Art Reviews

​A complete list of all reviews, books, media stories here ​
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For the winning piece – this piece has the courage of its convictions. It has at its core a process of experimentation, and technically this is sophisticated in its realisation. It travelled a long distance – it arrived where it was meaning to go. The use of the FeCrAl hand coil wire as the base structure enabled an incredibly dynamic form to be realised, combined with the textural qualities of the ceramic porcelain paper clay. The result is a piece that feels coherent but also hums with energy due to its formal intensity and its focus on dualities of life and death, living and not living. We kept circling back to this work, not just because it was brilliant yellow. It had a life force that was compelling.” 

Judges Aaron Scythe and Heather Galbraith, of the 2024 Forsyth Barr Contemporary Ceramics Award at the Arts Council Nelson’s biennial exhibition, Pushing Clay, at the Refinery Artspace, New Zealand. (Award speech, emailed September 30, 2024 12:48 pm)  Speech video by Judges on Facebook here (it starts 21 minutes in)

SCULPTURE BY THE SEA, Cottesloe Beach, WA ​

STEFAN’S TOP FIVE
​... Art Gallery of WA director Dr Stefano Carboni nominates his favourite Sculpture by the Sea entries: ...  '[Hay has] created these flat tiles with a lot of texture and transformed them into two sculptures which quite effectively communicate the idea of a kiss. It’s very clever. It’s been designed very carefully and has an almost cartoonish feeling. ..."

Paddenburg, T., Your expert guide to sculptures by the sea, The Sundays Times, 8 March, 24 
(reproduced: Paddenburg, T. Art Gallery of WA director Stefano Carboni nominates his top five Sculpture by the Sea entries,
​www.PerthNow.com.au, March 11, 9:50AM)

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Ten of the Best

​… Here are some of our favourites in the show
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​ … Two totemic ceramic monuments stand in silent tribute, or reproach, to our disposable age of instant mobile communication…"

Steve Bevis, Arts Editor, Beach Art Exhibition Struggles to survive:​ Ten of the Best, The West Australian newspaper, Perth, WA, 5 March, p.18 ​

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... The Kiss also alludes to the intensely romantic and erotic Rodin sculpture from the late 19th century, a popular sculpture of two lovers holding each other in a tight embrace.  In Hay’s The Kiss, the ‘lovers’ are separated, standing apart, the bodily embrace non-existent, communicating through smart phones..."

Dr. Maria Miranda,  Robertson Park Artists’ Studio, Perth, The ARI Experience, artist-run initiatives in Australia and Denmark, Blog posting: May 29, 2015

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​From landscape to technologies of communication, Graham Hay presented a work collapsing the ubiquity of the mobile phone with one of the most ancient forms of communication, the clay tablet. 8000 paper clay cast tablet iPhones were made ceramic and placed atop of one another to form two large pillar-like heads. This piece towered above the viewer, as a layered monolith reflecting on how humanity has shifted from back then to here now while the principles of communication and connection with others remain consistent." 

Dr. Laetitia Wilson, Review: Expansive Visions Drawn From the Land and Reaching Beyond, Ceramic Now, Cluj, Romania,  3, p.20-23:

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HERE&NOW14 marks the first time in a decade that a major Western Australian art institution has shown an exhibition dedicated entirely to ceramics. ... Graham Hay ruminates on the shift from the use of clay tablets to record information to digital means of communication in contemporary society. The cairn-like conglomerations Hay has constructed from 8000 roughly hewn paper clay iPhones deftly express the notion of technological progress over time. 

Shannon Lyons, Review: HERE&NOW14, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth, 26 July - 27 Sept 2014, Artlink,  vol 34 no 4, December 2014.

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​And drawing on newer communication technologies for inspiration, Graham Hay constructed iHead, two tall 2-metre-high forms reminiscent of cuneiform clay tablets, each with a large protruding eye, encased in 8000 cast paper-clay iPhones, bristling in a bricklaying-like arrangement over a steel frame. 

Cochrane, G., Ceramics here and now, Eyeline Contemporary Visual Arts Magazine, CUT, Qld, Aust, 83, p72-75

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​Solo, Moores Building, Fremantle, WA

Also working on models and equally concerned with the ethics of form is Graham Hay’s Morality, Mortality and Art at the Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery. 
   
In many ways not as sophisticated as Reamillo’s work, Hay’s sculptural accumulations are nonetheless enjoyable viewing. 
   
Pencils, biros and paper have been the material of choice for many contemporary artists, for example local artist Janis Nedela’s series of pencil paintings (as you can see in his new book when you visit Alwin Reamillo’s show) but regardless of this, Hay’s work testifies to an involved thought process and a considered outcome. 
   
His magazine DNA-like towers, though not the most immediately engaging of his works, dominate the space, while his paper balls, pencil and biro CAD-like forms and his name paintings are all solid pieces. 
   
Probably better known for his paperclay works, the extension into pencil and biro form seems a natural excursion; after all one needs the other. 
   
This then seems to have led the artist into text itself and I really enjoyed his name collections. 
   
Part political narrative, part found object and part concrete poetry, Momentum, Rolled and Drafted 1, 2 and 3 are more then just name-dropping pieces. 
   
The strength in Hay’s work is the artist’s willingness to allow the material to dictate the form. 
   
This occurs subtly in the name pieces, as well as in Honey Pot, Apple and Star. 
   
It’s pivotal to the towers, too, but it’s much clunkier there. Honey pot, with its toasted bread and pens, builds a narrative around it without taking away from the materialism of the work. 
   
With the arcing up of the Large Hadron Collider this week, Hay’s Nurture and Mark, genetic shapes built in pen and pencil, reminded me of the desire we have to further sub-atomise ourselves and our surroundings. 
   
These are elegant and contemporary works which I hope will be given a more extended context in the future."

Ric Spencer, Review: Playing it by ear, Today Section,  ​The Western Australian Newspaper,  12 September, p.7 
Source: http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=182&ContentID=97410  @ 12th September 2008, 8:15 WST 

Hay's clay forms are generous, excessive even explosive in their configuration. They cling in diverse clusters, sometimes like intergalactic seedpods, sometimes a soft turbine, a bundle exotic fruits, split second angel wings made from plasma, an alien ray gun, the vortex round a black hole. The irregularity of their forms lends itself to all kinds of associations limited only by experience and memory. Any and all are relevant. More to the point the artist's struggles with the imperfections of the clay form come alive when placed in close relationship to an audience with freedom to respond to them... Most modernist sculpture hovers between two poles, the organic and the mechanical, biology and engineering. Once again, however, the palpable degeneration of his media sets these secure landmarks of the modern at odds with each other and questions them, not from the distant horizons of deconstruction but the immediate familiarity, the existential presence, of the exhausted objects piled round your garbage bin. This is the true post-modern as redundancy, same as it always was. The radicalism of the collective has always stemmed fron, its ability to shift attention away from "this goes with that" categories and straight line novelties to complex questions of relative presence (-How is that there? Why and when am 1 here? Why not there?) in which the work of art acts as a question mark or a key to the pattern of experience rather than as an object in itself, lodged,; alone in time and space. “

Dr David Bromfield, The Robertson Park Group, catalogue essay, 2000

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This is an abbreviated collection of reviews of exhibitions by Graham Hay.
More recent media stories and profiles written about the artist.