Ceramics Now brings together the sculptural works of five ceramicists whose practices are a testament to the diversity and endurance of ceramic forms. Collating Angelo Ooi’s traditional techiques, Zhu Ohmu’s organic vessels, Kohl Tyler’s ephemeral forms, Pip Byrne’s playful textures and Honor Freeman’s sculptural mimesis, Ceramics Now celebrates the contemporary artists who are reinventing one of the oldest, most universal mediums.

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Artist Statement

To work with ceramics now means to work in a tactile, slow medium during a period of time in which the pace of life is forever quickening, and this human drive, with its building cadence, is leading to the detriment of our ecosphere. This is why as I slowly make sculptures, I create work that I view as a form of world-building. These sculptures could be viewed as the inhabitants of a new world in a speculative future or a remnant of a past forgotten history. I want to use clay to question what may be possible in our future, and how life, humans included, may evolve. They may feel familiar, as they’re inspired by the lifeforms of here and now such as botanical species, mushrooms or corals, but as I think forward and back in time on both sides of the Anthropocene these forms become more otherworldly.
It’s known that orchids were among the first flowering plants to evolve on our planet over 300 million years ago. My sculpture The First Flower loosely references an orchid’s form, I see this work, with its bone-like dolomite glaze as a fossilised flower from early in the planet's formation, asking what it was like to be among the first to bloom. Whereas Aorta is pumping with life, its multi-piped rim leads to an anthropomorphic chamber, it feels dewy and futuristic in its nebulous form.