Lotte Schwerdtfeger makes things, some of which are functional and others not so. All have a distinct relationship to the natural world in their volume, texture, materials, tones, morphology. Their ability to operate as vessels or carriers is variable, longevity is not always an issue. Like anything in the world, the life of an object (animate or inanimate) depends. Everything has the potential to morph into something else through the process of its life cycles. 

When Lotte makes ceramics, she doesn’t always fire or glaze them, and if she does, she is happy to be surprised by the results. Equally, a pot which disintegrates because it isn’t glazed or fired, or because it reacts to the heat of the kiln by collapsing is interesting in itself. The reaction of materials to an environment, whether though human or elemental interaction is what is relevant here.

Vessels have been made continuously by humans for eons. Writer Ursula Le Guin cited Elizabeth Fisher’s 1979 book Women’s Creation: sexual revolution and the shaping of society in her brief text, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986). Le Guin, following Fisher, notes the first human made object was probably some kind of receptacle (constructed probably from a large leaf or kelp) enabling hands to be free. Other, sturdier receptacles came to be made for multiple everyday functions or be venerated for what could be offered from within. They could also disintegrate and return to the soil.

Lotte observes the world she inhabits, the origins of things, their life cycle, and their inevitable decay. The pots she makes emulate these processes through experimental glazes and firings, and through affinities in shapes and duration. They are as frequently indebted to the history of vessels as they are biomorphic — their blobbiness legible as lava or fungi, coral or breasts. The interdependence of animate and inanimate worlds, whether microscopic or macroscopic, is the beginning of her work.

Judy Annear

Arts writers, Honorary Fellow at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.