Exhibition co-curator David Craig said more than 100 ceramic pieces by potter Barry Brickell, of Coromandel, would be displayed in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition ''Barry Brickell: His Own Steam'' from Saturday.
Mr Craig said his favourite work in the exhibition was The Waitaki Refrigerating Company Mural.
The 2m-high and nearly 5m-long ceramic mural was made on commission in 1981 and usually hangs in the Alliance Group head office in Invercargill.
''To me, that is his greatest work ever. It's just an extraordinary detailed ... [labour of love].''
It details the operations of a freezing works and the meat industry.
Gallery director Cam McCracken said he brought the exhibition from the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt because he believed Dunedin audiences would have a strong connection to the work.
The works were drawn from Brickell's collection, loaned from museums and the gallery also borrowed several pieces from private collections in Otago and Southland.
The exhibition included pieces from when Brickell worked with Ralph Hotere in Port Chalmers in the 1970s, Mr McCracken said.
Brickell was ''a joker with a quick wit'' and the ''humour and sexuality'' in his work was evident in his ''spiromorphs'' - large-scale spiral creations built from coiled clay.
Brickell was due to arrive in Dunedin on Thursday and would hold public programmes, including a wheel demonstration.
The exhibition runs until March.
