Until the beginning of the twentieth century time was seen as absolute, flowing irretrievably in a forward direction never to return.  With Einstein's theories, time became "a more personal concept, relative to the observer who measured it" (1) while history became discontinuous and mediated through narrative discourse.  Each of the artists in this exhibition has chosen to engage with time and history through a number of discourses.

Stewart Scambler enters the historical debate through the established concept of essential beauty. He sees beauty as a way of transcending time and normal consciousness. Beauty is evident in his work through the simple elegance and refinement of his pots and the use of varied glazes. Scambler's pots are traditional but they all bear the imprint of his individual style. His message is that time may fly, but by adding a personal narrative to it the journey may offer some interesting detours and it may seem to last a little longer.

Christine Dyer slows time and makes her journey a little longer by using recycled materials. She collects old pieces of rope from the beach and combines them with ceramic forms. Each piece of rope has its own history. She slows down the flow of time by stitching strands of different histories together to make new narratives then adding these narratives to the mainstream traditional narratives of her craft. The process is reflected in titles such as Arrested Moments and This Mortal Coil.

The fibres in Dyer's work are infinitely varied in textures and colours. She describes them as "lurid, brash and indestructible".  Fibres from the ropes are combined with ceramic forms to create protective cocoons and capsules. They are 'teased' out to form thatched, embracing, colourful, circular frames around the entrances to these cocoons.

Dee Jaeger reworks the Eden myth with a series of ceramic sculptures entitled Daughters of Eve. Jaeger describes her 'girls' as "a cross between the Minoan Snake Goddess, Kali, Eve, Madonna (the 20th century one) and myself". Their purpose is to take up arms against the notion of women's collective guilt and their weapons are garden implements. This sounds like a serious engagement with the myth-making process but the message is delivered with playfulness and humour. The comment on the Eden myth and its historical debate made by these unselfconsciously capricious figures is to make fun of it.

Irene Poulton's series of Friars is also extremely whimsical and poetic. These are multi-fired raku figures dressed in long, flowing, religious habits of mostly black but with richly coloured highlights. The appealing feature of these figures is that their dignified demeanour is undercut by facial expressions that vary from fawning to quizzical to superior.

One of Poulton's strongest pieces is Maenad, a raku fired female half-figure, which speaks of elegance and power. The head is concealed behind a helmet topped with 'horns' in gold lustre. The Maenads were female followers of Dionysus and Poulton's figure suggests the excesses practised by the originals.

Bill Jeffrey's works take on a surreal quality. Fluid Mind, for example, stands on a pair of feet while a pair of arms reaches out to hold a small ladder. The ladder clearly indicates a passage between levels of consciousness and a means of transcending time. Subjective and relative time have been invoked as a means of travelling what Jeffrey calls his "mysterious road of excess in search of a reality beyond the object".

Another figure which seems to have resulted from this journey is Unfolding Thoughts. This is a female figure tapering upwards with its head 'unfolding' from its body. A series of stones is placed within horizontal 'folds' at intervals up and down the figure. It is a surreal, slightly disturbing figure, folding down on itself in search of an unconscious or subjective reality within.

Graham Hay references retrieving something from the flow of time. He is particularly interested in "the financial, social and institutional nature of art systems". In the work entitled Bubble, consisting of paper & 700 ceramicists and terracotta, Hay has formed pieces of paper inscribed with names into an enclosed 'kidney' shape. In Layers, 1500 colourful biro pens form a rough circle.  Both of these pieces comment directly on the fact that artists consciously create their own subjective narratives. The narratives here concern the right of artists to operate within discursive formation and not just in response to established discourses.

Hay's sculptural forms are all roughly circular in shape. In this way he invokes the idea that the circle as number and letter signifies closure, a nothingness and a return journey. But it is also a figure of completeness and perfection.

What all these artists have brought to the concept of time and its inevitable flight is that significance may be referenced by the past but should not be directed by it. Art is an ongoing, creative process, its narratives are continually expanding to include not just established traditions but also connections between the established and the new. It is a place of confrontation, appropriation, destruction and construction, and always pushing the boundaries of the subject and society as well as those of time and history.

(1)  Stephen Hawking (1988) A Brief History of Time, London; Bantam Books, p. 151