Ash + Aperture

Ash + Aperture is a collaborative exhibition by ceramic artist Dave Austin and photographer Mark Hamilton timed to celebrate Matariki. 

Dave and Mark started working together several years ago over coffee as Dave sought a professional photographer to document his work. They soon realised that they had a lot in common, age, qualification, creative vision.

So began a mutual exploration of the landscape around them featuring Dave's ceramic pieces as cultural signifiers.

Their collaborative images are shot on location at Mt Ruapehu, Port Waikato, Waikato River, and around Kirikiriroa. 

Ash - Dave Austin

"Fire is my ancestor, my teacher, my collaborator.
In my Castrol drum kiln - forged from necessity, born from resourcefulness - I have found my ritual space. This is where transformation happens. Where earth becomes memory. Where the volcanic knowledge inherited through
Te Arawa lineage meets contemporary ceramic practice.

Raku is my chosen conversation. Japanese Raku techniques spoke to something already alive in my cultural DNA - the understanding of fire as creative force, the acceptance of crack and flaw as beauty, the collaboration with chance and combustion. I have adapted these techniques not as cultural borrowing, but as recognition of universal truth about fire and earth.

Over two years of obsession, I have developed methods that are uniquely my own - ways of working with flame and smoke that create surfaces, textures, and forms that carry my volcanic inheritance into contemporary expression. These techniques are my cultural innovation - traditional knowledge applied through modern practice."

Aperture - Mark Hamilton

Photography has always been my way of expressing myself and how I view the world, fuelled by my natural curiosity, it has taken me to places I never could have imagined and became friends with people I never thought I’d meet.

I think this element in my work lead me to meet Dave or maybe the universe led him to me, I’ll take both. First and foremost, I have to thank Dave for reaching out to collaborate, unknowingly both of a similar age and having studied the same degree (at Wintec) we already had a number of things in common.

I believe we share a similar creative vision. His work transforms natural earth elements into beautiful raku ceramics and I find these same elements within the frame of my camera.  Our works are born from the exact same source material, mine displayed in the rawness of a landscape in a 2-dimensional image and Dave’s displayed in 3 dimensions all crafted from the same land.

I hope this collaboration brings more to us both in the future."