A Memory : The Jan Feder Memorial Ceramics Collection

A collection of ceramics in honour of a former student will be exhibited at Federation University Australia’s Gippsland Campus. The Jan Feder Memorial Collection was chosen by former ceramics lecturer Dr Owen Rye and will be exhibited at the Switchback Gallery from 20 May until 9 July, 2015 Many of these pieces are works of national and international significance and would be highly sought after by museums and galleries in Australia and overseas. The exhibition will be opened by Dr Rye at 5.00 pm on Wednesday, 20 May, 2015 in the presence of Dr Harry Ballis, Campus Director, and Peter Pilven, well known ceramic artist and Head of the Arts Academy. In 1980 students at the then Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education raised a small sum of money to buy a few small ceramic pieces to form the basis of a study collection. They did this in memory of student Jan Feder, who died tragically that year. Beginning with a piece by the noted Australian potter Victor Greenaway, the collection grew over the next decade to become a collection of 63 major works by some of the world’s leading ceramic artists. The collection was packed away in a clay shed and forgotten altogether until director Tony Hanning, along with two technical assistants Russell Snelton and Neale Stratford, rediscovered the collection. When they unpacked the work they realised that it was a snapshot of world ceramics from the eighties and nineties, with major works by leading British, American and Japanese artists, as well as the cream of Australian ceramic artists. Image: Neale Stratford, The Jan Feder Memorial Ceramics Collectio