Neville Assad-Salha studied at the South Australian School of Art from 1973 to 1976.

He has been a practising ceramist/ potter for over 40 years.

He has held many solo exhibitions and group shows.

Neville taught ceramics at many universities in Melbourne and Adelaide.

He is a former professor at the University of Beirut.

He has attended many international symposiums.

Neville lives between South Australia and Lebanon.

Jane began studying ceramics in Japan in 1993. She subsequently completed her BFA, majoring in Ceramics at the Tasmanian College of the Arts and was awarded the Deans’ roll of excellence.  Jane was later selected as an Associate at the Jam Factory Craft and Design Centre in Adelaide and has worked in her own studio practice, educational facilities and exhibited throughout Australia and internationally. This year she was a finalist in the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize and successively undertook an Art/Science residency at UTAS School of Creative Arts.

Jane’s work is primarily informed from research and observation of the coastal, marine and alpine landscapes of Tasmania. This observation, connection to place and environmental awareness has led her to produce work on issues like climate change’s impact on Tasmanian marine environments and the reestablishment of Spotted Handfish spawning habitat.

In 2018 Jane began a commission for the CSIRO to design and make 3000 ceramic artificial spawning habitat (ASH) for the Spotted Handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus). These installations of ASH were SCUBA deployed to support this critically endangered marine species. Creating ceramic ASH is a significant project which intersects her ceramic art practice with current scientific research and practice. In September 2018 the Spotted Handfish’s first wild spawning around ceramic ASH was observed. It is rare that an arts practice has the opportunity to engage so directly with the natural environment in a manner that is beyond interpretive and has very real achievable positive ecological outcomes.

Website: www.janebamford.com

Image: Ceramic Artificial Spawning Habitat (ASH) 2018 Porcelain, photographer, Uffe Schultz

Portrait: Charles Chadwick

Glenn Barkley is an artist, writer, curator and gardener based in Sydney and Berry NSW, Australia. His work operates in the space between these interests drawing upon the history of ceramics, popular song, the garden and conversations about art and the internet.
Recent major exhibitions include imayimightimust, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney (2018); yetmorecontemporaryart, Artspace, Sydney (2017); the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object, Art Gallery of South Australia (2016); The Garden of Earthly Delights, Westspace, Melbourne (with Angela Brennan) (2016); Watching Clouds Pass the Moon, Lake Macquarie Regional Gallery, NSW (2016); and Glazed and Confused: Ceramics in Contemporary Art Practice, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, NSW (2014).
Barkley was previously senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2008–14) and curator of the University of Wollongong Art Collection (1996–2007). He is co-founder and co-director of The Curators Department, Sydney and of kil.n.it experimental ceramics studio Glebe, Sydney.
He was a finalist in the 2017 Sidney Myer Ceramics Award and is held in numerous collections both nationally and internationally, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Shepparton Art Museum and Artbank Sydney.

Pie Bolton, BSc(Hons), MFA, current PhD candidate RMIT University

Pie Bolton is a contemporary ceramic installation artist working at the human/geological interface. Bolton’s practice is grounded in basic material properties and temporality. She uses interpretations of geological processes to expand ideas about humanity as a geological force. Bolton enjoys pushing material boundaries through technical testing and experimentation with lithic fragments and elemental earth materials by cutting, beating, coupling, twisting, heating, coating, arranging, rearranging and reflecting. Tertiary studies in both art and science have resulted in Bolton’s unique, authoritative practice. She creates innovative and enigmatic objects and installations backed up by sound academic research and technical expertise to assist the development of a clearer understanding of the intersection between deep geological time and shallow human time.

Biography: Ursula Burgoyne
I have been making ceramics for over twenty years now, interspersed with a career in language education in Australia and Papua New Guinea. My interest in clay has always been related to wood firing, initially because I lived where this was possible and wood was readily available, and later as an abiding obsession to explore how you can make something interesting, beautiful, even useful from clay and wood as people around the world have done in their own ways for thousands of years. I now live in Sydney, make my work there, and fire it in Moruya on the far south coast of NSW.
My studies in ceramics were at the Canberra School of Art in the early 1980s and more recently at Gymea TAFE where I completed an Advanced Diploma in Ceramics in 2012. I loved being a student, not because it refined my ideas about what I wanted to make, but because it was such a bombshell of learning, stimulation and play.
Because there is no longstanding tradition of Australian ceramics that predicates and sets notional standards for what anyone should make with clay, we are free to explore ceramics traditions from all over the world for inspiration and knowledge, and free to develop new questions about making and firing . We are free to incorporate elements from anything that excites our creative energy, whether it is painting, textiles, sculpture, the natural world, or our local surroundings . I like to take advantage of all these freedoms in my work.
In the past few years I have been involved in small group shows in Sydney, and recently the groups have included ex-colleagues from my language education days, so the two parts of my professional life have finally and happily coalesced.

Cosmic Plate
2016
Stoneware with porcelain inlay, wood fired
18cm diam; 3 cm h
Ursula Burgoyne

Lisa Cahill has held several senior roles in government and the design sector. Prior to joining the Design Centre as Associate Director in 2015, she was the CEO of the Australian Design Alliance. Her various government roles include ministerial adviser, SBS, the Australia Council for the Arts and the City of Sydney. She was also research manager for the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies. Working variously as a curator, writer and creative producer in the visual and performing arts, Lisa co-curated the Australian exhibition for the Triennale of Craft in Kanazawa, Japan in 2013 and New Weave: Contemporary Approaches to the Traditions of Weaving for Object (now Australian Design Centre) in 2014. Lisa completed a Bachelor of Communications in Professional Writing at the University of Canberra and a Masters of Arts Administration from the University of New South Wales. Currently Lisa is co-chair of the Australian Craft and Design Centre Network and is a member of the Interim Council of the Sydney Culture Network.

Website: australiandesigncentre.com

Somchai Charoen is a Thai born ceramic artist based in Sydney who has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Trained in industrial ceramics design, he was a former lecturer at Silpakorn University, Thailand. Since migrating to Australia in 2002, he has worked commercially as a mould and model maker as well as established his ceramic home ware label Eat Clay. Somchai is a co-founder of Belmore ITCH, a creative for non-ceramic artists to experiment, explore and interpret the medium.

Over twenty year experience in making plaster moulds for ceramics. Somchai like to challenge his skill by making mould that will explore the idea and possibilities of what mould making technique can be. For example created the plaster moulds that can be easily be used to create a number of different mould or can connected in different ways by having part that can be construction or flexible arrangement. Somchai will showcase his latest new mould making and slip casting technique by created plaster moulds that able to dip into the slip to create the forms instead of pouring slip into the plaster moulds.

