Natasha Chant is an early career ceramicist from Melbourne’s east that is getting noticed. Recent presence as a finalist in both the 2022 North Queensland Ceramic Award and the Clunes Ceramic Award.
Natasha pushes the clay to its extremes- the pieces are often tilted precariously, their asymmetry creating a feeling of tension and drama in an otherwise simple and organic form.
Each piece has been lovingly handmade over many days and weeks. Deliberately unglazed to highlight the beauty of the natural clay colour, the meticulously finished surfaces are temptingly tactile.
‘Gaia and Terra’
My style of work is best described as biomorphic abstraction. Originating from the Greek word “bios” (life), and “morphe” (form), the term “biomorphic art” refers to abstract portrayals of the natural world.
I am drawn to the flowing lines and curves found in nature, to the elegant lines of the human form, rolling hills and bends in a river. I have very early memories of clambering up and down the hills of my grandparents Gippsland dairy farm. Of following the creek as it weaved its way through the gullies, and of holidays spent exploring the bush around riverside campsites. As an adult I worked for many years as a Doula and am immensely awed by the primal strength and beauty of a birthing woman. All these things have crept into my work, in particular my Gaia series.
My process can be quite instinctive and even somewhat unconscious, similarly to how surrealist art reflects the subconscious, biomorphic art is often created with a level of automation. My hands take over and in conversation with the clay, a form begins to emerge.
Each piece I make is hand built with coils. It allows me to create the sinuous curves that I love, and to push the clay to its limits. I want to find that place of perfect balance, where the form is taken to its furthest limit before I bring it back and realign the centre of gravity so it will hold itself upright.
Beauty in imperfection, balance and instability. I do not want to make something that is perfectly aligned, I am far more interested in the tension created, the beautiful imperfection that elevates something beyond the mundane into something that will continue to draw the eye.
‘Standing Stones’
Like many people, I love history, and I love a good mystery.
I am particularly drawn to the intersection of history, mythology and legend, and have been creating a series of sculptures exploring this idea.
It takes only 4 generations, for the memory of those that have gone before us to be lost.
Stories get changed in the telling, details forgotten or embellished, and within a relatively short space of time, some things that should not have been forgotten are lost. History becomes legend. Legend becomes myth.
Somewhere in the myths and legends is a grain of truth. But too much time has passed to be able to unravel the fact from the fiction.
In 2023 I visited the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, to see the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. An ancient land that has had continual human settlements since Neolithic times, the Megalithic standing stones have born witness to thousands of years of human life, their presence a constant as generations have come and gone like mist in a valley.
The various stories and legends around the Odin Stone, once a part of the Stones of Stenness, were the inspiration for my Standing Stone sculptures. Intertwining history, legend and myth through a biomorphic, minimalist lens, my sculptures are an abstracted, contemporary response to these ancient monuments, inviting contemplation of the threads binding us to the past, the primal impulse of creation, and our fleeting yet profoundly rooted connection to the land.