Speakers for this event

• Anna Maas

  Anna Maas

  Skepsi Gallery Anna Maas, director Skepsi Gallery (formerly Skepsi on Swanston), established in 2000, specialises in Australian Contemporary Ceramics, exhibiting and promoting work by prominent and promising early career artists. After the first ten years of operation from a city location, Skepsi Gallery now does things differently, presenting exhibitions at different locations in Melbourne. These include Montsalvat, Malvern Artists' Society, Manningham Art Gallery and Whitehorse Artspace. The focus is on keeping ceramics in the public eye - sharing the beauty and the knowledge of this amazing Art Form. In recent years, Skepsi Gallery, with the generous assistance of philanthropists has published several comprehensive catalogues for important major showcase exhibitions. Anna Maas, Director of Skepsi Gallery has over 35 years experience in the Arts, her specialty is ceramics. Skepsi Gallery, in operation since 2000, has presented over 200 major group and important solo exhibitions, informative workshops and Artist studio visits. Anna is an approved valuer for the Australian Cultural Gifts Program, she specialises in Australian Studio Ceramics - 1945 to present. Anna is a consultant for ceramics, has been a judge, guest curator and speaker. *Skepsi - a Greek word for thought and reflection - epitomizes the process underlying the creation and appreciation of art.

• Anne Mette Hjortshøj

  Anne Mette Hjortshøj

  Anne Mette Hjortshøj graduated from the ceramic department at The Royal Danish Academy on Bornholm in 2000. To improve her skills and gain further experience, she spent eighteen months working in Wales with the potter Phil Rogers and in the USA, Australia and Korea. Since then she has exhibited and worked internationally but spends most of her time making work to fire in her two chamber wood kiln on the Danish island of Bornholm. click here to go to Anne Mette’s website

• Ben Richardson

  Ben Richardson

  I was born in Tasmania, and completed a Bachelor of Economics degree at the University of Tasmania in 1972. Soon after I found myself working with resin and fiberglass on the long curves of surfboards while playing in the ocean, before undertaking non-qualifying studies in ceramics at the School of Art in Hobart finishing in 1981. Those studies were really about finding somewhere that could feed my increasing passion for clay and wheel-forming and fire. After finishing I established Ridgeline Pottery focusing on a strong commitment to contemporary place-based craft making - with an emphasis on exploring the potential of local materials gathered and then processed in the workshop. I combined my workshop making with part-time teaching for many years, initially as a sessional lecturer at the School of Art and later as the coordinator for Ceramics at TAFE, both in Hobart. During that early teaching as a co-research with Les Blakebrough I developed Southern Ice porcelain to the early prototype stage. I no longer have any formal teaching commitments and while my workshop research focus is still on using local materials wherever possible, As part of that commitment I established SWIPE, the Slow Working Institute for Pragmatic Expressionism, as a vehicle to advocate for the expressive potential of ceramics used daily or occasionally. I now also make contemporary tableware for the theatre of fine dining. This offers the opportunity of working with outstanding chefs who seek to express an integrated plate-based response to place and season. At last work that has always been about place and culture has found a placement with the context and creative presentation that allows the potential of pots to be seen, enjoyed and appreciated – now the revolution is on the table. click here to go to Ben’s website Portrait: Peta Richardson

• Catherine White

  Catherine White

  Catherine White works in the rolling hills of Virginia one hour from Washington, DC. Weaving together throwing and handbuilding techniques, objects are made with markings and irregularities that intentionally reveal the touch of the hand. She collects and poetically uses diverse raw materials in her anagama and gas-fired kilns. Clay work is intertwined with extensive drawing, painting and collaging. White has an MFA in ceramics, studied painting in Aix-en-Provence, France and taught ceramics for many years at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. She has made pottery for over thirty-five years for Omen-Azen, a Japanese restaurant in New York City; had commissions for state gifts from the Obamas; and has been in over 100 exhibitions. She has written for The Studio Potter and The Log Book examining failure, drawing, materials and choice. click here to go to Catherine’s website click here to go to Catherine’s instagram

• Dr Sandy Lockwood

  Dr Sandy Lockwood

  Dr Sandy Lockwood has been working with clay, wood-firing and salt-glazing as well as developing and building kilns since 1980. Her ceramic works have been widely exhibited and are represented in public and private collections in Australia, UK, USA, Europe, Korea, China and Japan. Her work has been published in journals and books and she has been a presenter on wood-firing internationally. Sandy holds a Masters of Visual Arts and a PhD. She has taught at a number of tertiary institutions and is currently a lecturer at the National Art School, Sydney. At her studio in Balmoral Village in the Southern highlands of NSW, Sandy makes and teaches occasional short courses and introductory woodfiring workshops. click here to go to Sandy’s website Portrait: Michael Wee

