Sometimes the colour, shapes, juxtapositions and jostlings suggested more of a street theatre than a silence. Character and animation came into play; I titled them Jug Parade, and Parade with Yellow Cup. Not long ago, I made two lines of small, anonymous table pots; one of 19 pieces, the other of 23. The pots have a certain squareness, flat to the ground. The rims are fine but have no flare. There is some colour, some leaning towards movement but the mattness suggests quiet. I saw a displacement: images of re-settlement, border crossing, refuge-seeking. I called them Exodus.

In the catalogue of the recent Crafts Council of Queensland Touring Exhibition, Objects of Ideas, I try to explain why they move me: Pots, useful, everyday, ordinary pots, have for most of my life been my daily pleasure mines. Crowding the kitchen shelves, focusing the mind during a coffee conversation, letting the eye rest on considered form, on tenuous line, on languidness, on simplicity, on offered optimism; inviting the hand to cup, the finger to outline a rim, the lip to brush. They have become... my companions; and each meal or smoko I make a choice, inviting the pot like a friend, and seeing, perhaps, something about it I had overlooked in the rush.

Beauty, and our response to it, remains a mystery. But, it seems to me that, in the alchemy of making, the pot becomes subtly humanised. It is as though a kind of knowing – a history of understanding, and a sort of longing is translated, through care and consideration, and an intimate connecting with the stuff under our fingers... into a form with an independent life. With its own power to move.

So we speak of pots as though they are animate; we call them gentle or generous or strong or vulnerable... a straggling line of jugs, cups and tumblers become an assorted tribe journeying somewhere. A silent line of porcelain beakers waits in a window for the light to hit their rims and their ordinary beauty to become radiant.

Of course, they are still just pots that some days we might not look at twice. But they have, for a moment, pulled on our attention, with, perhaps, a reminder of our own vulnerability, and beauty and possibility of transformation and repose. Good.

I explain to curators that my pots must be grouped in that order, leaderless, uncomfortably close but quiet: I ask that they are shown at a certain height, so that the glimpses of the interiors become finely outlined, hanging ovals of colour. I supply snapshots of the arrangement; insisting on that angle of vision. I ask that a group of Limoges porcelain beakers is lit from behind, if possible with natural light.

I am quite pedantic about display, and about photography. When I see (as often) work shown low down, so that the darker interior colours become uneasily dominant or the tension of the spacing is lost, I am disappointed and want to disown the work. In fact, it is not my work. It is made for a certain eye level; spaces between the pots have a meaning; group dynamics come into play and a Promenade can be either a shuffle or a strut according to the choreography. I prefer the shambling and distrust design.

I know this is perverse. The pots are not fixed. Nothing holds them together but suggestion. I try to control their public face but, after that, who knows how they are changed and arranged and used. I let them go. Some new works are more specific in their reference to families. They are rather pale, like memories: matt like frescoes. The first, Procession, was made after my father's funeral. The others, like some recent Still Lifes have more than one suggested arrangement. There might be a group of pots posed as families. Their references are intimacy and distance. A recent grouping of 14 bottles, four jugs and tall beaker (from Somatic, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, March, 1997) is called Waiting. Groups within groups huddle or stand aloof.

In her catalogue statement for the exhibition, Objects of Ideas, Susan Ostling wrote: "Placed on tables or shelves, objects are always, I think, in waiting. They are performers in an event that has just occurred, or will occur. They are outlines of objects or blanks waiting to be filled with association. There is a vulnerability about them and all their idiosyncrasies are there to see. They are intended to trigger, or generate many scenarios." The works are called Object-stages, composed of small stages and object-players. The catalogue shows a wavering, thinly-worked wide-mouthed jug, as monumental as a tree trunk, on an upturned rigorously simplified tray, one of several 'stages'. I am impatient to see it in the flesh. The words, describing her work exactly, might have been about mine. The similarities in our approach please me. But it is the difference which is the most exciting, forcing new connections, and appreciations. Recognitions and surprises reinforce, and challenge, and always lead me back, grateful, to my workshop.

In 1996, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott received the prestigious Australia Council Emeritus Award for Art. Photography by Brian Hand.