Rebecca Coates is the director of Shepparton Art Museum. Located in regional Victoria, SAM is recognised for its significant collection of Australian ceramics, notable historic works, and a growing collection of outstanding contemporary Australian art by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists.  Rebecca is an established curator, writer and lecturer, with over 25 years professional art museum and gallery experience in both Australia and overseas. She has a PhD in Art History and was previously a Lecturer at the University of Melbourne in Art History and Art Curatorship, where she is an Honorary Fellow. She speaks and writes regularly on contemporary art and theory, curatorial practice, and art in the public realm, and sits on a number of advisory boards.

Website: Shepparton Art Museum

Image: Dr Rebecca Coates in front of Angelina Gorge’s painting in SAM collection

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.

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.

A maker for 50 years. Member if the International Ceramic Academy since1986

100 solo exhibitions. Over 250 group exhibitions throughout Australia & 23 countries. Represented in over 80 National & International Art Galleries & Museums including National Gallery of Australia, all State collections, Victoria & Albert Museum (London). He has received 37 National & International awards. Author of Glazes & Glazing Techniques, Lustre and Developing Glazes.

@gregdalyceramics

Website: www.gregdaly.com.au

Image: Clement Massier, Lustre Vase, 1900c, 20 cm H x 7 cm diameter, phoptographer, Greg Daly

Portrait: John Daly

Andrei Davidoff is a ceramic artist based in Melbourne, Australia. His practice includes both functional utilitarian ware as well as conceptual installation and sculpture. His ceramic pieces are predominantly wheel-thrown and are made in his home studio. Andrei completed his BFA followed by a Masters in Fine Arts at RMIT University in 2012. He has received several Australia Council grants and exhibits regularly throughout Australia.

Since 2012 Andrei has been working as a studio potter, creating custom designed ceramics for some of Australia’s most loved and highly regarded restaurants. His functional flatware finds influences throughout the world’s greatest culinary traditions. Constantly studying the history and evolution of functional forms he attempts to imbue each functional piece with a conceptual understanding of history relating to food and it’s vessels.

Davidoff’s exhibition practice revolves around the vessel, exploring contemporary memento mori and vanitas. Harnessing the ceramic vessel, itself a material constant, the works interrogate our contemporary relationship with the end while investigating the tension between an objects’ high art cultural value and its social value as a utilitarian object. Ultimately presenting vessels that have evolved from docile decorative ware to objects of ominous intent.

Image: Various vessels, 2018, various stoneware clays, glaze, dimensions variable.

Images by Clare Plueckhahn

I am an artist and independent business person.

I create ceramics, works on paper, prints and film.

I stay true to my creative process.

My work is informed by my rich cultural heritage – Gomeroi/Gamilaraay – and connection to country is vitally important to me.

Design work on my ceramics engage with the ancient symbols and iconography of my Ancestors with the underlying intent of reinstating ownership of something which was forcibly taken from us.

I have been very busy in 2018: a solo show of my ceramic work at the Lismore Regional Gallery was installed throughout April.  Measured Response, a group show at the National Art School curated by Emily McDaniel, features a large wall installation of my ceramics.

Also my ceramic design work will feature on the eastern sails of the Sydney Opera House as part of Badu Gili for NAIDOC in July 2018

My current work explores the devastating impact of water mismanagement and regressive European agricultural practices which are destroying our environment and are particularly acute in my Ancestral homelands. This investigation has resulted in a substantial body of ceramic work to be installed at the Shepparton Art Museum for the Indigenous Ceramic Art Award August 2018.

Website: www.pennyevansart.com

Photographer – portrait: Neshko Garch

Dr Cathy Franzi is a visual artist engaged with ideas of nature and the environment. Through the materiality of ceramics and its possibilities for form, surface imagery and installation, she explores ways to express cultural values attributed to Australian plants, including scientific ones. Her work is underpinned by research in the botanical sciences, natural history collections and fieldwork on location. In 2015 Franzi was awarded a practice-led PhD from the ANU School of Art and Design in which she explored ways in which representations of Australian flora on the ceramic vessel, historically and in her own work, might reflect botanical and environmental knowledge. In 2016 she investigated the significance of leaf shape and function in collaboration with Professor Adrienne Nicotra in the Research School of Biology as part of the Vice-Chancellor’s College Artist Fellows Scheme. Currently she is undertaking research for the project Art of Threatened Species supported by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. Her work is held in numerous collections including Parliament House Art Collection and Manly Art Gallery and Museum.

Website: www.cathyfranzi.com

Portrait: Andrew Sikorski: Art Atelier

Honor Freeman is an Adelaide based artist whose practice involves crafting objects that belie their materiality and purpose. Freeman completed her studies (with Honours) in 2001 at the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia. Following graduation, Freeman took up an Associate position and later a Tenant residency in the ceramics studio at JamFactory Contemporary Craft & Design. Her work has been curated into major exhibitions at institutions throughout Australia, including the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera 2007, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, and Adelaide’s Samstag Museum. She has undertaken international residencies at Guldagergaard, Denmark’s International Ceramic Museum and in the US at Indiana University’s School of Art & Design. In 2006 Freeman travelled to Chile to exhibit and participate in the The South Project and to continue her ongoing project on/off/on, installing slipcast porcelain light switches and powerpoints clandestinely in public spaces.

Freeman has been exhibiting since 2000 and her work is held in numerous private collections as well as important public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, ArtBank, Deakin University Art Gallery and Washington DC’s National Musuem of Women in the Arts in the United States. Freeman’s porcelain works feature in the publication 101 Contemporary Australian artists, published by the National Gallery of Victoria.

In a recent body of work Freeman ambitiously slipcast, hand carved and sanded 656 porcelain used soaps – a lifetime’s. This important work continuing her enduring interest in how we measure and mark time’s passing.

Website: www.honorfreeman.com

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.
Image: Large Kame, own clay blend with china clay slip, 46 x 46 x 47cm, Photographer: Shannon Tofts
Portrait by Kerstin Gren

Shannon Garson is known for 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. Shannon’s interest in exploring marginal eco-sysytems has led her to make work about the tidal zone, endangered paperbark habitat and rare native flora and fauna. Shannon has been awarded many significant national prizes and she is regularly represented in group exhibitions of Australia’s leading ceramicists.  Shannon has a history of community involvement in the arts and holds workshops in Maleny and for community groups nationally, publishes articles on contemporary ceramics nationally and internationally, and has been a presenter at national conferences and symposia. She exhibits throughout Australia.

Website: www.shannongarsonporcelain.com.au

Trudy Golley received her education in ceramics at the Alberta College of Art and the University of Calgary (BFA 1988) in Canada, and the University of Tasmania (MFA 1991) in Hobart. She has been invited to participate in artist residencies, lecture and give workshops in Canada, the USA, Australia, Europe, and China.

Inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2002, she is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Her work is represented in numerous public and private collections in Canada, China, Denmark, and Australia. Since 2000, Trudy has taught Ceramics in the School of Creative Arts at Red Deer College in Alberta, Canada.
Recent works exhibit an interest in transforming found organic or digital forms into elements that become part of larger ceramic compositions that aim to capture, obstruct, transmit and redirect light in order to exploit its many qualities. Reflective surfaces explore ephemeral qualities through the creation of a drawing in light and shadow which extends beyond the confines of the ceramic object. Often, they are juxtaposed with heavy stoneware elements that contrast the delicacy of the cool porcelain and reflected gold or titanium PVD coatings.

website: www.alluvium.ca

Image:
(a)blaze, detail, 2014, slip-cast and press-molded glazed porcelain with titanium PVD (Physical Vapour Deposition), 0.65m high x 6.4m wide x 0.25m deep

I was born in Kununurra and I went to school in Broome. I first began work as a trainee broadcaster and journalist in 1990. I also did a few months at the Waringarri Aboriginal Arts Centre and enjoyed the little time I spent there. I’ve worked at the Wyndham Super Market and Tuckerbox store in Kununurra for several years. I’ve been painting on and off for a few years now. I’m carrying on my parents, Peggy and Alan Griffiths’ stories that were handed down to my parents and then to me. Both my parents are famous artists in the Kimberley but most importantly, they are my traditional teachers. I too can keep our tradition alive and hand the stories of our ancestors and how our country came to be, down to the next generation and generations to come. I do this with great pride and honour. I am now exploring ceramics (having recently completed a residency at the JamFactory in Adelaide SA and Midland Art Centre WA in 2017) and I am now exhibiting my work in clay as well as on canvas.

Jan Guy is an artist, writer, academic and occasional curator who graduated from the Queensland College of Art in Brisbane, Australia and Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. Her PhD research focused on the relationships between the haptic senses and virtual spaces. Since 2006 she has been a full-time lecturer in ceramics/sculpture at the University of Sydney. A diverse creative practice in ceramics and the broader field of art that encompasses sculptural, functional and installation has resulted in my participation in over 50 exhibitions and a recipiency of a National Craft Acquisition Award and an Honourable Mention in the International Ceramics Triennale in Mino, Japan. An interest in craft and design theory and an enthusiasm for emerging artists includes the publication of many journal articles, catalogue essays and the presentation of conference papers at the 2009 and 2012 Australian Ceramics Triennials and invitations to deliver papers in Taipei and the 2014 Ceramics in the Expanded Field conference in London. She was a member of the organizing committee for the 2009 Australian Ceramics Triennale and has curated several exhibitions including the 2009 Young Guns, an international show of emerging ceramics artists. She has been an artist in residence in Finland, Taiwan and Hong Kong and loves to travel as it allows her to be a stranger to herself. She claims that art is life, but that might be untrue.

Image: Connections (three orifices) version #3, 2016, red stoneware, porcelain, underglaze, stains, coloured slips and glazes, 1230 degrees, 260 x 1100 x 440 mm (approx.) Permanent Collection of Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan, image courtesy Yingee Ceramics Museum

Portrait: Image courtesy of the artist

Dr Olivia Hamilton is an emerging ceramic artist and sociologist from NSW. She recently completed the Diploma in Ceramics at Gymea TAFE, and has previously completed a PhD in Sociology at Macquarie University. Her academic and artistic practices are closely linked. As a researcher, Olivia explores ideas of belonging, identity, and concepts of space and place, while in her art practice, these central concerns are complemented by an interest in everyday objects and material culture.

Olivia’s graduate body of work, titled De Corporis Fabrica (2018), was a comment on the experience of living with endometriosis. The work drew inspiration from research into early anatomical drawings and current understandings of female anatomy, in the slip-cast and hand-built elements, while also using gestural thrown forms to evoke the embodied experience of chronic pelvic pain. She was a finalist in 2018’s sculpture walk, Hidden in Rookwood, with her mixed media installation piece What Lies Buried / What Grows (2018), which explored the connections between people and place through a reflection on the acts of burying, and planting.

Website: www.ohamiltonceramics.com

Image:

What Lies Buried / What Grows, 2018, exhibited at Hidden: A Rookwood Sculpture Walk, 1st September – 1st October 2018, ceramic, soil, plastic and plants, dimensions variable, approx. 2.5m wide x 1.5m deep x 1m tall, photograph by Jasmine Poole (jasminepoole.com.au)

Portrait: Dean Ixer

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.

Website: Elisa Helland-Hansen

Image: Porcelain cups (2016), reduction fired to cone 10, 10 cm H x 10.5 cm W

Portrait: courtesy of the artist

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.

Website: annemettehjortshoj.dk/

Peter Hughes was appointed as the first full-time curator of decorative arts at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 1999. He graduated with a Master’s Degree (Research) in Art Theory from the Australian National University in 1995 with a thesis exploring the links between the English nineteenth century art critic, John Ruskin’s writing about architecture, ornament and design and ecological theory. Ornamentation remains one of Peter’s research interests along with Tasmanian colonial decorative arts, Australian decorative arts and identity, design and ecological theory, and contemporary ‘thing’ theory. Peter’s current projects include a history of Tasmanian colonial-period furniture 1804 – 1860 to be published as a book by the museum, the life and work of the Tasmanian mid-20^th century potter, Violet Mace and proposed new exhibitions for the TMAG art and design galleries. Peter has curated numerous exhibitions at TMAG, including the 2012 Redevelopment Art and Design exhibitions in the Hunter Galleries and Our Changing Land; Making Tasmania in the Bond Store One Gallery. In 2015 he curated Things I Once Knew: the Art of Patrick Hall, the artist’s first retrospective and, most recently, Prospero’s Library as part of the Tempest exhibition in 2016.

Website: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

My work portrays characters placed in situations that are drawn from my imagination but based on my life experiences. My art works capture a composite of fleeting moments, hand gestures, eye movements that follow and reveal the sentiments expressed. These details are all derived from actual observations but are gathered or collected over my lifetime. Through the drawn images and sculpted forms, I capture faces, body types and use symbolic elements to compose, in the same way as you might create a collage. These ideas drift and migrate throughout my work without direct regard to specific individuals, chronology or geography. Universalism is implied and personal interpretation expected. Through my work I get to report about and explore human encounters, comment on the relationships between man and woman, and eventually their sexual union that leads to the final outcome “the passing on of DNA which is the ultimate collection” a combined set of genes and a new life, represented in the child. Everything that surrounds and excites me is automatically processed and transformed into…an artwork.

The essence of my work is not in the medium or the creative process, but in the human beings and their incredible diversity. When I think of myself and my works, I’m not sure I create them, perhaps they create me.

Website: www.sergeiisupov.com

Image: Reflection 2007 – 14 (2014), porcelain, slip, glaze. 10 x 14 x 5″

Images courtesy Ferrin Contemporary.

