Speakers for this event

• Bridget Nicholson

  Bridget Nicholson

  Bridget is a Melbourne-based visual artist, with a background in architecture, urban design, sculpture, and an overlay of community cultural development. The impetus for this journey was provided by a childhood experience that created the need to question my own identity and connection to 'place' in an effort to acquire a sense of belonging. Most recently this quest has best been served by developing arts projects that enable me to delve into these questions through interactions with others; people and places. Multi media conceptual installations provide a framework for reviewing and re-presenting the experiences and material collected. Work starts with finding a material that is embedded in the conceptual thinking, within the parameters of place it has always resulted in organic materials and often clay. The body has become in effect the tool and the means engagement. Current work on threatened species has taken as a starting point the egg. Clay again seems the natural choice and together they are the focus of my paper and workshops. Clay: Affect and Effect will look at the way in which clay has played an active role developing works both conceptually and physically. Workshops will follow to enable a playing out of ideas. Bridget has exhibited in regional galleries and non ‘art’ spaces, she has presented at a number of conferences including Performance Climates Psi#22, and Land Dialogues and been published in Garland online magazine, The Journal of Australian Ceramics and Ceramics Technical. Portrait: Helga Leunig

• Heidi McKenzie

  Heidi McKenzie

  Heidi McKenzie is a Toronto-based ceramic artist. She found her true calling at 40 when her parents found an essay she had written when she was nine years old – “What I Want To Be When I Grow Up… A Potter.” She left a 20-year career in arts management and radio to apprentice in her father’s ancestral home at the foothills of the Himalayas with India’s foremost studio potter, Mini Singh (a student of Bernard Leach). Heidi returned to Canada and completed her Diploma at Sheridan College in 2012 and subsequently her MFA at OCADU in 2014. In 2011 Heidi received the Emerging Artist Award at Toronto Artists Project, and in 2012 exhibited at the Toronto International Art Fair. In 2013, Heidi was funded by the Ontario Arts Council to create in Jingdezhen, China and in Bali, Indonesia. In 2014 Heidi completed a residency at Guldagergaard International Centre for Ceramic Research. In 2017 Heidi received OAC funding to work in Sydney Australia, to apprentice with Master Mitsuo Shoji and expand her sculptural vocabulary. Heidi has exhibited nationally and internationally, including biennales and Romania and Hungary, and at NCECA (Milwaukee, Portland). She is recipient of a 2017 Craft Ontario Award and Best in Show Ontario Artists Association Biennial Award. Heidi maintains both sculpture and functional ware studio practices. Her work engages issues of identity and belonging. She is an active arts journalist and ceramic arts reviewer. click here to go to Heidi’s website Portrait: Ali Kazimi

• 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