An enduring collaboration between Indian and Australian potters is featured on Creative Instinct this week.
Michael Shirrefs is on a journey to the outskirts of Delhi, to enter a labyrinthine series of pottery colonies.
In a city of more than 16 million people, the need for functional and ceremonial ceramic objects is endless. But being a potter, or Kumhar, in India is not a choice. In a world of traditional hierarchies and castes which dictate the lives of millions of individuals, families and communities, it’s a life that you’re born into.
However, in a modern India, this sort of collective fatalism is being questioned. The word ‘caste’ is increasingly out of favour, and things are changing … slowly.
Michael Shirrefs is heading to an area called Vikas Nagar—off the main drag, and into the narrow, dusty, unmarked streets—to find a potters’ colony called Kumhaargram.
It’s an endless chaos of auto-rickshaws and trucks and people and cows and dogs, and he’s looking for one person in particular—an Australian potter called Sandra Bowkett.
To listen to the program, click here …
Broadcast on Creative Instinct, ABC RN, on 14-4-2012
© 2012, Michael Shirrefs & ABC RN