A Common Thread

A COMMON THREAD 

SAM GOLD | HARRIET MCKAY 

Craft ACT Craft + Design Centre

Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre is supported by the 

ACT Government, the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy – 

an initiative of the Australian State and Territory 

Governments, and the Australia Council for the Arts – the 

Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body. 

CRAFT ACT CRAFT + DESIGN CENTRE 

Tues–Fri 10am–5pm 

Saturdays 12–4pm 

Level 1, North Building, 180 London Circuit, 

Canberra ACT Australia 

+61 2 6262 9333 

www.craftact.org.au 

Cover: Sam Gold, Stillness (Votive vessels series), 2020. 

Porcelain Limoges (gold on glaze). Photo: Sam Roberts 

Page 4-5: Sam Gold, Stillness (Votive vessels series), 2020. 

Photo: Sam Roberts.

A COMMON THREAD 

SAM GOLD | HARRIET MCKAY 

Craft ACT Craft + Design Centre 

14 May - 27 June 2020 

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A Common Thread 

Exhibition statement 

A Common Thread by emerging makers 

Sam Gold (SA) and Harriet McKay (ACT) 

is a contemporary and multidisciplinary 

collaboration encompassing textile painting, 

ceramic sculpture and installation. The 

exhibition is fundamentally concerned with 

how connection to a material connects us as 

humans. 

For Gold, the exhibition is in some ways a 

lament on the repetitious acts during the 

creation process and the ways time and 

space inform the artist’s use of materials and 

technique. Gold explores this notion through 

clay and has created sculptural forms through 

repetitive mark-marking embedded within the 

clay. Gold’s body is a tool, the clay becomes 

a site to document time and experiential 

narratives. 

McKay’s approach is based on a more 

intuitive process of editing and evaluating the 

compositional balance of her textile works much 

as a painter does when constructing a painting. 

Through the process of play and the practice 

of repetitive trial and error, McKay’s works are 

arranged, ordered, and moulded the same way 

a painter pulls and pushes the paint around the 

space of a canvas. 

‘It’s been an incredible opportunity to be able to 

work with my good pal Harriet McKay for this 

upcoming show at Craft ACT. We both work 

in different mediums, however the concepts 

underpinning our pursuit for making work 

crosses over many depths. It has been both 

inspiring and satisfying to find such a common 

thread that runs deep through our practices. 

Utilising our shared experience, the cathartic 

enjoyment of touch and by weaving tactile 

stories together across disciplines, we were 

able to share technical approaches to materials 

and philosophies which allowed our practices to 

deepen,’ said ceramic artist Sam Gold. 

Opposite: Harriet McKay, Marmalade (detail), 2020. Ink 

and felt on canvas. Photo: courtesy of the artist. 

Page 8: Opposite: Sam Gold, Stillness (Votive vessels 

series) #10, 2020. Cobalt hand dyed oxide fine.Photo: 

Sam Roberts 

Page 11: Harriet McKay, Maisy Mae, 2020. Ink and felt on 

canvas. Photo: courtesy of the artist. 

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Exhibition essay 

Catalogue essay: Dr Julie Bartholomew 

Touch and the haptic are fundamental 

aspects of material and process-oriented 

art practices. Intimacy between bodies 

and materials during long periods of 

repetitive physical engagement engenders 

artwork that is guided by the procurement 

of material knowledge, and processes 

that activate relational and often cathartic 

experiences. Sam Gold and Harriet 

McKay explore these processes of 

connectedness, a common thread aligning 

their distinct approaches to making. 

Gold draws attention to the labour of 

hands that manipulate threads of clay. 

Repetitive movements conjoin body, 

material and mind to form voluminous 

structures that lay bare the rhythms of 

making. McKay’s intensive processes 

of layering threads of naturally dyed felt, 

calico and raw canvas, form rich and 

worn textured surfaces. McKay’s fibrous 

collages disclose the reiterative hand and 

material interplay. 

Time is fundamental to Gold and McKay’s 

individual practices because both artists 

embrace repetitive crafting, as does 

Adelaide textile artist Sera Waters who 

refers to her own practice as ‘using time 

to make time …’ 1 Waters describes a 

repetitive body and object interaction as 

opening space for thinking about the world 

in a different way. Therefore, immersive 

making may be understood as activating 

an interconnection between body, material 

and mind. As philosopher Maurice 

Merleau-Ponty argues, all our senses 

are connected, both body and mind are 

needed to form experience. 2 

From the perspective of the viewer, art 

objects that reveal enduring acts of 

making can trigger a prolonged moment 

of consideration. The duration of the 

making and the artist’s time is often 

noticeably apparent, and the viewer 

reciprocates by spending time with the 

work as its fullness unfolds. 3 

Gold’s groupings of stoic, bulbous forms 

emanate a silent strength. The viewer 

is able to glimpse inside these vessels, 

through mostly small openings, that 

provide access to a hidden, mysterious 

inner space. For Gold, the vessel’s interior 

holds significance. Her new series ‘takes 

inspiration from seeds, what emerges 

from the internal space, what could 

grow from within…’. 4 The simplicity of 

Gold’s forms also allow for a greater 

consideration of the exquisitely coloured 

clays, oxides and traces of finger marks 

imprinted within each coil. 

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Form and colour are also a strong aspect 

of McKay’s paintings but in this instance, 

her reductive, coloured configurations 

redirect the viewers’ attention to rich and 

textural layers of naturally dyed felts, 

calico and raw canvas. Material narratives, 

their histories and memories are of 

great importance for McKay. ‘Felt holds 

resonance to me, the smell reminds me 

of my grandmas’ house in Adelaide and I 

cannot move away from the nostalgia it 

stirs in me - I love the weight of felt, the 

comfort of the material, and the warmth 

which it omits’. 5 

In our visually dominant world, the 

significance of mind, body, material 

relationships can be easily set aside, 

particularly during our current Covid-19 

crisis, when visual media has become 

our dominant channel for social 

connectedness and experiencing art 

objects. Gold and McKay’s exhibition 

is a dynamic reminder, a testament to 

the importance of knowing the world 

by physically navigating materials and 

allowing the hand to think through ideas 

of making. 

