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Gerry Wedd was born in 1957 and grew up in Port Noarlunga near the beach
south of Adelaide. He studied jewellery making, painting, drawing and ceramics in
which he has a Masters Degree, SA School of Art. In 1991 he began designing for
Mambo Graphics, beginning a relationship which continued until 2006. He has
worked in consultation with a number of community groups to produce graphics
and public artworks. Wedd exhibits nationally and internationally and has work in
many public collections including the Australian National Gallery, Manly City Art
Gallery, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Melbourne Maritime Museum, Powerhouse
Museum, Sydney and the personal collection of H.G. Nelson. In 1998 he received
the premier prize at the Sidney Myer Fund International Ceramics Award. In 2009
his work exhibited in the Havana Bienal, Cuba. Gerry Wedd has been the
recipient of a number of grants from Arts SA and the Australia Council. From
"For an Australian ceramicist, Gerry seems to me to be enmeshed in the ceramic influences of
eighteenth-century England, and maybe we can see this best of all through his use (and abuse?) of
the willow pattern on his plates and platters and saucers and jugs and so on and of course, on his
remarkable willow pattern thongs, for people who know that series: where something English is
literally imprinted onto something Australian. The blue and white willow pattern is pure kitsch: it
looks like it has some kind of authentic Chinese history, but in fact it was designed and
manufactured in England for the English, once again around the end of the eighteenth century:
giving the English a sort of kitsch orientalism that soon became incredibly popular worldwide.
Gerry’s work has taken up the Anglo-Chinese willow pattern and played with it in all sorts of ways:
making it local (like his ‘Waits Willow’ which pays tribute to a local surf spot) or his platter with
the kangaroo and the iconic tree with the spherical tips to the branches (and a faux-Chinese house
beside them), or that iconic willow-patterned thong series. "
Ken Gelder, opening Gerry Wedd's latest exhibition in Melbourne, 2011.
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