Additional Info
A contemporary jug
Linda Valley jug by Laura Veleff
Linda Valley and Iron Blow are a part of Laura Veleff's ongoing series that explores sites of past mining activities- sites of plunder but also of regenerating beauty. Having moved to the Central Victorian Goldfields, Dja Dja Wurrung Country, in 2021, Veleff became interested in the enduring geophysical and visual impact of extraction practices on the landscape and how such industries are implicated within her own pottery-making. Earlier this year she visited Tasmania’s Queenstown- another site that has been dramatically altered through past mining, referred to by locals as a ‘moonscape’, owing to the completely denuded mountain ranges that surround the town. And while the ‘upside down’ Goldfields and the ‘moonscape’ of Queenstown are linked through their shared history of environmental destruction, they are also sites of enduring natural beauty and rehabilitation. From these disused sites, Veleff collected materials such as ochre, slate, clay deposits, and rocks, and used them to make her own glazes, slip, oxides, and clay bodies. These particular works have been adorned with iron oxide slip gathered from the rocky outcrops of Linda Valley, within which the Iron Blow is situated. There is something immeasurably valuable when materials are taken personally from the land and processed by hand in the making of work. This time and labour-intensive process deepened her knowledge of the geo/physical area, and it also gave her a real and immediate sense of the finite and precious nature of the materials that are intrinsic to what is essentially an extractive practice.
These pieces therefore hold within them a narrative of the site; a story of its past and enduring present. They also serve to embody Veleff's profound respect for natural materials, honouring those that are left following what is of perceived value has been taken- and the conflict that exists within the practice of extraction itself, implicating her own role as a potter- taking from the land to make her work.