Football culture - St Kilda versus Collingwood

Ntaria (Hermannsburg) is a community with rich artistic origins. In the 1960s, inspired by the luminous watercolours of the renowned local artist Albert Namatjira, artists in the community 125 kilometres west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) began making small terracotta clay sculptures.  The artists’ early creative endeavours evolved into the distinctive rounded

jars with moulded lids that are now characteristic of the Hermannsburg Potters. 

Made using the hand-coil technique, Coulthard’s round-bellied pots are vibrantly painted to illustrate the local natural environment, animals, food sources and day-to-day Arrernte life. In her work Football culture – St Kilda versus Collingwood, Hayley Coulthard playfully expresses her love of football by sculpting in clay a game between two Victorian teams. Crowning the pot is an anthropomorphic lid, which shows a Collingwood player soaring over the crowd to mark the footy, above an opponent. With moulded outstretched arms that extend from a painted body, the St Kilda player also leaps for the ball but is outdone. The other competitors are rendered in full panoramic view across the body of the vessel.

Coulthard’s clever combination of sculpture and painting enables the viewer to be actively in and out of the football game, observing the spectacle from the position of both the player and the spectator.

Gloria Strzelecki, Associate Curator of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art