John Parker's ceramic work is highly regarded both within New Zealand and overseas. Working from clean austere form, his pieces have both elegance and power. Using both his skill as a ceramicist and the skills which he has developed through a long association with the theatre, the artist creates pieces which inhabit their surroundings in much the way that actors inhabit a stage. Individual pieces have their own characters, and when placed alongside each other, these personalities interact to create a sum greater than the parts.

While Parker has previously created pieces in a range of colours ranging from sheer austerity to flamboyance, in his current exhibition he has pared back to monochrome, producing pieces predominantly in leather-like matt black and white and hard shiny black. In doing so, he has allowed focus to rest on texture and form.

A rigid linearity of form has long been a feature of Parker's work. His geometries are those of industrial ceramics, at least in part informed by such objects as high-voltage insulators. As such, the utilitarian styles of early 20th-century art are often implied; the dominating curves of art deco and rigorous purity of neoplasticism are touchstones in many of Parker's forms.

Ceramics of Unease raises the stakes on Parker's creations. The gentle bubbling of the surfaces of his earlier work has increased in pieces such as Shiny Black Spotted Bottle, suggesting water about to boil, and has broken the surface in the "Gobo" pieces, named for an element of theatrical lighting. The potentially phallic form of the artist's conical bottles is drawn into perspective by the title of his "Penetration" works. Drawing inspiration from the darkly surreal erotic nightmares of H. R.  Giger, these pieces become as if props for a science fiction film¹, or fetishistic items for adult play.