Claire Johnson is an Australian ceramic artist and painter based in Port Macquarie on NSW mid north coast. Claire completed her Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in ceramics at UNSW Art and Design at the end of 2014. Her work pays homage to ideas of mythology, love, the role of the muse, stories of personal experience and the notion of the ‘artists hand’ in her gestural forms and brushstrokes.
Claire’s practice also embodies the belief that art can assist in the treatment of mental illness, something she discovered herself as a mental health patient in art therapy.
‘Art and mental health are intrinsically linked for me. A visual log and self portrait of a woman who is still finding herself, and a woman who is grateful for her hands that create all she cannot say. My heart on paper, and in sculpture’.

Kate Jones has completed a Diploma of Art (Ceramics) and a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) with honours at RMIT. She was awarded the Trudie Alfred Bequest in 2013, the Craft Victoria Fresh award in 2014 and the Victorian Craft Award for Ceramics in 2015. Kate has been an integral part of the School of Clay and Art’s evolution, involved in teaching, research and studio management. Her private studio is based there.

Kate’s work encompasses an exhibition practice; a strong investment in education that brings together philosophical enquiry into the fields of ontology and epistemology with a solid methodological base; and a simple love of throwing functional pots. These broad interests continue to inform her involvement in the development of SoCA’s physical and theoretical structures.

Image: all here, 2016, terracotta, slip and glaze, 50h x 30w x 25 d approx, photographer Andrew Barcham
Portrait: Darcy Kent

Kirsha Kaechele is an artist and curator drawn to the space where complex problems exist. Problems, for Kirsha, are simply a mechanism for art.

Kirsha’s projects include: 24 Carrot Gardens, which creates kitchen gardens for schools in disadvantaged parts of Tasmania and New Orleans; Heavy Metal, an art-science project focused on cleaning up the River Derwent; Zero-Trash / Trascism, Mona’s zero-waste approach (tested at the Mona Market over the last few years and embraced by Mona’s hospitality and festival teams); the Hacking School in New Orleans, a strictly non-dorky community learning space; Eat the Problem, a creative cooking solution to the problem of invasive species; as well as, of course, regular art feasts.

Website: Kirsha’s portal

Image courtesy MONA, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Photo Credit: RémiChauvin

‘In my works, fine paper-thin leaves of glaze material are assembled to form layered objects. Working with delicacy and movement, I use the flowing layers like the opening pages of a book or fluttering piles of fabric to create a windblown or whirlpool effect. Energy and movement is assisted by the gentle softening that occurs during the firing process, giving sculptures the capacity to hover, tilt or extend, as if once animated.’

Amy Kennedy is a ceramic artist based in Melbourne. Her work is guided by the development of unique materials and processes. She is driven by a sense of wonder and curiosity in natural phenomena and endeavors to capture these qualities in her works.

Amy graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) Honours from RMIT University in 2006, having previously completed a Diploma of Ceramics at Box Hill Institute of TAFE. Her career highlights include being awarded residencies at Baer Art Center Iceland, Anderson Ranch Arts Centre, Colorado USA, and the European Ceramic Work Centre in The Netherlands. In 2015 she was awarded first prize in the Toorak Village Sculpture Exhibition and in 2013 a New Work Grant by the Australia Council for the Arts. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions nationally, including Return to Beauty, Edwina Corlette Gallery Brisbane (2016), Quiet Conversations, Skepsi Gallery (2014) and An Important Exhibition of Australian Ceramics: A Tribute to Janet Mansfield at Mossgreen Gallery, Melbourne (2014). Her work is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Bendigo Art Gallery, Warrnambool Art Gallery and the European Ceramic Work Centre.

Website: Amy Kennedy Ceramics

Image: Baer (2017) Image Credit: Christopher Sanders

Shane Kent trained as a potter in Japan and Australia before completing a Bachelor of Fine Art (Ceramics), post-graduate studies in sculpture and education, and a Masters in Drawing. He taught the Diploma of Art (Ceramics) at Box Hill TAFE from 1989-2011.  He has been exhibiting in Melbourne since 1985, most recently at Australian Galleries.  Since 2011 he has undertaken major ceramic commissions through design studio Projects of Imagination for custom tableware, lighting, bespoke tiles and artwork.

Shane has a deep interest in explanations of creative processes, which he continues to explore in his own practice and his teaching.    Both the studio environment at SoCA and his approach to teaching are informed by an intention to inspire and nurture creative emergence, open up ways of seeing, bring awareness to creative processes and foster the independence necessary to a sustainable art practice.

Website: SoCA

Jason Lim has been touted as Singapore’s next master ceramist. In a practice that combines skilled craftsmanship and influences from performance art, Jason’s work is striking and thought provoking.

Jason studied at Central St Martins College of Art & Design, and graduated with a BA (Hons). He attained his Master of Fine Arts Degree from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (LaSalle College of the Arts) in 2003. Jason’s repertoire of works encompasses ceramics, photography, video art, installation art and performance art. He recently started experimenting with new mediums such as bronze and resin, in collaboration with the Yogya Art Lab.

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.

Website: www.sandylockwood.com.au

Image: Unearthed Series, 2017, woodfired saltglazed stoneware, 29 x 32 x 10cm, photograph courtesy of the artist.

Portrait: Michael Wee

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.

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.

Website: Jeff Malpas

A passionate and proud Tasmanian Aboriginal woman from the Northern region of Tasmania, Sinsa Mansell is a performer and choreographer as well as Co-Founder, Program Producer and Project Officer with the successful pakana kanaplila- a Traditional/Contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginal dance troupe.
Dancing statewide, nationally and internationally for well over a decade, Sinsa has been working to reclaim cultural dance within the island State of Tasmania for the past 15 years.
Through educational dance workshops, pakana kanaplila aims to create a safe and inviting space to broaden the awareness of the rich cultural heritage and the living ancient traditional practices through song and dance; keeping to traditional Tasmanian Aboriginal culture. Sinsa facilitates open opportunities for the broader community to engage with local First Nations peoples through educational dance workshops, ceremonial performance at a wide range of events, including fun and interactive workshops in schools. She is passionate about creating a greater awareness of Tasmania’s ancient traditions.

Dr Lorraine Marshalsey is the Honours Program Director (Design, Fine Art, Photography and Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art) at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University in Australia.

Lorraine’s teaching philosophy keenly embraces practice-led studio learning; encouraging students to create their own self-directed strategies as they ‘learn-how-to-learn’ in art and design education today. A key aim of Lorraine’s approach to creative teaching and research is to continually attempt to bridge the gap between student engagement and the changing shape of specialist art and design learning spaces. Lorraine’s pedagogical approach focuses on empowering students and tutors alike, to improve the quality of their educative processes and learning environments in a mutual ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’ approach. She has taught in the United Kingdom, India, China and Australia.

