Australian Studio Potter.
Australian studio potter and teacher Moon Milton studied pottery at Sandison Pottery in Brisbane and worked with Australian potter Harry Memmott in the late 1950s. He was Senior Instructor in Pottery at Brisbane Technical College from 1962–68 and Head of the Pottery Department at the South Australian School of Art from 1969–74. In 1966 he was the subject of the monograph ‘Focus on Milton Moon’, by Dennis Pryor.
Moon has received numerous awards, including a Foundation Churchill Fellowship in 1966 (representing Australia at the 1st World Craft Congress in Montreaux, Switzerland), a Myer Foundation Geijutsu Fellowship to study in Japan in 1974, an Advance Australia Foundation Award in 1992 and a five year Australian Artists Creative Fellowship in 1993. In 1984 he was made a member of the Order of Australia for services to the arts. Moon is well known for his large wheel-thrown stoneware platters and vessels inspired by the Australian landscape.
Artist’s Statement
In this, my seventy-ninth year, over fifty of which I have been a potter, I remain concerned, if a little obsessed, with the challenge of making pots, which although belonging to a ceramic tradition of some eight thousand years or more, are undeniably and uniquely Australian. With all my changes of expression this has remained constant.
The initial creative inspirations were drawn from the beauty of the coastal areas of Eastern Australia and from the mountain areas of the Great Dividing Range which stretch from North Queensland to the extreme South of Victoria. But the most lasting inspiration has come from the inland of Australia, more particularly from the Gammon and Flinders Ranges and from the Olary Uplands of South Australia, and more recently from the Pilbara and Kimberley areas of Western Australia, where dating of the rock engravings place them as being amongst the oldest marks left by human-kind anywhere in the world.
All parts of Australia are full of an ancient history stretching back through time and which today, despite white settlement, somehow still survives in legend and ritual. If it is the case that these legends do now only exist, in some muted half-life there is still the sense that they remain as a very powerful spirit presence. It is impossible to ignore the feeling that this country re mains inhabited by the past. For me it is also impossible not to creatively respond to the echoes of the past, even if only through the somewhat vague process of inspiration and distillation.
Whether one searches the horizons of these vast bare rugged lands or views the far vistas from the great mountains of the High Country the same spirit remains. To understand this spirit, even a little, is a privilege but to try an express it is a compelling endeavor. For me to be a truly Australian artist it is something that cannot be ignored.