Special guests from Western Australia
Our special guest artists this year are from Western Australia.
With Perth hosting the next Triennale in 2025 this is an exciting time for WA to liaise with other Australian and international ceramic associations in order to develop a comprehensive vision
Exhibitors are from Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australia (CAAWA)
a not-for-profit organisation run by members aiming to promote all aspects of hand made pottery and ceramic sculpture to the ceramic community.
With more than 120 members based across Western Australia our aim is to promote, among practitioners and non-practitioners, the production and appreciation of ceramics and to act as an umbrella group to represent their interests.
We want to raise the profile of clay within the community - culturally, educationally, politically and socially.
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Ian Dowling
Janelle Petersen
Ian Dowling has worked with clay and fire for most of his life. The Margaret River based artist continues to explore the world of ceramics.
As large projects are moved to the background, Ian returns to making individual pieces, functional and sculptural.

Form and Surface continue to intrigue, with a particular search for things that give a closer connection to the location, Wardandi Boodja.

As always, patterns are involved; progressive patterns that change and evolve to give a sense of movement.
Janelle Peterson is a ceramic artist, living in Albany, Western Australia, creating hand-built, sculptural and functional ceramic pieces. She attended Edith Cowan and Curtin university receiving a bachelor’s degree in fine art.
Janelle is a storyteller and her work is drawn from her childhood experiences. Telling Stories that can be powerful, eerily beautiful and dark.
She high fires most of her work using a mixture of stamping, sculpture and making her own moulds to create one-of-a-kind artworks.
Her background using textiles, collage, assemblage, stencils, and printmaking heavily influences her current work.
Lyn Nixon
Warrick Palmateer
Lyn Nixon is a West Australian emerging artist whose work explores the fragility of existence with a focus on notions of impermanence and change. Lyn uses a variety of media such as photography, printmaking, installations and more recently ceramics, to illuminate aspects of the human condition and global environmental uncertainty. Her work was selected as a finalist in the Macquarie Emerging Artists award and won the Emerging Artist award in the CAAWA 2021 Selective exhibition.
Clay is a simple, pure material, immediately responsive to the touch. It is transformative in its nature, changing from soft, malleable and plastic to hard durable and permanent once heat is applied. These magical properties have captivated me ever since being introduced to this form of alchemy when I was an art student at high school forty years ago. My work is all hand thrown on a potter’s wheel and texture is expressively applied and colour intuitively rendered to suggest the rugged and fragile beauty of the Western Australian littoral zone.
Sandra Black
In recent years I am drawing inspiration for mark making from the environment with more thought to the fragility of life around us. We have experienced some of the hottest and driest summers on record here in WA’s southern region. Fires have passed through the forests and mountain areas of the South West. Driving to my former teaching job I passed through the major industrial hub of Kwinana and observed the fumes from the chimneystacks of the chemical plants. This reminds me of the destructive impact as human beings we have on our environment Life is fragile but also tenacious and I want my work to reflect this by the use of more extreme carving and piercing.
Recent vessels illustrate through photographic decals, imagery derived from organic forms particularly the structures of plants and trees, exploring both their ecological fragilities and adaptive strengths. There are still elements of light play, within, through and from the objects exploring translucency, illumination, and reflection.
I have practiced as a full-time ceramic artist since 1975 and have had 33 solo shows and participated in over 300 group shows throughout Australia and overseas. My work is held in the collections of major Regional and state galleries and corporations throughout every state and territory of Australia, along with public and private collections in the UK, USA, Japan, China, Canada, Netherlands and New Zealand.
I have travelled and participated in residencies, guest lectures, workshops and conferences in Australia, China, India, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, UK and the USA. I have also been published in several international ceramic books including “Masters of Porcelain” published by Lark Books USA and Peter Lanes “Studio Porcelain” and “Contemporary Porcelain” published in the UK.
Bernard Kerr has been a practicing ceramic artist for over 45 years producing both functional and sculptural work in stoneware and porcelain.
His work is featured in a number of international publications and he has authored international journal articles concerning Australian ceramics. His work is held in a number of government, private and corporate collections.
Some aspects of Bernard’s work are linked to the Western Australian landscape based on the ancient landforms and the wildflowers that have evolved in them.
Bernard also investigates the relationships between image and object by referencing the history of painting in the medium of ceramics.
Bernard Kerr
Lee Woodcock draws inspiration from the alchemic process of turning clay into stone and crystalline materials into glazes.
