EDGE - 9th National Australian Ceramics Conference

he EDGE - 9th National Australian Ceramics Conference, organmised by the Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australia is taking place in Perth, Western Australia from July 5th - 8th (4th -7th for the USA), 1999. The Australian National Ceramics Conference is a trienniel affair, i.e. once every three years. While this conference is not being billed as a 'millennium conference', there are plenty of high tech activities apprpritate for the 'end of millennium' happening which warrant a closer look. The web site states "EDGE will consider questions that relate to Ceramics as we move towards the year 2000." These include an internet video conferencing session, various internet chat sessions, live web cam feed from the conference to the web and daily updates of conference proceedings on the web with images taken by digital camera as well as various discussion panels. Some of the above activities are of course not active yet and links will be posted on the bottom of this page on the day. Please note that US residents can already tune in on the 4th of July, as Australia is a day ahead (12-17 hours, depending on your time zone).

Other conferences activities include keynote speaches by Janet Mansfield, Ceramic Artist & Editor of Ceramics Art and Perception and Ceramics Technical; Paul Mathieu, a potter and teacher from Vancouver, Canada; Edmund de Waal, who trained as a potter, read English at Cambridge, studied the Japanese language and culture at first hand and established four pottery workshops in the UK and in Japan; Steven Goldate, who will be speaking on the impact of digital technology on ceramics.

Artists giving workshops include Torbjorn Kvasbo (Sweden), Christine Thacker (New Zealand), Nino Caruso (Italy), Martin Willis (Australia), Jeff Oestreich (USA) and Astrid Gerhartz (Germany).

Many more demonstrations are also taking place, with too many artists to mention. These are listed on the Gallery of Works by Visiting Artists. A second gallery bears a collection of works by members of the Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australia.

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