An old photograph shows 3-year-old Bronwyn Mohring dressed up in a red dress with a hood standing by a rocking horse.
"Mum had dressed me up like Red Riding Hood," Mohring says.
Decades later, that photograph has inspired the latest series of ceramics work Mohring, a life-long lover of horses, has created for her master’s exhibition at the Dunedin School of Art, "Ageing of Little Red".
"It’s how I tend to start out, with a photograph. I tend to start out with something personal, I don’t start out with some big theme or I can choke on how much information there is. If I start small, with something intimate and personal, then I can breathe. I know it’s real and I know I’m being genuine and things grow out of that naturally ."
She describes that as her "anchor".
"Then there is me as an older woman with my very elderly horse, so it became my horse in the photo, it became my anchor and it became the journey of this little Red Riding Hood to this ageing Red Riding Hood."
The idea developed further to not only be about ageing but about mourning and human-non-human relationships.
"It grew naturally out of this very personal beginning."
The image, which is inextricably bound to the Red Riding Hood fairy tale, also led her to explore the fairy tale phenomenon.
"When exploring the realm of fairy tale, another essential character emerged, that is the notion of the “big bad” or the “evil old”. This ominous character in so many fairy tales embodies fear and anxiety."
It has led to the creation of a series of clay "toy-like" figures based on the "Little Red" character as she gets older and her equine companion.
The "toys" are very different from what Mohring used to do. She has been a potter since completing a diploma in ceramics design in her early 20s but her work involved glazed pieces and was based around New Zealand birds and the relationship people have with wildlife.
A few years ago she decided to head back to art school and did a night course in print-making. Meeting the tutors and others started her thinking about challenging herself further.
So she did a postgraduate diploma as a way to find out if she wanted to commit to a master’s degree. At the end of that she produced “Toys: An Open Narrative” (2019) exploring childhood memories.
It reinforced her need for change and with a "dare" from a friend just the nudge she needed, Mohring signed up for the master’s course.
"It is what I wanted, a change not just in technique, which I did do, but developing new skills from working with clay and cast glass as well, new ways of thinking and a broader knowledge of where I sit in the community."
Mohring has continued to develop the themes of "toys" in her latest work and has changed just about every way she creates her work.
She has also incorporated cast glass so it has required her to learn a new skill and not an easy one.
"It’s all about process, process. It’s long and lengthy and you have to get it right. It’s quite unforgiving."
The glass replaces the glazing she used in the past.
"It is like taking the clothes off something and putting them aside. I call them naked clay. It contrasts the raw nature of the clay with the marks of the firing and smoke compared to this pristine semi-clear glass, I enjoy that contrast. The glass becomes something precious looking among the trees of ceramics."
She also likes the aspect of danger the glass brings to the figures, playing in to that "big-bad, evil" fairy tale notion.
"I’ve made glass toys so it’s sort of not what you should really play with, it’s a bit odd."
She has developed her own saggar technique (a ceramic box-like container used in the firing of pottery) drawing from historical and contemporary saggar techniques to find a way that met her needs.
As her work is about "me and my pony", Mohring wraps her figures in horse poo, leftover hay and seaweed — as her horse used to love hooning down the beach.
"A lot of this stuff is from my emotional connection to these pieces."
Having collected the horse hair from her horse when she was shedding, Mohring has used it to pack around the pieces in the saggar boxes.
"That won’t make any difference at all to the piece but it does when you are moving them around.
"It holds them in a nice nest so you feel secure when you are moving the saggar box from the table to kiln."
The other things like the horse poo, seaweed and hay will affect the firing.
"I’ve dealt with horse poo for a long time, I’m immune to horse poo. When it’s dry it’s quite a different material. They’re not meat eaters so it’s a lot less offensive, not nearly as hideous as it sounds, but it’s pretty visceral."
Mohring prefers to fire in a gas-operated kiln, finding it hard to trust computerised electric kilns to do what she wants, apart from the first "bisque" firing.
"A lot of it is very visceral. You go out and look at the flames coming out of the chimney, what the colour of the interior of the kiln looks like. There is much more involved in a gas firing than an electric firing where you set it and walk away hoping it works.
"I’d rather be checking every quarter to half hour to ensure the flame is doing what you want it to."
With gas though there is the environmental issue so Mohring does what she can to reduce usage by dropping temperatures and the amount she uses it.
"Traditionally, it is fired really high but now we are aware that gas is limited and can be more environmentally aware. I treat gas firing as a very precious thing that I’m allowed to do."
When the ODT talked to her, Mohring was in the process of the final firing of her pieces for the exhibition. The masters experience had been full-on and after a particularly bad firing just when lockdown hit, Mohring had taken a bit of time out to breathe.
"It’s been really intense. Like most people here, you get in here and you want to make [the] most of it. So you do throw yourself into it."
Once it is over she says she will take "a breath" but admits there are things she still has not had a chance to make so it will not be for long.
"I’ll rethink this and I’ll probably continue some of my themes here especially the mourning and human-non-human relationships and how we deal with mortality. I think I’ll keep doing that."
Being at a certain age, she says people should face these things — even if they do not want to.
"Sometimes it is cathartic to do it."
TO SEE
Bronwyn Mohring, "Ageing of Little Red", A masters exhibition at Dunedin Art School, September 6-8, 10am-4pm. Celebration closing Friday September 9, 5– 7pm
