deborah halpern · 2015. 5. 21. · created date: 5/11/2015 3:26:03 pm

I PROFILE DEBORAH HALPERN

Steppingout of themainstreamto catcha visionled to alarger thanlife careerin ceramics

he outsider in modern mythol-ogy is a romantic character. [nreality, it is a tricky role to playwell. To revel in one's differ-onces. one must believe in theirintrinsic worth. Deborah Hal-pern, aged thirty-one. was, in

a sense, born an outsider. Her parents, Mel-bourne potters Sylvia and Artur Halpern,were among those who started the Potters'Cottage in marginal Warrandyte in the fif-ties. Artur was Polish and a trained engineer.According to his daughter, he ran his com-mercial pottery studio as he would have runan engineering workshop. Sylvia, who hassurvived her husband, is a studio potter whobroke free of secretarial chains.

They sent their daughter into town, tothe Establishment's Methodist Ladies' Col-lege. Later, determined not to be a potter, shestudied literature at university and journal-

ism at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Tech-nology. But her mind resented beingtrimmed. She abandoned the mainstream andduring the shake-out months established thatshe would never again work for anybody,never go on the dole and never again pay rent.

The mud-brick culture was in its hey-day. Halpern built a house with her boyfriendwith borrowed money and agreed to becomeher father's apprentice to pay the bills. He

152 Vogue AustraliaSeptember 1988

firing-

was working in the favoured earthy tones ofthe seventies, but in his cupboards he keptmulti-coloured pottery from a previous era.She took a paintbox and began to play withhis throwaways.

Halpern's father died and in 1978 sheand her mother held a joint exhibition at thePotters' Cottage. "In all of our eyes I was acompletely unknown quantity," she recalls."What I was doing didn't fit into anybody'sframe of reference." The response to herwork was overwhelming.

But the next year she left Warrandyteto study painting and go into showbiz withTony Edwards ("half of the Black CatCafe"). Their performing career culminatedat the Last Laugh. Halpern learnt how tocrack whips for that show, practising in avacant lot behind her St Kilda apartment.

When showbiz ceased to be fun. sheput forward an "outrageous and totallyimprobable" application to the AustraliaCouncil's Crafts Board for assistance with anexhibition of life-size ceramic furniture. Thatgrant was probably responsible for Halpernnow being considered one ofAustralia's live-liest and most ambitious exponents ofceramic sculpture.

Halpern is a rampantly fertile artist.Her shopfront studio in North Melbourneseeps into her living quarters above. There

are no undecorated spaces. The bathroomwalls are lined with her unmatched tiles, thekitchon cupboards are sketch pads, thebenches are laden with her painterly mugsand miniature ceramic furniture all func-tional, as a matter of principle for the potters'daughter. Paintings commissioned by hetdentist ("he insisted there be no teeth show-ing") lean against chairs. Whimsical cush-ions, the fruit of a .barren Chdstrnas, arestacked on couches. China, her dog, findsfloor space under her trestle desk.

We talk about Gaudi. the architecturalartist who was given the run of Barcelona; ofthe maverick Hundertwasser; and the re-markable partnership of Niki de Saint-Phalleand Jean Tingluey, who did the water play-ground next to the Pompidou Centre in Paris.These unaffiliated artists are her inspiration,

Halpern's vision is not being starved ofattention. Her work is sought after by privateand public collectors, and, inevitably, it hasbroken out of the intimacy of homeand gallery.

Her most recent creation, scheduledfor unveiling this month, will stand in monu-mental festivity in St Kilda Road, its threeceramic-clad legs planted in the murky moatof the National Gallery of Victoria. Thisprestigious commission has been largelyfunded by the Australian BicentennialAuthority. The gallery's curator of sculpture,Geoffrey Edwards, says it exposes an artform which is among the freshest, most vig-orous and most experimental in Australia.

After forebodings about tackling sucha grandiose project, Halpern persuaded her-self to "stop being such a coward, to pick itup, play with it, to make a commitment to itbeing the best tlring you have ever done".Perhaps it is the defence reflex of a fringedweller which prompts her to add: 'A lot ofpeople have trouble with my work because itis an outpouring of who I am. It is not a state-ment about the world . . . But there is some-thing in my work which touches the kid inpeople, and even ifthey disapprove ofit, theyoften laugh at it."

She reaches again for her book onHundertwasser and, as if searching for anappropriate scripture, opens it at a photo-graph of his rpiraculously whimsical house instaid, imperial Vienna. The existence of sucha house, in such an environment, feeds herresolve to let her playful imagination have itshead. "For me, to see Hundertwasser is verystrengthening, because I am always an out-sider. I can't be more sophisticated. I makewhat I am."

Her monument has two heads. Somesay that's better than one. Diana Bagnall