Lorraine is also an active educational researcher, who produces international research on learning spaces and the studio as a site for learning. Lorraine regularly delivers papers on this topic including at Tate Liverpool in the UK and the Singapore Institute of Technology. Lorraine graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1998 with a BA (Hons) degree in Design and Applied Arts (Ceramics) and from Edinburgh Napier University in 2013 with an MA in Design (Graphics). Lorraine was awarded the Global Excellence Initiative Fund PhD studentship under the theme of Education in Art, Design and Architecture in 2014 and in 2017, she completed her doctorate at Glasgow School of Art in the UK. She is also a member of NSEAD (The National Society for Education in Art and Design).

Image: Handbuilt Form 3, 2018, stoneware, image courtesy of artist.

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.

Image: Untitled, 2017, thrown stoneware, slip and other native materials, 88 x 15 cm, photographer, Rob Frith

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.

Website:  www.heidimckenzie.ca

Image:

Building Blocks, 2018, stoneware, ceramic decal, 30cm x 15cm variable, photographer, Joginder Singh

Portrait: Ali Kazimi

Mal Meiers is a chef, a ceramicist and founder of mental health awareness initiative Food for Thought. Mal has crafted his experience all around Australia and the world working at high end restaurants and most recently completing a 9 month tour Europe and Japan with pop up restaurant concept Food + Wine. After stints at Bennelong in the Opera House and Hobart’s acclaimed Franklin, Mal has now settled into a Head chef position at Subo, Newcastle where his ceramics are designed and inspired by the local area and for the dishes that make up the offering.

Image: Ceramic: Organic Main Size Plate, Dark Stoneware w/ Crusty White Glaze, 30cm

Food: Hazelnut and Buckwheat Gnocchi with Local Goats Curd, Fermented Shiitake and Saltbush, Feb 2017, photographer, Jana Langhorst

Portrait: Jana Langhorst

Dr. Damon Moon is currently Creative Director of the ceramics studio at JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design in Adelaide, South Australia and an Adjunct Researcher in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Tasmania.

His role at the JamFactory encompasses the design and production of tableware as part of the JamFactory product range and bespoke commissions for private and corporate clients, as well as mentoring up to six trainees who are undertaking the two-year JamFactory associate training program.

Damon Moon is also one of Australia’s most prolific commentators on contemporary and historic ceramics, with over fifty published articles, catalogue essays and he has contributed to several major publications, including co-authoring the 2014 SALA monograph ‘Beyond Bravura’ on Stephen Bowers for Wakefield Press.

Damon’s own practice as a maker sees him straddle the worlds of art, craft and design. In 2018 he is showing work in Milan as part of the 5 Vie ART + DESIGN WEEK series during the Milan Design Fair, and is exhibiting his own work in response to the collections of Shepparton Art Museum, Bendigo Art Gallery and the La Trobe Art Institute.

In May 2019 Damon is curating ‘Manifest’, the Australian Ceramics Association biennial exhibition as part of Holding Space/Making Place, the 2019 Australian Ceramics Triennale in Hobart, Tasmania.

Websites:  Jam Factory, Damon Moon

Dr Kevin Murray is an independent writer and curator, Adjunct Professor at RMIT University and Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Major current roles are managing editor for Garland Magazine and the Online Encyclopedia of Crafts in the Asia Pacific Region. In 2000-2007 he was Director of Craft Victoria where he developed the Scarf Festival and the South Project, a four-year program of exchange involving Melbourne, Wellington, Santiago and Johannesburg.  He has curated many exhibitions, including ‘Signs of Change: Jewellery Designed for a Better World’;  ‘The World of Small Things’; ‘Symmetry: Crafts Meet Kindred Trades and Professions’; ‘Water Medicine: Precious Works for an Arid Continent’; ‘Guild Unlimited: Ten Jewellers Make Insignia for Potential Guilds’; ‘Seven Sisters: Fibre Works from the West’;  ‘Common Goods: Cultures Meet through Craft’ for the 2006 Commonwealth Games and Joyaviva: Live Jewellery Across the Pacific that toured Latin America.  His books include Judgement of Paris: Recent French Thought in an Australian Context (Allen & Unwin, 1991), Craft Unbound: Make the Common Precious (Thames & Hudson, 2005) and with Damian Skinner, Place and Adornment: A History of Contemporary Jewellery in Australia and New Zealand (Bateman, 2014). He is currently a Senionr Vice-President of the World Craft Council Asia Pacific Region, coordinator of Southern Perspectives and Sangam: A Platform for Craft-Design Parnerships. He teaches at RMIT University, the University of Melbourne, Swinburne University and University of New South Wales.

Website: Kevin Murray

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.

Image: Pied oystercatcher eggs, 2018, Harrington NSW, photographer, Bridget Nicholson

Portrait: Helga Leunig

Grace Nickel is a ceramic artist living in Winnipeg, Canada, who creates large-scale installations. In recent years she has been collaborating with experts in various faculties at the University of Manitoba where she teaches full-time. For instance, she worked in residence at the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology where she learned to apply its ground-breaking architectural research in fabric-formed mould-making to her own sculptural forms. This resulted in the installation Arbor Vitae, which was exhibited throughout Canada and in the NCECA Annual Exhibition 2017 in Portland, Oregon.

Other highlights of her career include winning awards in the Mino International Ceramics Competition in Japan and the Taiwan Golden Ceramics Awards. Grace  has attended numerous residency programs including Medalta in Medicine Hat, Canada, the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, and she worked at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia, as an invited Adjunct Research Fellow.

Grace Nickel’s work is broadly collected, with the largest representation in the collection of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, where she completed her graduate studies at NSCAD University. She is currently creating a new body of work for an upcoming solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Burlington in Ontario. In the new work, themes of loss and regeneration are being explored by using a combination of analogue and digital technologies, including hand-building, casting, and 3D printing.

 Grace Nickel is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

 Website: gracenickel.ca

Image: Arbor Vitae, 2015, porcelain, oxides, glaze, 240 × 360 × 525 cm overall, photographer, Michael Zajac.

In her artistic practice, Alicja Patanowska combines glass with porcelain, and visual arts with designing, always aiming to engage the audience.

What is characteristic of her art is the recurrent topic of waste.

She considers craft skills to be crucial for her artistic practice as she designs and learns through the making process.

She graduated from the Royal College of Art in London (2014) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław (2012). Her products are available in many places, including Merci in Paris, London’s Barbican and New York’s MoMA. The laureate of a number of awards, such as Gazeta Wyborcza’s WARTO (2017), must have!, (2016), British Glass Biennial (2015), her works also form a part of several art and design collections, one of which belongs to the Shanghai Museum of Glass.

