Fiona Tribe

@fionatribe

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Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· 22d

Perth skies

A bright, clear blue sky above a flat-roofed cream rendered house with a vertical three-panelled window to the right, behind a brick fence with two small pine trees growing to the left. The Indian ocean (with howling afternoon winds) is less than 20 metres to the left. You can smell the salt in the air.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· 26d

I haven’t been in the studio the past two weeks because I’ve been sick. Sadness! My mentor sent me this today, to cheer me up, and to keep me connected to my work.

Black and white sketch by artist Lola Dupre of a tall building with a million teeny windows that is very much like my latest pieces made from clay. I create the window shape with the bottom of a chopstick.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jul 2

Mum gave me the 👀

Book cover for Kathleen Richardson’s “Sex Robots”.

“There are more ways to connect and communicate via technology than ever before. Yet loneliness is on the rise as we begin to experience an 'attachment crisis in forming and maintaining intimate relationships. Enter sex robots. Built from the bodies of sex dolls, they are created to help humans - particularly men - cope with our inability to connect.
In this bold and trenchant critique, Kathleen Richardson explores important questions surrounding this emerging technology. What does the rise of sex robots tell us about the way that women and girls are imagined? To what extent are porn, prostitution and child sexual exploitation driving the attachment crisis?
The author argues that sex robots are produced within a framework of property relations' - in which egocentric Man (and his disconnection from Woman) shapes the building of robots and AI. Can this tide of destruction and disconnection be turned, and what would a revolution for the love of humanity look like?
Presenting a passionate case for the abolition of practices that cast women as property, Sex Robots is essential reading for students and scholars of robot ethics, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy of technology, sociology and related fields, as well as anyone concerned for the future of human relationships.”

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 24

bits’n’pieces

A (very) breeze(y) block alongside a curved stairs. Stoneware hardened and shaved now ready for a bisque firing. What will I do with these? Not sure yet.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 21

Jane Hirshfield

The Poet
She is working now, in a room not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be tempered by a shade, where the bulb's single harshness might dissolve, but it is not; she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them, though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in I cannot decipher. Her chair-let us imagine whether it is leather or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her have a chair, her shadeless lamp, the table. Let one or two she loves be in the next room. Let the door be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 17

My colosseum’esque bisque fired piece, skew-whiffed to perfection. A final firing will change it into an exposed-aggregate rough surface like the asphalt they used to have in schoolyards back when they didn’t care if you shredded your knee to bits when you tripped over playing netball.

A three tiered circular building where the tiers are narrower on each level like a wedding cake. Each of those levels has a series of cut out arches. The clay is a red (burnt orange really) colour.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 14

Stuff

A pin board in my kitchen full of postcards, gift cards, notes, and shards of drawings and business cards etc. My favourite is the brie cheese my niece sketched for me.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 13

Richard Siken

Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you're falling to the floor crying thinking, "I am falling to the floor crying," but there's an element of the ridiculous to it - you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you're on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn't paint it very well.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 13

Urban planning

Clay factory on a circular plate with a tree out front. Curved walls with arches lurking in the background.

A long clay cityscape panorama on a plate. A much shorter “mountain range” on a plate sits in the background.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 13

👁️👁️ in the studio today

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 12

John Ashbery

“Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night, Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you, Recognize you when he sees you, Give you the thing he has for you?”

God I hope so.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 10

Self-explanatory

Large brick building with two industrial arched windows and “THE SUBSTATION” written above them.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 5

Laundry window

A small sash window looking out from my laundry over a timber side fence, over the top of the side of my neighbour’s weatherboard house at a sunny blue sky. This window cannot open and never will as it is embedded in its frame. One of the many quirks in this old house.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 5

You’re right. A lot of my architectural pieces need a geometry brain, too. I’m struggling! Meanwhile, my mentor showed me this as an example 😍

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 4

I attempted to add something decorative to one of my basic pieces when three people said “what’s the banana about?” It’s not a banana! [I removed the banana]

A stoneware arch piece that is part of a collection of architectural pieces. Sitting precariously on top is a decorative curve shape (AKA “the banana”).

The “banana” has been removed and the piece is ready for its first firing.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 2

Me admiring the work of the (more) talented throwers in studio. I love pieces the most pre-firing.

Stoneware pots and plates patiently waiting for Sachiko (teacher) to load them into the kiln. Kiln loading is a Tetris skill. My curved wall sculptures are sitting at the back of the kiln, in the dark.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· Jun 1

Just made it into 1970.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 25

Captured

Shadow of my hand holding my iPhone taking a photo of an Egyptian artifact (tablet with images of a fight scene) at the National Gallery Victoria a few years ago.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 23

If anyone is looking for a place to shoot a scene for a horror film I’ve found it for you.

A tall steel picket fence with a disused industrial yard behind it wears a sign that reads: “NO HAWKERS ALLOWED” in a spooky font that should be called “Spooky” if it isn’t already. This place exists deep within an industrial area not far enough from where I live.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 22

Anxiety

An Artline doodle of multiple ghost-like faces (eyes closed mouths wide) with handless arms held up in the air, flailing for attention. This is what my anxiety looks like in sketch form.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 22

Carving is my therapy.

A stoneware clay vessel tipped upside down on newspaper begging to be carved. I used thick coils to make the vessel, let it try to greenware than carved out a foot. Tomorrow I will begin using a steel ruler to carve out chunks from its sides. Carving clay feels SO good.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 20

First attempt. Had a play with different ways to arrange them. Layering one behind the others looks surprisingly good.

Two mini stoneware clay breeze blocks. They’re still damp and need tidying. I love them. Giving myself permission to love my own work. Can’t wait to see them fired and potentially glazed.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 20

Which is your favourite?

A 5 x 3 grid of different breeze block designs.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 16

I am a huge fan of Ken Eastman’s work. HUGE.

A Masterclass in hand building, and in using layers of coloured slip and oxide, and in repeated firing. Three curved structures intersecting into one piece. I would love to be able to build brutalist, concrete-looking pieces like this.

See previous alt text. Piece viewed from another angle.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 12

Nasser Mufti 2011. Cat’s Cradle. Creating new kinds of people with our hands and minds engaged, together.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 12

The local oval

A local footy oval readying itself for night time practice. The base of a large gum sits to the left within a cyclone fence. A stunning pink night sky is seen above the gum trees surrounding the oval. Lights flood the oval and a small yellow clubhouse to the right.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 10

“Windscreen to bed to ship to shards, and then into story.” I am experiencing this now with a particular clay piece that seems determined to be something I hadn’t planned on it being. Odd that I came across this passage last night when reading. The Clay Gods are mentoring me through a book.

“While clay is still in a plastic state you can alter form, rethink. And so, sometimes pleasingly, you find the moments when pragmatism inter-venes. 'In the reign of Shên Miao, Jingdezhen was called upon to make a windscreen. It failed and turned into a bed six feet long and one foot high. And this changed again into a ship three feet long complete with tackle? This sixteenth-century note adds that The district and prefectural officials both saw it but hammered it to pieces not daring to forward it to the palace!
Windscreen to bed to ship to shards, and then into story.”

From Edmund de Waal’s The White Road — a book given to me to read by my clay mentor.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 10

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 9

Someone knocked one of my walls and damaged it. This stuff happens. I know where she lives.

A few of my curved walls, drying. The one at the front has had a piece snapped off in between two arches. I’m firing it anyway. It might end up looking okay.

Fiona Tribe@fionatribe· May 7

Walls around corners