Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, who has been based in Ipswich QLD since 2000, is one of Australia's most renowned ceramic artists. Her works are represented in the collections of galleries and museums worldwide, she has featured in countless exhibitions and has also inspired a school of followers.

Like many of her peers, Hanssen Pigott was attracted to Korean and Chinese ceramics. She traveled to Japan and also worked with the influential British potters Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew. A significant departure occurred in her work when she began exhibiting her porcelain vessels in tightly prescribed 'still life' arrangements. Painters have been depicting vessels in still life paintings for centuries and some sculptors explored the idea of 3-D still lifes in the 20th century, but for a potter it was a surprising development. It allowed her work to transcend the limits of function and enter into a dialogue with the history of art.

The term 'still life' intimates a cessation of time and accordingly introduces a fourth dimension. This, combined with the set arrangements - forcing a consideration of the relationships between the objects in each group or 'family' as Hanssen Pigott terms it - opens the door to metaphysical readings of her work.

Still life with 2 cups, is an example of the style of work for which Hanssen Pigott has now been acclaimed for decades. Simple, but in a refined modernist rather than rustic sense, the beautifully executed wood-fired vessels pay homage to the sensory domestic pleasures offered by the perfect teapot or cup.

Ken Thaiday Snr. was born in 1950 on Erub (Darnley) Island in the Torres Strait. He is a senior indigenous artist renowned for his dance masks or 'dance machines'. His father was a dancer and sculptural headdresses played an important role in the traditional Torres Strait Islander ceremonies of his youth. However, Thaiday now produces contemporary interpretations of the theme. He is inventive in his use of materials and frequently adds modern plastic components, plywood and paint to traditional natural materials such as bamboo and feathers.

Thaiday commonly depicts native fish and birds in his work, but he is best known for his shark headdresses. A shark is his key totemic animal and in his culture certain sharks are associated with law and order, so respect forms part of the inspiration for his headdresses.

Hammerhead shark headdress is designed to be worn during traditional dances, with the dancer able to control the movement of the shark and open and close the jaws by pulling the strings. The white feathers around the jaws represent foam breaking around the shark's mouth as it feeds, adding to the sense of dynamic movement and power.

Chris Trotter assembles sculptures from materials found in the 'graveyards' of the industrial age, where the grand aeronautical or agricultural machines which once represented the future rust into oblivion. Trotter carefully selects components, often those marked by age and wear, and recycles them into animals, fossils or alien creatures. His intimate understanding of structure and movement, combined with a naturalist's eye, imbues his works with energy and the essence of the subject.

Sparky II, from Trotter's 'biomechanic' series, evokes the comic nobility of the Daschund. The work also portrays a sense of playfulness in the cartoonish quality of the dog's expression and its invitation to the viewer to interact with him, to throw 'the bone' - which in this case is a spanner that may have been used to create him.

Each of Trotter's sculptures contains mechanical parts from different industries and discovering and identifying these, such as the spark plug which gave Sparky II his name, provides a level of humorous interaction with the work.

William Robinson was born in 1936 and studied art in Brisbane. He taught art for many years and continued to paint regularly. The French painter Bonnard had a major influence on his work, which is evident in Robinson's spatial inventiveness, brilliant use of colour, and ability to imbue everyday objects or scenes with a deeper significance.

Robinson's early paintings depicted domestic interiors but after moving to a farm in Birkdale in the early 1970s the farmyard creatures he acquired inspired a new body of work. Chookyard is from this period and it captures the comedy, chaos, colour and individual characters of the chookyard. However, Chookyard is also a beautiful composition that reveals the unique mesmeric rhythm and the use of multiple viewpoints that Robinson has become famous for in his later landscapes.

Chookyard was entered into the inaugural City of Ipswich Acquisitive Art Competition in 1982 and, as one of the winners, became part of the city's art collection. Shortly after this Robinson's work achieved national acclaim and he is now ranked highly amongst Australian landscape artists. He has had a major retrospective exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery and his work is represented in the collections of State and national galleries. Robinson has also won several prestigious art awards, including the Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1987 and 1995, and the Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 1990 and 1996. In June of 2007, Robinson was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Queen's Honours List for his service as one of the country's most distinguished landscape artists. 

This water jug was made at Roger's and Co. pottery in Ipswich during the late nineteenth century. In Ipswich this item is called a 'foreigner' - a colloquial term used to describe objects made for personal use by workers, often illegitimately on company time, at the city's various industrial sites.

More broadly known as 'workman's pieces', such items reflect the creativity and ingenuity of everyday people. Numerous foreigners are known to have been produced at Ipswich potteries and brickyards. Naive in style and often quite opportunistic in construction, they were made from surplus clay and slipped into the kilns alongside the commercially produced items. This water jug was made by pressing clay into a mould taken of an English-made jug. The maker has then added his own patriotic decorations by hand, including an unofficial Coat of Arms and the words 'Advance Australia'.

The jug is reputed to have been found precariously perched on the windowsill of an old timber house in Ipswich by a private collector. Still in use, the jug had remained in the one household since it was brought home from the pottery in the 1890s.

The Ipswich Free Handicap Cup was awarded to the winner of the fifth race in the Ipswich Christmas Races held on 26 and 27 December 1866. The Free Handicap Race was open to all horses and run over a distance of two miles. The winner of the event 'by a length' had their name engraved on the cup: 'Won by Jibboom, Owner: Mr A Nicoll'.

