Speakers for this event

• Avital Sheffer

  Avital Sheffer

  Notions of fecundity and containment intrinsic to the human form and the natural world animate the making of my ceramic vessels. The embodiment of utility, divinity and beauty in the vessel form is as ancient as the existence of human consciousness. Projected through mythology, language and lived experience, it is an endless source of inspiration, questioning and search. I am engaged in a deeply rewarding process of oscillating in history. Every layer of clay, glaze and print applied, concealing and revealing, moving back yet simultaneously forward in time. click here to go to Avital’s website Portrait: Uri Karem

• Dr Curt McDonald

  Dr Curt McDonald

  Heat, cold, pressure, time. Time. Soft dust, hard cliff, everywhere. Waiting. A road cut shows you ancient interior, a secret vault, seeing sun for the first time in a hundred million years. Curt McDonald is a ceramic artist based in Perth. His work communicates the beauty and richness of Western Australia's vast landscape and geological legacy through clay, using natural materials found and developed in WA. Curt distils and decants the materials of the bush into the vessel itself at the most fundamental level. Simple, iconic forms reference familiar shapes from our natural environment, invoking subconscious remembrance of place and the comfort it brings. The significant endeavour of locating, refining and transforming these unique natural materials is rewarded by rich, multi-layered colours and textures, which channel the quiet warmth and vibrance of the WA landform. Traditional firing methods - including the ancient magic of the wood kiln - bring out the soul of these endemic materials. This work addresses an inherent contradiction in contemporary ceramic practice. There are few mediums in which the origin of the raw materials is as important to the final appearance of the work as in ceramics. The current yearning to return to the authentic and the bespoke sails hard into the wind of a streamlined global supply chain in which few - if any - of the materials we use come from the places we belong to. Curt's work rediscovers and expresses WA's timeless geological signature, and embodies an authentic reference to place. artwork: Untitled (2017), thrown stoneware, slip and other native materials, 88 x 15 cm, photoghrapher Rob Frith

• 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

• Fleur Schell

  Fleur Schell

  In 1863 French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote ... “Genius, is no more than childhood recaptured at will.” My children are the inspiration in my work and provide insightful moments of genius as our family live out ordinary and mundane acts of regular life. More recently I have been building fantastical large-scale dioramas that explore the relationships between three-dimensional porcelain characters, found mixed media props and illustrated backdrops. I am so grateful for the infectious joy and unwavering belief in big magic that my children share with me. click here to go to Fleur’s website

• Honor Freeman

  Honor Freeman

  Noticing and quietly commemorating the smaller moments that are a constant rhythm of the everyday continues to be a preoccupation in my work. Working primarily in porcelain, I harness the mimetic qualities inherent in clay through the process of slip casting. The works playfully interact with ideas of liquid made solid. The porcelain casts echo the original objects; the liquid slip turns solid forming a skin, and becomes a precise memory of a past form. A ghost. click here to go to Honor’s website

• Shannon Garson

  Shannon Garson

  Shannon Garson's work engages with endangered eco-systems, bio diversity and environmental issues through her chosen medium of thrown porcelain and drawing. Her thrown porcelain vessels decorated with intricate drawings exploring the relationship between domestic forms and the infinite variety of striations, spots, and marks found in nature. Over twenty years of studio practice has led her to develop innovative ways of using drawing within the material constraints of ceramics. Shannon exhibits nationally and internationally. click here to go to Shannon’s website

• Tania Rollond

  Tania Rollond

  Tania Rollond makes ceramics and drawings. Working in-between representation and abstraction, she makes drawings on (and about) objects to test the limits of recognition and meaning. Tania holds a Master of Fine Arts (Research) at the University of NSW Art & Design and a Bachelor of Arts (Design) from Curtin University. She studied ceramics at the National Art School and has been a lecturer there since 2004, and has also taught ceramics at UNSW and Institutes of TAFE. She has been exhibiting regularly since 2001, and her work is held in the collections of the Bendigo Regional Gallery, Shepparton Art Museum, FLICAM Museum in Fuping, China, and many private collections in Australia and internationally. click here to go to Tania’s website Portrait: Brendan O’Donnell