Website: Alicja Patanowska

Image: Of Mice and Men, 2016, porcelain, taxidermia, photographer, Alicja Kielan

Robyn Phelan is currently undertaking a Master by Research at RMIT where she teachers professional practice and ceramics in the School of Fine Art.
She works sculpturally, using clay and believes that ceramics objects are keepers of memories and experiences. Reference to art history and a sense of place informs her work. Clay is a material that has immense agency and is intrinsic to universal human experience. Robyn’s work utilises these conceptual and material connections to ask, what and who are we are? Her Masters research is questioning our relationship and role to making contemporary artwork about the Australian landscape.
Robyn has a diverse range of professional and visual arts experience. She has worked at major Melbourne institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria and Museums Australia and was an active committee member at West Space ARI. She has worked as curator, program manager and project coordinator at Craft Victoria at both Gertrude Street, Fitzroy and Flinders Lane, Melbourne.
She is an avid observer, writer and supporter of contemporary ceramic practice who writes in each issue for the Journal of Australian Ceramics, maintains a blog on ceramic exhibitions, lookingwithsofteyes.blogspot.com and is a founding member of Bluestone Collection.
Robyn’s most recent study has been a degree in Ceramics at RMIT where she now teachers in Ceramics and Professional Practice.

www.robynphelan.com.au

IMAGE: Selfie with Turrell & photobomber @ MONA.

Hayley Panangka Coulthard was born in Hermannsburg, daughter of fellow Hermannsburg Potter Anita Ratara. Joining the Hermannsburg Potters in 2009, Coulthard has established herself as a prominent member of the group, developing her raw natural talent under the mentorship of Senior Potters Judith Inkamala and Rahel Ungwanaka. Her work is known for its incorporation of ceramic relief methods, which plays on the Hermannsburg Potters’ multidimensional style. Like her mother Anita, Hayley chooses to depict her traditional Country, Palm Valley, in her work, and the associated Willy Wagtail Dreaming.

As an emerging artist of the Hermannsburg Potters, Hayley Coulthard is known for producing work of both a high technical standard and of artistic merit. Having participated in numerous group exhibitions in Australia, she was invited to exhibit in the 2010 collaborative exhibition Meou Art: Exhibition of Australian Indigenous Art in Shanghai, China. This

significant international exhibition showcased the work of artists from the Northern Territory’s Hermannsburg Potters, Warlukurlangu Artists and Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Arts Centre.

Hayley Coulthard is also renowned for her delightful AFL footy pots, her work St Kilda versus Collingwood being acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2011. She has since gone on to be a part of the significant 2016 National Gallery of Victoria exhibition, Our Land is Alive – Hermannsburg Potters for Kids, where twenty AFL-themed pots were commissioned to tell the story of the game’s history, particularly as it has unfolded in the footy fanatic community of Hermannsburg.

Hayley served on the Desart Incorporated Board from 2010 to 2012 and is currently a director on the Hermannsburg Potters Board and Desart Board.

Website: hermannsburgpotters.com.au

Image: “This work depicts my traditional Country, Palm Valley, west of Hermannsburg”, 2016, Western Aranda artists of Ntaria, photograph, Tobias Titz Photography.

Judith is a founding member of Hermannsburg Potters. Judith’s work has been exhibited widely throughout Australia over the past 30 years and she has travelled extensively, both nationally and internationally over this time to represent the Hermannsburg Potters. Her pots reflect a predisposition for balanced, symmetrical objects and reveal an accomplished hand in the craftsmanship.

Inkamala takes inspiration from her Western Aranda country and transforms these visions into wonderfully crafted terracotta pots and occasionally paintngs on canvas. Her pots are beautfully crafted and show a great attention to detail. Her paintings seem to invite her pots into the landscape – as skillfully painted as the pot is constructed.

Judith Inkamala has had a long-standing association with creative work and as a child was known to spend time at the Albert Namatjira household as she was great friends with his grand-daughter Gloria. As a child, Judith recalls watching the famous Albert Namatjira and his kinsmen painting in the camp near the Mission, going to the painters’ camp after school and watching the men paint. Her historical works on the Hermannsburg Mission and, as well as her works on the Namatjira story, are of particular interest to collectors both in Australia and internationally.

In 2010 Judith accompanied Rahel Ungwanaka to China to showcase their pottery to ceramic artists for the collaborative exhibition Meou Art: Exhibition of Australian Indigenous Art in Shanghai, China.

Website: hermannsburgpotters.com.au

image: Lyerrtjina (budgerigar), 2016, photograph courtesy of Hermannsburg pottery

I am based in Sydney where I make, sell and exhibit ceramics. I run elph storein Paddington NSW, make elph ceramics, and exhibit artworks through Utopia Art Sydney. I also teach beginner’s throwing at Kil.n.it experimental ceramics studio, Glebe.

I found my love of ceramics while studying fine arts at National Art School and since graduating I have exhibited in group shows at both commercial and regional galleries as well as being a finalist in a range of art prizes. I am currently just about to complete a Masters of Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney.

My preferred method of making is throwing, carving and altering porcelain, sometimes playing around with stains and other clays, but I do dabble in hand building sometimes! I work predominately in stoneware but have recently been enjoying using midfire porcelains.

Image: The spaces between us,  2018, porcelain, 115 x 11 x 17.5cm (installed)

Image courtesy the artist

David’s ceramics have built a reputation for being wild and flamboyant Baroque creations. Conceptually, the creations explore function and dysfunction within our consumeristic society. The handmade is an idealistic idea he holds dear within his making process. Decoration is incorporated within the body of the work; weaving, twisting and turning, with a confounding plethora of images and motifs. He believes life is a juxtaposition between the perception of the beautiful and the ugly, which creates a subjective perception towards making and looking at Art itself.

David Ray retired from RMIT University in 1996 with Honours and his work is held in Australian and international collections. He has held numerous Artist in Residence placements and he lists that Liverpool (U.K.) was his most ‘mind-bending’. Various publications and articles have been written about his work. He comes up when Googled!

Terrible at self-promotion, David prefers making in his studio in the Yarra Valley, Victoria and continuing to exhibit within both realms of the ‘Art’ and ‘Craft’ worlds. He is a trained secondary teacher, specialising in trauma informed practice, with 15 years experience in this field. He says “time is precious, but teaching and making both provide a balance within my life”.

Website: David Ray

Image: Wild, 2017, handbuilt earthenware, decal, enamel gold, 48 x 40 x 36 cm, photographer, Shannon McGrath.

Winner of the 2017 Manningham Victorian Ceramic Art Award

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.

Website: www.ridgelinepottery.com.au

Image:  Foliage vase – Wedge series, 2010, wood fired stoneware using local clays and glaze materials, 38cm x 26cm  x 21cm, photographer, Robin Roberts.

Portrait: Peta Richardson

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. 

Website: taniarollond.com

Image: ‘between going and staying’, 2017, porcelain and midfire clay, h 34cm x w 30cm x d 20cm, photographer, Tania Rollond

Portrait: Brendan O’Donnell

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.

