Interview: Vipoo Srivilasa on The Art Show, ABC Radio

In August 2024, Vipoo Srivilasa was a guest on The Art Show, ABC Radio National. He talked to host Daniel Browning about his life and practice, including his initial art studies in Bangkok, his culture shock moving to Melbourne, and how cockroaches played a part in him becoming one of Australia's most successful ceramic artists. He also talks about his major solo show re/JOY at Australian Design Centre from 22 November 2024 to 19 February 2025, which then goes on national tour.

Daniel Browning, The Art Show presenter: His maxim is positivity, accessibility and beauty and it’s hard to argue with that - an ethos that, deep down, most of us crave in art. Vipoo Srivilasa’s ceramic sculptures are playful, technically brilliant creatures that make peace signs and spout flowers, and generally only in two colours, white and blue, with a bit of gold.

But if you think that’s a simple-sounding premise, don’t underestimate the power of unlimited joy. He wants to bring happiness to dark times, to sparkle in the face of austerity and befriend the viewer standing alone, looking at his work for the very first time.

Vipoo’s own experience of intense loneliness and his community activism has influenced his idiosyncratic work, which he pulls off with a highly skilled technique that has been nurtured over decades.

It’s Vipoo’s year, with three exhibitions including the country’s richest craft award under his belt. This is an artist inspired by his Thai culture, queer art and his Buddhist faith.

Daniel: You grew up in Bangkok but were originally more interested in dance as a teenager?

Vipoo: I decided to be a professional Thai classical dancer but when I arrived at the school there was no one on the information desk so I couldn’t get the application form. We waited for a bit, then my mother took me across the road to the College of Fine Art, so I got in there and never looked back. But I think that original love of dance still comes through my ceramics work with the gold and the jewellery, like the Thai dance costumes with all the sparkles and sequins.

How did you discover you were good with your hands and ceramics became more important to you?

At the College of Fine Art it was quite fashionable to be poor. If you were rich student you wouldn’t fit in, so everyone was pretending to be poor even if their parents had money. To be rich you had to make money for yourself not just asking for it from your parents, so all the students tried to make something to sell to get extra income. My thing was to make fashion accessories, like earrings and necklaces.

Back then I used air-dried clay, like modelling clay now but we didn’t have it back then, we had to make it ourselves. We used dry bread, powdered then mixed with PVC glue. It turned into a clay-like material, so I could make things like starfishes or hearts and turn them into earrings, very big and colourful and bold, and I did really well, customers really liked them.

But about six months later they contacted me and said we really like your earrings but so do the cockroaches. Because they were made from bread, the cockroaches were eating my work.

That’s when I decided I had to find a different way to make my jewellery. I thought ceramic would be a good material because it’s similar to air-dried clay, so that’s how I decided to study it at university.

So cockroaches made you switch from PVC glue and bread?

Yes, I have to thank the cockroaches, I got a really good career from them. I never kill them at home, I just catch them and put them outside, because I owe them.

They were important life skills learnt at Fine Art College?

Yes, sometimes I wish I had studied harder and paid more attention in drawing class, I think it’s fundamental for art, good drawing skills, but I was making too much fashion jewellery, so didn’t pay attention in class.

So you were good at the business side?

Yes, looking back, the jewellery was like owning a small business. My mindset and my skill of how to deal with clients and consignments learnt when I was young, so when I became a full-time artist it came back to me and I can deal with the business side better than most artists I think.

You arrived in Australia 1995 and studied ceramics at the University of Tasmania. Was that a culture shock?

I started with six months English language study at La Trobe University, and my first week in Melbourne was total culture shock. In Bangkok food is everywhere but in Melbourne I was so hungry the first day because I was expecting the same, to go out at 5-6pm and find some street food but there was nothing at all!! Everything was closed, where am I going to eat? I think it’s much better now.

When I started doing my postgrad degree at Monash, I volunteered at Craft Victoria and the Victorian Ceramics Association to get my feet in the art world and get to know people, it was really good way to start my art career.

Networking is very important, who you know and who you become familiar with. By volunteering I also learnt to understand the system, eg with Craft Victoria, understanding how it worked, the consignment concepts. I learnt about mailing lists, how to use a bank account to get paid, all the practical things you don’t learn at university.

When I lived in Thailand I didn’t really value my own culture until I moved to Australia, then I realised my Thai culture made me different from others, and that it’s a good thing. But living in Australia for almost 30 years, it’s really hard now to tell which part is Thai and which part Australian because it’s melded quite a lot. So the gold could be from Thai culture but Australia also has the gold rush and love of gold too, so it’s blended together.

Last year you made a call out to overseas-born Australians for broken ceramic pieces, but things that were loved and kept. You also wanted to know the stories behind them, how they were broken and why they were kept. What happened to that project?

It’s already done and will be revealed at the Australian Design Centre in November. I like to work with stories, a story is a powerful thing, and I want to highlight immigration. When people thing of immigrants they have a certain type of people in their head and this project is to show there are different kinds of migrants here in Australia and not everyone comes here because of sadness or their country is not very good. People come for different reasons.

So I started by asking people to submit their object that they love but it broke, then they tell me a bit of the story of the object and how they moved to Australia, and I chose seven that resonated with my experience and I liked the stories, then I talked to the donor and create artworks around the piece and the stories.

I’m not fixing the broken works but integrate them into my sculptures. This is the most ambitious project I have done because each sculpture is 1.5 metres tall, so they are the largest I’ve ever made.