Valued at 40 Guineas in 1866, the raised shield-shaped sterling silver cup is flanked by two cast silver scrolled handles, has a parcel gilt interior and is richly decorated in repousse with garlands of English oak, riding boots, crops, stirrups and a horseracing scene. It is of English manufacture and was presumably acquired for the Ipswich Turf Club and engraved locally. The maker's mark, the initials 'RMEH' in a quatrefoil, is struck into the cup's outside upper rim and reveals the manufacturer to be Martin Hall & Co. Sheffield, England. Other marks include, in order: a lion passant, the assay mark for sterling silver; the letter 'W' in a square, indicating the year of manufacture to be 1864/65; a crown, the town mark for Sheffield; and a duty mark, the erased head of a young Queen Victoria.

It is not surprising that an English firm made the cup because locally-made silver was unobtainable in Queensland at the time; the State's first working silversmith, Charles Allen Brown, did not establish his business in Brisbane until the early 1870s.

The cup's substantial proportions amply illustrate the wealth and prosperity of the township of early Ipswich, which at one stage rivalled Brisbane to become the State's capital. Thanks to their extraordinary generosity of the Ipswich CEO's network and the Ipswich Arts Foundation, the cup is now proudly on display at the Ipswich Art Gallery where it stands as an eloquent testimony to the City's proud sporting past.

Biggingee Sorabjee Poochee immigrated to Australia from India in the early 1860s. In 1863 he settled in Ipswich and established a studio on the corner of Bell and Union Streets specialising in studio portraits.

Poochee's business was well patronised by Ipswich, however his panoramic portrait of the rapidly growing town was commissioned by an English printing firm. It was to be copied as a lithograph and reproduced in a book titled Short Sea Route to Australia. This print of Panorama of Ipswich was presented by the photographer to the Mayor of Ipswich in 1865.

Many of Ipswich's well-known heritage landmarks are clearly visible in Poochee's panorama, including from left to right:

Goolawan, the imposing mid-Victorian Cribb family residence on Denmark Hill, Limestone Hill covered in scattered tailings from the limestone kiln of the convict era St Stephen's Presbyterian Church Claremont, a late Georgian homestead by the river School of Arts building (today the Ipswich Art Gallery) the original iron railway bridge built in 1865 to carry Queensland's first railway across the Bremer River and link Ipswich with Grandchester.

Margaret Olley paints still lifes almost exclusively. Although this genre of painting has remained out of fashion in the art world for long periods of time, Olley is renowned for pursuing her own vision irrespective of current trends and fashions.

Olley is widely traveled and the influences of great European masters from Vermeer to Bonnard are evident in her work. However, the intense colour of her palette is drawn from sub-tropical Australia. In Still life 1986 the flowers and fruit seem to glow against the background and are infused with energy. This celebratory painting reveals Olley's mastery of colour and pictorial composition and was awarded the Aberdare Art Prize for still life at the Ipswich Regional Art Gallery in 1986.

Born in Lismore in 1923, Olley has enjoyed an illustrious career and is widely regarded today as one of Australia's most respected and prolific painters. She has won numerous awards and was recently given a major retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (1997).

Ipswich artist Davida Allen was born in Charleville, Queensland in 1951 and studied art in Brisbane. Betty and Roy Churcher were influential teachers and encouraged Allen to develop what was to become her distinctive expressionistic style.

Allen was inspired by Expressionist painters, such as Emil Nolde, and the Fauves, a group of artists led by Henri Matisse whose works were characterised by brilliant color, expressive brushwork and a kind of primitive wildness. These influences are evident in Allen's use of dark jagged forms, floating figures, truncated limbs and a paint surface so thick in parts that it is almost sculptural.

My father-in-law hosing his celtus trees is a portrait of Ipswich doctor John Shera. It won the prestigious Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1986 but is far removed from formal or traditional portraiture of distinguished figures. In Allen's portrait, her father-in-law is wearing shorts and is depicted as an old man who appears vulnerable and exposed but glares at the viewer in a confronting manner.

Allen describes the process of creating paintings as torturous, as being 'like giving birth', and this painting's surface was actually beaten with branches from John Shera's garden. Stylistically Allen's work reflects the painting process and it also reveals the influences of her catholic education and ongoing interest in the grand themes of birth, life and death.

Vida Lahey was born in Pimpana, Queensland in 1882 and enjoyed a highly successful career as a painter. She exhibited extensively in Europe and Australia and is considered to have made a contribution to the introduction of Modernism in Australia. She also taught art in Brisbane for many years, wrote an important book on art in Queensland and was involved in raising funds for the acquisition of works for the Queensland Art Gallery. In 1958 she received an M.B.E. (Member of the British Empire) in recognition of her services to art.

Through her career Lahey became increasingly drawn to still life flower paintings. It was a theme she returned to frequently and she identifies her childhood in the country and her father's love of flowers as inspiration for this. During childhood her family was separated for a period of time and her father would bring bunches of wildflowers when he visited. However, it was also the opportunity to explore composition, texture, form and her love of colour that attracted her to the genre.

Flower study c.1930 features daisies, nasturtiums and alyssum lilies and it reveals the artist's modernist influences in the simplified forms and background textiles.