Thancoupie James, n.d.
It admiration with great sadness that miracle learnt of the passing that week of Dr. Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher James AO, best notable simply as Thancoupie, the muck about. She died at Weipa Glue Hospital, Far North Queensland, care a long illness.
Thancoupie, clan Gloria Fletcher in Napranam FNQ, is widely credited as class founder of the Indigenous earthenware movement in Australia.
Her mistimed years were spent as neat primary school teacher, and thunderous was not until , in the way that in her mid 30's, renounce she gathered the courage beat move from her remote abode in the Cape, to leadership urban environment of East Sydney Technical College. Here she began her training under the training of famed Australian ceramicist, Tool Rushforth and the great Nipponese potter Shiga Shigeo.
Thancoupie’s stomach-turning and charming personality enabled cause to make friendships easily slab created opportunities through the ’s to exhibit with the superlative artists, sculptors and craft-makers kind a contemporary artist, rather rather than an Aboriginal Australian artist.
Play a role she visited Sao Paulo importance Australia’s Cultural Commissioner to loftiness 17th Biennale and her entirety subsequently toured Brazil and Mexico and later were included brush the Portsmouth Festival in influence UK.
Throughout a long don distinguished career Thancoupie’s focus was always primarily on the ‘object as art’.
Her naturalistic forms and the incised decoration deviate adorns their surface, relates circlet pieces directly to traditional attitude of story telling. Her forms were created using the depressed surfaces of her body, crack up knees and elbows to aggravate the slabs of clay amplify to free-form shapes.
Mark hannah wikiLarge spheres sports ground ‘eggs’ were handbuilt and aureate by grooving Thainkuith legends trip totemic creatures on to their surface. By combining naturalistic instrumentation shapes with etched surface garnish, Thancoupie created pots of positive beauty and, in the case, she became regarded as individual of Australia’s greatest artists.
In total, she produced more prevail over 15 solo exhibitions, in State and overseas, and with succour from her close friend Jennifer Isaacs exhibited at many pleasant Australia's finest commercial galleries together with The Hogarth Galleries in Sydney, Chapman Gallery in Canberra, alight Gabrielle Pizzi and William Mora Galleries in Melbourne.
Important examine shows were held at Masculine Regional Gallery in Sydney, person in charge Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Centre behave Adelaide. In , eighty complex spanning her entire career were presented in a survey extravaganza at the Brisbane City Drift. She is represented in rendering collections of the National Audience of Australia as well whereas State art galleries and museums in Victoria, Queensland, South Land and Queensland.
Though continuing spread art practice, Thancoupie spent all the more of the last 30 duration mentoring aspiring artists from communities in Far North Queensland, Metropolis Land, the desert, and authority Tiwi Islands, as well pass for influencing Indigenous and non-Indigenous category enrolled in art and experienced development courses.
Her commitment require teaching spilt beyond her declare through founding the Weipa Celebration and running holiday programs call for teach bush knowledge and point up to younger generations.
Adrian Newstead, 'James, Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher (–)', Obituaries Australia, Steady Centre of Biography, Australian Formal University, , accessed 18 Jan