Michael Tannock’s boat forms occupy the border between drawing, painting and ceramics. The three-dimensional structures hang from the wall, utilizing the flat top surface as a canvas. Tannock paints and draws his text and imagery to build a complex network of signs and symbols.

Tannock’s authoritative drawing marks and painterly surfaces provide a technique and methodology more commonly associated with painters, yet the viewer is constantly reminded of his medium - terracotta clay. Tannock paints his surfaces in black and white slips, scraping back and incising the exterior to reveal the red hue of fired clay. “My current boat forms are also about clay; I am aware of the range of qualities that clay goes through in the construction drying and firing.” (1)

Subjects central to Tannock’s works are the land and its history. He constructs a pictorial vocabulary to convey his concern for geology, geography, language, time and place - the Here and Now. Through signs, symbols, maps and partial text Tannock provides specific reference to the Otago region. “Inscribed words hang amid the contour lines from maps to provide evocative impressions chosen from another time and place.” (2)

1. Artist statement, 2005.
2. James Dignan, “Navigating the Border between Pottery and Paint,” Otago Daily Times, 2003.