• Elisa Helland-Hansen

  Elisa Helland-Hansen

  Elisa Helland-Hansen is a Norwegian studio potter based in Rosendal by the Hardangerfjord in western Norway. She was trained at the Bergen National College for Arts and Design in the 1970s, and has worked as a full-time potter making utilitarian work since then. She was head of the department and a professor at HDK - University of Gothenburg, in Sweden for five years, has traveled extensively, and exhibits nationally and internationally. click here to go to Elisa’s website Image: Porcelain cups (2016), reduction fired to cone 10, 10 cm H x 10.5 cm W Portrait: courtesy of the artist

• Eva Czernis-Ryl

  Eva Czernis-Ryl

  Eva Czernis-Ryl is a curator at MAAS who has published, lectured and curated exhibitions in the areas of decorative arts, craft and design from the 18th century to the present. At MAAS she is responsible for a range of collecting fields including contemporary ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles and jewellery. Eva has particular interest in revealing connections between decorative and fine arts, craft, design, science and technology. Her most recent exhibitions are Recollect: Ceramics and Fantastical Worlds , and her A Fine Possession: Jewellery and Identity received the 2015 IMAGinE Award for best large museum exhibition.

• Grace Cochrane

  Grace Cochrane

  Grace Cochrane (AM) is a New Zealand-born, Sydney-based curator, writer and historian, whose introduction to Australia was a memorable 14 years in Tasmania, from 1972. A masters and PhD graduate of the Tasmanian School of Art in 1986 and 1996, and author of The Crafts Movement in Australia: a history in 1992, she was also a senior curator at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney for nearly 20 years. Over this time Grace has met many craftspeople across Australia and beyond, and values associations with them and their related organisations and institutions, as well as with colleagues in museums and galleries which are also dedicated to preserving important histories through their exhibitions and collections.

• Jeff Malpas

  Jeff Malpas

  Jeff Malpas is Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania and Visiting Distinguished Professor at Latrobe University. He was founder, and until 2005, Director, of the University of Tasmania’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Ethics. He is the author or editor of 21 books with some of the world’s leading academic presses, and has published over 100 scholarly articles on topics in philosophy, art, architecture, and geography. His work is grounded in post-Kantian thought, especially the hermeneutical and phenomenological traditions, as well as in analytic philosophy of language and mind, and draws on the thinking of a diverse range of thinkers including, most notably, Albert Camus, Donald Davidson, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. He is currently working on topics including the ethics of place, the failing character of governance, the materiality of memory, the topological character of hermeneutics, the place of art, and the relation between place, boundary, and surface. click here to go to Jeff’s website

• Jenny Töpfer

  Jenny Töpfer

  Jenny works from her studio 'Cloudstone', 30 minutes north of Hobart. Her work is made in response to the textures of the places we inhabit, focusing on the process of making using surface and line. The history of the paintings is evident in the build up of marks and layers. They track the passage of time, and the process of coming into their own being, seeking to create a connection between the artist and the viewer. Jenny holds a BA (Hons) from the Australian National University and an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management. In 2002 she left a corporate role in Sydney to pursue a full-time career as an artist in Tasmania. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Hobart School of Art in 2006, majoring in painting and printmaking. Jenny is represented by Fox Jensen Gallery in Australia and New Zealand.

• Kenji Uranishi

  Kenji Uranishi

  Kenji Uranishi is an Australian-based, Japanese artist who explores ideas around nature and the built environment, place and belonging. Kenji studied at the Nara College of Fine Arts and began his career in Japan working mostly with stoneware clay. A move to Australia in 2004 signalled a critical shift in his practice as he began working predominantly with porcelain, hand building translucent white, often architecturally inspired objects. A turning point came in 2014 when he received an Asialink residency (funded by Arts Queensland) to spend 12 weeks in Arita in Kyushu – a place many consider to be the birthplace of porcelain in Japan. During that time, Kenji worked with local craftspeople, designers and artists to explore new directions in his ceramic practice, including with a master mould maker who shared the techniques of his craft. Returning to Australia, Kenji continued to explore this process and began hand-carving moulds for slip casting to construct and expand modular forms. He first showed the results of this work, in combination with slab-built sculptural pieces, in his 2016 solo exhibition at the Museum of Brisbane, Momentary. Comprising 50 sculptures, the installation captured Kenji’s interest in the wild and unfamiliar aspects of the Australian environment, and the light and patterns in architecture, nature and everyday life. Kenji’s artworks are held in a number of public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, and feature in public spaces including 400 George Street, Brisbane and the Ipswich Courthouse, Queensland. During 2018, he was undertaking three new public art projects. Kenji lives and works in Brisbane. click here to go to Kenji’s website Image: Danpen X (2018), slipcast porcelain, 5 x 34 x 34cm

