Courtesy: the artist and Sanderson Contemporary, Auckland.

Sanderson presents the exhibition States of Flow, featuring the work of Wi Te Tau Pirika Taepa ONZM, Arapeta Ashton, Caitlin Clarke, Becky Richards, Iza Lozano, and Ys Blue.

Curated by Jemma Giorza, the exhibition brings together six contemporary artists working with clay to explore ideas relating to fluidity, materiality and corporeal interactions between the artist and medium. The title of the exhibition references the term ‘Flow State’; a mental state in which someone is absorbed and focused on a single activity. In this state, it is noted that people ‘lose track of time’, self-consciousness and focus on anything that is not ‘the task at hand’.

Artist, teacher and researcher Hannah Beehre describes one aspect of flow as: “Feeling a sense of being connected to something bigger than yourselves – that the material knows what it wants to do, and the medium becomes something that is informing us.”

Working with clay is inherently tactile. In its unfired state the medium is immediately responsive to the artist’s hand; allowing connections and gestures between the maker and material to be recorded. Each artist in this show forms their clay using different techniques and processes but they are all linked together by a connection to the state of flow.