He is an active teacher and technician at North Metropolitan TAFE in Perth, Western Australia and admires how working with clay may revitalize the mind and liberate the soul.
Using the potter’s wheel to make a variety of forms, he enjoys throwing collectable miniature bud vases and a wide variety of functional stoneware items. Lee also constructs anthropomorphic sculptural forms inspired by natural elements and symbolic entities that are up to 2.3 metres tall.
Lee’s passion is an exploration the alchemy involved in wood firing. He fires his work in his hand made kiln that can hold anywhere from 500 standard pots to a few very large forms, He fires his work for up to 100 hours. This prolonged natural firing process provides unique natural and subtle variations of colour and texture to his work.
Janet Hummerston is an experienced potter whose work is informed by her passion for, and involvement in, the visual arts. Through her work, Janet’s interest in the uniqueness of place is evidenced in the use of local clays mixed with West Australian minerals.
The importance of the maker’s mark and the strength of this connection of materials to the object stimulate investigations in both domestic and decorative ware. Using combinations of thrown and hand-built techniques Janet explores the relationships of the object with function and form.
Robbie Kerr
In my studio practice I am currently exploring carving into the surface of my thrown forms to create expressive and organic patterns that follow on an intuitive journey. This journey starts with the form of the vessel.
I try to create a visual lift in my forms using a narrow base that swells around the waist before pulling back in around the rim with a balanced curve.
The glazes I choose work with the form to accentuate the carved surfaces. I also use coloured slips, painting them on then carving into them to create contrast between the natural clay and slip colour.I experiment with a range of firing techniques.
Alison Brown
My work references the ocean and its varying environment.
Some of the work is the macro gaze – for example the “Sunrise” and “Sunset” series – which is as I see it as I walk along the beach. The other works are from a micro aspect, where I’ zoom in’ to the finer details around me.
Being a beachcomber, I collect fragments of the detritus and degraded shells along the tideline which are then used to impress images onto a trailed clay surface. The low profile plate forms offer a particularly good form for this approach as does the tall elliptical vessels and dome forms. Each tells a story of imagined fossil and skeletal like forms. These works are each completely spontaneous in their expression and therefore are totally unique, taking many hours each to create and assemble.
A new series developed recently, are objects I have collected and slip cast. Things like ceramic forms, rocks, seedpods and found material that are assembled and presented as sculptures. The idea is to create these pieces in an altered concept I like exploring, assembling, arranging and imagining when working in this format.
Judith Paisley is a local Perth ceramic sculptor. Her introduction to pottery was late in life and after attending basic pottery classes on retirement, set up her own studio at home in 2013. Local and overseas workshops and master classes in Italy and Switzerland have been an essential source of learning, facilitating the development of her own ceramic language.
Whilst finding throwing on the wheel enjoyable, Judith has learned to appreciate the unlimited potential of hand building, preferring to work in a semi sculptural capacity with one off pieces.
Judith has a strong penchant for the dramatic simplicity of form, being the ultimate canvas on which to showcase the dramatic permeations derived from for which she has developed an unwavering passion. (Naked Raku, Saggar, Smoke and Pit firing). Whilst serendipitous in nature, and often unforgiving, it allows her direct involvement throughout most of the process with the opportunity to influence the final outcome. Not being in control but part of the process is the essence of Judith’s fascination and alliance with Mother Nature and the Elements.
Felicity Bodycoat’s work in porcelain is a collection of pieces drawing focus on colour, form and texture, in an exploration of different mediums and processes. Felicity’s background in horticulture and eye for design is reflected in the finish and details used on the surface of her work. The versatility of using liquid clay presents the opportunity to form detail and texture at a multitude of stages across the process to create a piece that is unique each time. Glazing is limited to the interior of the pieces that are burnished on the exterior to create a velvet touch. The outcome produces a combination of solid colour, layering of the slip clay and decal transfers that are incorporated to curate groupings that sit comfortably together. Digital and three-dimensional technologies are used to create decals and forms of modern design and to craft pattern and repetition within the individual pieces.
Workshop
On Tuesday 28th February 1-6pm, Western Australian Potter Bernard Kerr will be running a special One Day Workshop at the Warrandyte Neighbourhood House for potters focussing on creating large pots, using coil and throwing methods with slip decoration techniques.
For more information contact Jane Annois on 0422 942 216
Bookings:
https://www.trybooking.com/CFMCC
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