• Nancy Fuller

  Nancy Fuller

  Nancy Fuller is Taiwanese by birth but was raised in the North East of Scotland. Having trained as a printmaker, she went on to attain a Masters in the History of Art and Archaeology of Asia in 1999 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. A Chinese language scholarship took her back to Taiwan in 2000 to explore her roots and whilst there she found a sense of connection through the ancient ways of pottery. After studying at various studios her discovery of anagama-fired pottery was like the missing jigsaw piece. In addition to language, culture and tradition, it embraced the natural environment, and in essence revealed the Taiwan she was looking for through the medium of wood-firing. Her quest to build her own kiln resulted in her undertaking a year-long training with anagama master Suzuki Shigeji in Shigaraki, Japan, supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. During her training she was also a resident artist at the Shigaraki Cultural Ceramic Park and it was there that she met Karatsu master, Nakazato Takashi. Realising his ‘Nanban’ aesthetic might suit the clays available to her in the UK, she studied reduction cooling with him at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, USA, through support from the Scottish Arts Council. What emerged from this was a firing aesthetic which she feels embodies her own character and background. All her work is fired in an anagama which she designed and built herself on a croft in rural Aberdeenshire.

• Owen Rye

  Owen Rye

  Owen Rye (b 1944) from Australia is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. He is known internationally for being at the forefront of the contemporary woodfiring movement. Through his artwork, his writing and his teaching many ceramic artists have been inspired to follow the woodfirer’s path. Completing his doctorate in 1970, the first in Australia in the ceramic arts, he worked with archaeologists at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and the Prehistory Department, ANU. From 1980 he taught in art schools for 25 years, at the Canberra School of Art and then at Monash Gippsland, mainly supervising postgraduate students. About 80 of them graduated. His teaching has included giving workshops on woodfiring in Australia, the USA and Europe. He has curated woodfire survey exhibitions and organised conferences. He retired from teaching in 2004. He has exhibited in Australia and internationally and is represented in public collections in USA, China, Korea, Germany, France, and many Australian collections including the Australian National Gallery and many state and regional galleries, and private collections. His recent artist-in-residency stints were in China, Korea, USA and Australia. His extensive writing has been published in many ceramics magazines around the world, and he is author of three books including The Art of Woodfire, published in 2011.

• Yasmin Smith

  Yasmin Smith

  (b. 1984, Sydney and Itinerant) travels widely undertaking research for her archaeological ceramics installations that explore the chemistry of glaze techniques to furnish material evidence of histories, ecologies, geology and culture. She makes her glazes from organic and inorganic material found on site with elements of the clay body sometimes also locally excavated as part of her process. Smith’s practice straddles art (ceramics) and more scientific investigations. Smith is currently developing a site-specific work for the 21st Biennale of Sydney. Smith was a finalist in the 2017 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award exhibition at Shepparton Art Museum. Her work, Open Vase Central Leader Widow Maker, contains over 150 cast ceramic branches of three species of tree that have been glazed with their own wood ash.  In 2016, Smith developed site-specific clay and glazes and built an outdoor kiln for the inaugural, Sculpture at Barangaroo, Sydney. Contours of our heart was a two-week process based outdoor public engagement project. In 2014, Smith spent 6 weeks at Hermannsburg in Central Australia assisting the local community of potters. As a result of her time there, Smith developed Ntaria Fence for a solo exhibition at The Commercial in 2015. In 2013, Smith was shortlisted for the Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Artists’ Travel Scholarship Prize, Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney. Smith completed her Master of Visual Arts (Ceramics) at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney in 2010. She was a director of the influential Sydney artist-run initiative, Locksmith Project from 2008 until 2010. Smith is represented by The Commercial Sydney.  Her work is in the collection of Artbank and Shepparton Art Museum. click here for more info about Yasmin Image: Open Vase Central Leader Widow Maker (2017), slip cast ceramic objects, with three types of wood ash glaze, corrugated iron, canvas tarpaulin, dimensions variable Image Credit: Elise Fredericksen