Dr Julie Bartholomew 

Ceramic artist and educator 

[1] Sera Waters, Crystal Palace Exhibition Interview, 

Flinders University City Gallery, July 8, 2013 https:// 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGGc--w-ic 

[2] E Grosz, ‘Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the 

Flesh’, D Olkowski and J Morely (ed), Merleau-Ponty, 

Interiority and Exteriority, Psychic Life and the World 

State, 1999, p.147 

[3] J Millner, ‘Conceptual Beauty: Perspectives on 

Australian Contemporary Art’, Artspace Visual 

[4] Arts Centre Ltd. Sydney, 2010, p.189 

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[5] Email conversation with the artist, 25 March 2020.

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Sam Gold 

Artist statement 

Gold explores the body’s faculty for 

Poiesis in order to achieve meaning and 

its capacity to reconcile with material to 

achieve catharsis. This processed oriented 

work is held together by the indexical trace 

of gesture; the repetitious markmaking 

which is embedded within the clay. Gold’s 

body is a tool, the clay becomes a site to 

document time and experiential narratives 

of what we birth, rise and give death to. 

Biography 

Sam Gold is currently a ceramic associate 

at the JamFactory who works primarily 

as a ceramic sculptor. Gold produces 

ceramic installations that were initially 

informed by her training as an Art 

Therapist and Furniture maker. 

Gold speaks of the ‘storiness’ of our lived 

materiality - The artefacts we imbue with 

meaning, with loves and losses, with 

hopes and desperations. The conferring 

of emotion, tales of times lived into the 

material, is an essentially human and 

revealing act. 

Opposite: Sam Gold, Stillness (Votive vessels series) 

#9 , 2020. Cobalt hand dyed oxide fine. Photo: Sam 

Roberts. 

Page 12-13: Harriet McKay, Sleepwalker, 2020. Ink on 

canvas. Photo: courtesy of the artist. 

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Harriet McKay 

Artist Statement 

It has been a rough year for both Sam 

and I, and making these works together 

has been a way of breathing through it. 

Playing with the weight and thickness of 

felt, hand-drying calico, colouring in with 

texta’s and hand-dying with natural inks 

were the methods which I used to make 

these works, all very slowly in my garden 

at home. Their softness reminds me of 

the grace and warmth of my grandmother. 

And I am reminded again, materials are 

significant for the histories they hold. 

Biography 

Harriet McKay completed a Bachelor 

of Contemporary Arts at the University 

of South Australia in 2018 where she 

was awarded the John Christie Wright 

Memorial Prize. In 2019 McKay curated 

her first exhibition ‘Essential Forms’ at 

GAGPROJECTS | Greenaway Art Gallery. 

Harriet is currently completing a Masters 

of Art History and Curatorial Studies at the 

Australian National University. 

Opposite: Harriet McKay, Peanut paste, 2020.Ink and 

felt on canvas. Photo: courtesy of the artist. 

Page 18-19: Sam Gold, Stillness (Votive vessels 

series), 2020. Cobalt hand dyed oxide fine. Photo: 

Sam Roberts. 

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List of works 

Sam Gold 

1 Stillness (Votive vessels 

series) #1, 2020, 

Scarva black stoneware 

H 125 x D 170 mm 

$462 


series) #2, 2020, 


H 90 x D 185 mm 

$385 


series) #3, 2020, 


H 180 x D 195 mm 

$539 


series) #4, 2020, 

Porcelain Limoges (gold on 

glaze) 

H 370 X D 260 mm 

$2769 


series) #5, 2020, 


glaze) H 210 x D 115 mm 

$1539 

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series) #6, 2020, 



$1847 


series) #7, 2020, 


glaze) H 310 x D 300 m 

$2616 


series) #8, 2020, 



$1693 


series) #9, 2020, 

Cobalt hand dyed oxide fine 

H 134 x D 200 mm 

$924 


series) #10, 2020, 

Cobalt hand dyed oxide fine H 

218 x D 140 mm 

$1231

List of works 


series) #11, 2020, 


H 130 x D 245 mm 

$1077 


series) #16, 2020, 

Warm stoneware 

H 110 x D 110 cm 

$231 


series) #12, 2020, 


H 150 x D 185 mm 

$847 


series) #17, 2020, 


H 110 x D 132 cm 

$231 


series) #13, 2020, 

Cobalt hand dyed oxide 

H 83 x D 138 mm 

$154 


series) #14, 2020, 


H 130 x D 190 cm 

$847 


series) #15, 2020, 


H 205 x D 120 mm 

$1154 

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List of works 

Harriet McKay 

1 Butter lamb, 2020, 

Ink and felt on canvas 

72 x 55 cm 

$300 

2 Maisy Mae, 2020, 

silk, silver, cotton thread 

42 x 32 cm 

$120 

3 Ashton’s house, 2020, 


62 x 62 cm 

$300 

4 Marmalade, 2020, 


152 x 102 cm 

$500 

5 Peanut paste, 2020, 


80 x 50 cm 

$300 

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6 Sleepwalker, 2020, 

Ink on canvas with felt 

150 x 150 

$700

Page 20 -21: Harriet McKay, Butter lamb, 2020.Ink 

and felt on canvas. Photo: courtesy of the artist. 

Page 22-25: A Common Thread installation view, 

2020. Photo: 5 Foot Photography 

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A Common Thread

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