Even though ceramics are more popular since Covid and can demand more time than a painting, there are not so many collectors in the art market. How did you get into selling?

I got a lot of support from the ceramics community when I started, they bought my work and also I sell my work through galleries only, not direct, and the gallery helps move my work, they have the connections and the client list. But when I first started, after doing my Masters degree in Hobart, I moved to Adelaide to be at the Jam Factory for one and a half years and I learnt about finding your market niche.

At the Jam Factory, everyone was doing domestic ware and smaking huge money from selling bowls and plates so I tried to do the same, I thought that was the way to make money. But somehow my designs where not wanted, whatever I made, bowls, plate, vase, they were not selling. So the Head of the Wholesale Department Pauline said why don’t you just make something you really like, it doesn’t have to be functional, whatever you feel like making. So I made a set of teapots that you can’t put tea in, they looked like sea creatures with tea cups and a milk jug and it flew off the shelf! And I was so amazed, to make an imaginative one-off piece that doesn’t have to be functional, that’s when I found my niche. Then I tried to sell the same piece at the Sunday market at the art centre but it didn’t sell so I realised it needed to be in a gallery setting to be fully appreciated.

Tell me about the pivotal meeting with a curator at a Sydney gallery?

My career has had two turning points. One in 2008 when I met with Aaron Seto, the head of 4A Gallery in Sydney at the time, then he went to QAGOMA in Brisbane, then Indonesia, now in the US. He said he loved my work and wanted to give me a show, but only if I could present them without a plinth. Back then ceramics were always on the white plinths and he didn’t like that, wanted to challenge me.

So that completely changed my practice and what I proposed to him was a dinner party. I thought of how ceramics are used, with bowls and plates people can actually touch it and it matched my Buddhist philosophy of touch, see, smell and taste so I proposed the project Taste, Touch, Tell.

I made a 105-piece dinner set, then cooked a five-course Thai dinner, then served it on my dishes, my work, this way people are not just seeing my work but can touch it, feel it, hear it, and each meal I served I told the story of my moving to Australia, and talked about the coral reef.

It was the food I used to eat when I was young and makes me miss Thailand. It was quite a fun project, so I learnt that clay is not just a material to make sculptures, it could be a material to tell stories.

Another pivotal moment was with Samantha Littley, QAGOMA curator, she put me into Asia-Pacific Triennial three years ago, the last one. I had done a lot of work but this was the first time I worked with a full team of museum staff so from one idea I could just expand it to a really, really big installation. Worked with the exhibition designer and fabricators, worked with Samantha as a curator, she pushed me to go to the next level. It made me realise I have a lot more to offer, so she helped me grow as an artist.

Tell me about Re/JOY at ADC?

It’s a play on words because the ceramic object is broken, so the joy of having it disappears when they give it to me but then they come back and see their broken ceramic become something else so they are happy again.

So for instance the owner of teapot, how did they respond?

I don’t know, they haven’t seen them yet! I was thinking, do I send a photo now or do I wait for them to come and see it in person in the show? I like the second idea better, so they can feel the impact of the work. With a photo you can see the work but not the size of the piece. When you come to the show and stand in front of it, there’s more impact than seeing it in a photo.

Animals are often a theme in your work, you made a series about cats and Thai folklore, Eleganza Extravaganza, which focusses on the character of Nang Maew, who might actually be queer?

Nang Maew translates as Cat Woman, it’s part of a Thai folk tale. When I first saw Nang Maew it was in the traditional cultural dance, maybe that’s why I was drawn to Thai classical dance. It was probably first time I saw men in drag. This character is supposed to be Cat Woman, but it’s played by male performers, and it requires a lot of make-up and the acting very accentuated and over the top. Now looking back maybe this role was made for queer performance, but back then we didn’t have the word queer, we just had the performers. Really the way they act is like RuPaul’s Drag Race now, so that’s why the exhibition title is Extravaganza.

Your current exhibition your work’s not in it! In Generation Clay: Reimagining Asian Heritage you have brought 14 Asian artist together to make work in that palette of blue and white, how did that happen?

When I was approached to do this show by Penny the curator at Bunjil Place, I thought it was a great opportunity to give back to the community. When I started my career I had a lot of support from older generation artists who gave me the opportunity to do an artist talk or a platform to show my work, so I was thinking I can do the same. I feel like I’m in a position to give back so I thought of maybe doing an Asian-Australian ceramics show because I haven’t seen it done before.

I had a list of artists I like to work with but even though I’m in the ceramics industry I don’t know everyone, so I put out a call on my Instagram asking if anyone knows a ceramic artist with Asian background. I had about 200 comments, almost 200 artists I don’t know of, so I looked at their Instagram and made a long list then narrow it down to 14 artists. They all make different kinds of work, I thought if you put all their work together it’s not cohesive, so I asked them to create new work using the blue and white theme, partly because it reflects my own work, partly because blue and white is trans-cultural everywhere in the world, so it visually tied the exhibition together.

Your work is also political and spiritual, but maybe its beauty and loveliness can blur the message? Do you feel confident people can drill down and understand the message?

No I don’t to be honest. I put my work out there and it depends on the experience of the viewer. Some will connect and understand, some will say your work is so beautiful I love it. Just that level of connection makes me happy. I learnt a long time ago that I can’t control what people think or see in my work, I can only control what I can make so once the work is on show I try not to think too much.