Christine BOSWIJK

View in collection Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in to a fourth generation family of New Zealanders, Christine Boswijk makes coiled forms, inspired by landscape and natural forms. She trained at the School of Fine Art, Otago Polytechnic (1977) and the National Art School, East Sydney Technical College (1988). She lives in Nelson and has worked and taught in New Zealand most of her life. She makes strange vessel forms and objects that suggest a timeless fragility like objects that have been under the sea for centuries.  She wants her work to reflect something of the social, ecological and geographic influences on the land. She hand-builds using white earthenware and terracotta clay (sometimes mixed) patching and layering. At the International Potters Festival in Aberystwyth in 1993 she demonstrated her method of slapping thin slabs of clay on the floor to create long straps which could then be wound into her strange vessel/objects. A year earlier, at Expo 92 in Seville she showed a primeval forest in a metre square glass box, inviting the fragile surfaces to be inspected at close range. Her work is in private and public collections in New Zealand, Australia and other countries. In 2004, Boswijk was made an Officer of The New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Ceramic Art. She retired in 2016.

Details

• Dates: 1939-