Fleur Schell is a Ceramic Artist and illustrator who resides in Perth, Western Australia. Fleur was raised on a farm near the wheat belt town of Goomalling, WA. She has a Diploma of Ceramic Art and Design from the WA School of Art and Design, a Degree in Visual Art from Curtin University in WA and First Class Honours in ceramics from the University of Tasmania.

Fleur has been a professional ceramic artist her entire adult life. She founded and directed SODA International Ceramic Residency and The Clay House Centre in Perth WA for a decade.Fleur has presented in numerous Symposiums, conferences and Universities  throughout the world including The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts of USA,  The Australian National University, The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, The University of South Australia, The Sydney College of The Arts, The Alberta College of Art and Design – Canada, The University of Manitoba and The Emily Carr Institute – Vancouver. Her ceramics career has spanned nearly three decades and enabled her to live, work and present in China, Singapore, Indonesia, Finland, Scotland, Canada, USA, England and Africa. Her work has been published in numerous books and is represented in private and public collections throughout the world.

Fleur is currently represented Internationally by Red Sea Gallery, Singapore and in Australia by Linton and Kay Galleries.

Website www.fleurschell.com

Image: Excerpt from Fleur Schell’s illustrated art book, If my house was a suitcase, 2018.
Saving the world, detail of Mum and Dads bedroom suitcase from Floor Plan, 2018, porcelain, metal, wood, found suitcase and illustration on paper, 60cm W x 20cm D x 54cm H, photographer, Robert Frith.

Arun Sharma was born and raised in New York State. He holds a MA Ceramics from University of Wales Institute, UK (2011), a MFA from the University of Washington, USA (2009), and a BFA from Alfred University, USA (2001).

Arun has lived and worked as an artist in the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and the UK where he was awarded a US-UK Fulbright grant to research the Fragmented Figure at the National Center for Ceramic Studies at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff.

Arun has received numerous grants, awards and residencies nationally and internationally and has been invited to lecture and teach at universities in the UK, USA and Australia. Arun Sharma now lives in Sydney and continues to exhibit his artwork nationally and internationally. Most recently he was selected in the Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale 2019 Korea.

Arun Sharma’s autobiographical artwork revolves mainly around the figure. He examines birth and death and their relationship in the overall schema of human life. He is also interested in the relationship clay has to the human body, both physically and metaphorically. Using emotively beautiful work he elevates the viewer’s senses by drawing them into a world beyond the familiar, all the while presenting identifiable themes.

Website: www.arunsharmaart.com

Image: Untitled, 2018, photograph, 56.79 x 76.66cm, photographer, Arun Sharma

Portrait: Barbara Katzin

Avital Sheffer grew up in Israel and lives in Australia. Her life long engagement with multi-faceted Middle–Eastern history and design leads her inquiry into fundamental human concerns of materiality and spirituality, past and present, language and memory; complexities and dilemmas which she explores in her work.

Since 2004 Sheffer has had thirty solo exhibitions in Australia, USA and the UK, including a touring exhibition held in Regional Galleries across Australia. Her work has been presented at Collect, Art London, SOFA NY & Chicago; she has participated in numerous invitational group exhibitions and competitions, won several awards and been a presenter and demonstrator in conferences. In 2006 and 2008 she received Australia Council grants for new work and in 2014 was awarded the Australia Council artist Residency in Barcelona for 2016.

Her work is held in public collections such as the National Gallery of Australia, Sydney

Powerhouse, Atelier d'Art de France, Museo del Cántir, Argentona, Spain, Manly Art Gallery & Museum, The Jewish Museum of Australia, Regional Galleries across Australia, as well as Foundations, corporate and private collections in Australia, USA, The Middle East and Europe.

Her work features in many art publications, including The Pot Book by Edmund de Waal.

Avital Sheffer is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics.

Website: www.avitalsheffer.com

Image: Agora VI, 2017, earthenware clay w/ dry glaze, 44 x 39 x 18 cm, photographer, David Young.

(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.ÂContours 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.

Website: The Commercial Gallery

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

LEONARD SMITH – “rust never sleeps”
I started potting in 1970, so next year marks 50 years as a potter.
It was during a visit to the V&A Museum in London, where they developed a system of very tall pot filled glass cabinets called “Storage on Display”, that I realised that there were many more pots in storage than were ever displayed to the public. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to access these hidden pots I needed to have some form of academic credentials, so he I enrolled in post graduate studies at ANU.
From my early days as a student at East Sydney Tech I had a fascination with the high iron glaze the Japanese called Tenmoku and which I came to know a Jian Shan and as fortune would happen it was that glaze that I chose as the subject of my research. This was to beginning of my “Journey into the Heart of Darkness”.
A very full description of this journey can be found on my blog tenmoku.org.
Leonard is a Past President and Life Member of the Potters Society of Australia (ACA) a co-author of a Handbook for Australian Potters, an editor of Pottery in Australia and the Current President of the Ceramic Study Group.
“ When I first joined the Committee of the Potters Society of Australia in 1976, I suggested that we needed a National Conference. It is to the credit of that Committee that they ran with that idea and the first conference was held in 1978 and I went on Chair the 1981 conference, the very beginning of the Australian Ceramic Triennials.”

Jane Sawyer is an exhibiting artist and educator. Her initial degree in art education led to further specialist workshop training with Andrew Halford, Australia (1982-85) and Shussai-Gama, Japan(1985-87). She established studios in Edinburgh, Scotland (1987-1990) and Melbourne, Australia (1990-present) and established Slow Clay Centre in Collingwood, Melbourne (2012 – present). Jane undertook post graduate academic re-search at RMIT University (Melbourne) and holds an MA by Research in Fine Art (Ceram-ics) entitled “The Evocative Object” which investigated the power of the functional object to communicate through the sense of touch. Her ceramic practice has taken her around the world, including residencies and exhibitions in UK, Denmark and Japan and her work has received many awards and is held in institutional and private collections. Jane has served on the board of Craft Victoria, is a board member of The World Crafts Council – Australia, and is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. Through Slow Clay Centre (Melbourne), an independent ceramics eduction centre, she aspires to share knowledge and create a community that enriches the local and national ceramics land-scape.

Peter Timms was born and educated in Melbourne and currently lives in Hobart. He was Director of the Shepparton Art Gallery from 1973 to 1980, where he established the collection of Australian ceramics. In the early eighties, he was Assistant Curator of the Hyde Parks Barracks Museum of Australian Decorative Arts in Sydney. He was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 1984 to study studio ceramics in Europe and England, and an Australia Council Senior Writers’ Fellowship in 1994. In the early nineties, he travelled extensively in Japan, visiting potters and traditional pottery villages. Since 1988 he has worked as a freelance journalist and author, contributing to publications both within Australia and overseas. He was Editor of Art Monthly Australia for five years and has served as art critic for The Ageand The Australian newspapers. Peter has published eleven books of non-fiction, including Australian Studio Pottery, Making Nature,What’s Wrong with Contemporary Art?Australia’s Quarter Acre, Private Lives: Australians at Home since Federation and Hobart. His first novel, Asking for Trouble, was published by HarperCollins in 2014. His most recent book is A Serious History of Silliness.

