Neil Hoffman

Derwent Ceramics Award for Non-functional Design

Neil completed a Higher Diploma of Teaching, Major Studies in Ceramics, at Melbourne State College in 1976, and after working at Topferie Kumpmann in Gottingen, Germany, and with Ian Sprague at Mungeribar Pottery in Victoria, he established the Reedy Marsh Pottery near Deloraine in 1982.

He has attended many national wood-fire events, and convenes Summer Schools at Reedy Marsh Pottery, with wood-firing and salt glaze a focus. His work has been shown in many galleries nation-wide, he has won several awards and featured in art and ceramic magazines, most recently in Craft Arts International, Issue 43.

Artist's Statement

My curiosity around clay and woodfire drives my current making. I engage directly and bodily with these media. The will and plasticity of clay lead me to its living and breathing dimensions, its hidden secrets, its animate and naked self. I find in clay its elan vital, works of mood and gesture suggestive of an ancient time ... a time, perhaps, when life first emerged from parent earth ... when primal energies gave birth to primordial creatures unknown to us-extinct life-forms that now reside only in the earth's memory. Woodfire builds on this primitive naturalism. In the kiln, flame and ash move over and around my work, layering and colouring it in ways I find consistent with the elemental nature of my discoveries with the clay. My aesthetic favours the wild. My making seeks the yet to be discovered.