.

“This wall installation is like an extended catalogue of the materiality of clay. There are just so many different ideas encapsulated in the multitude of small-scale objects in this work. Each object tells an individual story which is so fitting for an installation about dementia, identity, time and memory.” John Parker, 2023 judge.

This year 238 works were submitted to the Portage Ceramic Awards from all over Aotearoa.

PORTAGE CERAMIC AWARDS 2023 WINNERS:

2023 Premier Portage Ceramic Award:
Jino Jeong, Tāmaki Makaurau
Celestial Thread: A Tapestry of Sunshine and Spiderwebs
2023 Merit Award:
Yueh Luo, Tāmaki Makaurau
Innerspace
2023 Merit Award:
Debbie Barber, Tāmaki Makaurau
There were no night stories in my head. That was ok.

PORTAGE CERAMIC AWARDS 2023 EXHIBITION
When: 24 November 2023 – 3 March 2024
Where:            Te Uru, 420 Titirangi Road, Titirangi
Hours:             Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 4.30pm
Web:               teuru.org.nz/portage
Facebook:       facebook.com/ThePortageCeramicAwards/

The Portage Ceramic Awards receive generous funding from The Trusts Community Foundation.

2023 WINNER OF PRESTIGIOUS PORTAGE CERAMIC AWARD ANNOUNCED