 Website: www.petertimms.com.au

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 Galleryin Australia and New Zealand.

Image: Small wintering,2017, Oil and wax pigment stick, pastel and graphite on linen, 61 x 61cm, photographer, Peter Whyte.

Portrait: Alex Wilson

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.

Website: Kenji Uranishi

Image: Danpen X (2018), slipcast porcelain, 5 x 34 x 34cm

Numerous national and international exhibitions, awards and publications celebrate the fine porcelain work of Prue Venables. Included in many public and private collections worldwide, her pots explore complex and unusual approaches to working with porcelain, challenge the significance of daily objects and highlight the richness that they bring to our lives.

‘A search for simplicity and quietness, an essential stillness, motivates my work. The making of functional pots, the exploration of objects to be held and used, alongside a search for new and innovative forms, provides a lifetime of challenge and excitement. A beautiful cup seems simple and yet is capable of gently holding and reflecting so much ceremony and personal connection. The kitchen is full of such objects, quietly sitting, watching, waiting. The made object stands innocently – as if oblivious to the complexities of its history, of making and firing processes. The translucency of porcelain, the light dancing on the sprung tension of a rim, the softly melting body inviting touch, even the frustration of failure – all this and more continues to invite me.’

Dancing together:

The magic of the dance. As if stepping out to music, there is a playful and connected interaction that is growing here. The timing is perfect as the meeting of minds and emotions intersect. The learning is exciting on every level.

Website: pruevenables.com

Image credits: portrait Christopher Sanders / objects Terence Bogue

Andrea Vinkovic is a ceramic artist inspired by fragility, organic beauty and delicate balance of natural environment, and intrigued by parallels with cultural environment.

Her work is inspired by microscopic images of pollens, planktons, molecules and natural structures.

Vinkovic completed an Advanced Diploma of Art and Design in ceramics at Central Institute of Technology in 2002. She was ceramic technician and casual lecturer at Central Institute of Technology for over 5 years, and ceramic lecturer at Midland campus of Polytechnic West for two years. She has exhibited her work in Perth and across Australia since 2001, including participation in invitational exhibition and workshops in Gangjin, S. Korea, national ceramic conferences in Bendigo, Brisbane & Sydney, UWA and Sculpture by the Sea Cottesloe and Bondi.

Her ceramic work ranges from very delicate and intimate works, to large outdoor sculptures.

Website: andrea-ceramics.blogspot.com.au

Image:  Intuitive Sense of Connection, 2015

Kirsty Volz trained in both architecture and interior design. Kirsty is the director of the design practice Toussaint and Volz. She is also a PhD candidate within the Architecture Theory Criticism History (ATCH) group at the University of Queensland. Her thesis discusses the built works of Queensland’s early women architects, focusing on the work of interwar architect and ceramist, Nell McCredie. Kirsty’s research on interior design and decoration has been published in the IDEA Journal, TEXT Journal, Lilith: a feminist history, and the International Journal of Interior Architecture and Spatial Design.

Image:

Nell McCredie standing in front of the Epping Pottery Studio, designed by Nell and built in 1936, photographer unknown c.1936. Photo courtesy of Bruce McCredie.

Portrait: Renee Brazel

Anna-Marie Wallace is a British born, Australian artist of Italian & Scottish heritage. She is an Industrial Designer turned Ceramicist, who began her short but avid foray into the world of clay in 2012 with Made OF Australia, a saggar firing business whose art, jewellery, & tableware are coveted by retailers, galleries, stylists, photographers, high end restaurants, & renowned chefs globally.

She introduced Liquid Quartz to the ceramic arts market in 2015, after years of research & development into finding a solution to the age old issue of food safety & unglazed surfaces. She openly discusses & shares the technology used to make her pieces food safe, with the hope of allowing others to expand their alternative firing ceramic practices too. She is an outspoken advocate for the death of “starving artist” syndrome, & runs workshops, mentorship programmes, & internships to teach others how to market & sell their art, as well as run a sustainable, & profitable, arts based practice.

She works solely with Australian clays, native flora, & waste from Indigenous fauna (Pandanus, Macadamia, Bunya, Magpie Goose feathers, Crocodile eggshell, Koala scat, Dugong seagrass, & calcified seaweeds & corals to name a few), foraged in her local area or sent in by friends from The Northern Territory to Tasmania. The unpredictable & unrepeatable finish of each piece tells a unique story of origins & process. Her creations pay homage to all that was destroyed to create them; they are pieces OF Australia, each as individual as you are.

Website: Made OF Australia

Image: Minimalist Plate (28cm); Australian Porcelain Saggar Fired with Pandanus, Macadamia, Dugong Seagrass, & Crocodile Eggshell (Range produced 2016-2018) Tiger Myrtle hand carved spoon also by the artist.

Image Credit: Michelle Eabry

Yi-hui Wang is a ceramic artist and researcher. Born in 1977 in Taiwan, she is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Vocation Development, National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan and a member of the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC). She received her BFA, along with a teaching qualification from the National Taiwan University of Arts (NTUA), in 2000, an MFA from Taipei National University of the Arts（TNUA） in 2003, and her PhD from Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) in 2009. Yi-hui has exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous major museums and galleries in Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, Sweden, Spain and Australia. In her work, the abstracted forms refer to the human organism and to bodily experience, and question contemporary issues of sexuality, desire and identity.

Mrs. Park’s Summer 2016-2, 2016, Stoneware, 1230℃, 300 x 40 x 40cm, Photographer: Yi-hui Wang

Portrait by Jia-Haur Liang

Karen Weiss is a practicing ceramist, community artist and ceramics journalist with an Associate Diploma in Vis. Arts (Ceramics) and an M.A. in Creative Writing. Currently she is working on a Research PhD with the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University. Her love of travelling and ceramics, coupled with an insatiable curiosity about her own Australian and other cultures, has led to her visiting 32 countries, as well as travelling extensively in Australia. She has taught ceramics to teachers, people with a disability, children and adults. She was part of the committee of the Australian Ceramics Triennale Sydney 2009, organising panels and exhibitions for the Aboriginal and Disability speakers, demonstrators and exhibitors, and co-organising initial stages of the Renegade Clay ephemeral events in the Sydney CBD. Until recently, she was an active committee member of the Australian Ceramics Association as Vice President and Education Officer. Her recent fieldwork for her doctorate has taken her to Japan, Central Australia and New Mexico, USA to interview Japanese potters, Aboriginal potters in Hermannsburg and Pueblo and Hopi potters in southwestern USA. She has also conducted interviews in farflung Sydney, Australia.

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.

catherinewhite.com
instagram @ artistpotter