Chrystie Longworth – 'Ruin Sentinels', Sculpture, 2025

"Over the last decade, I have collected tumbled bricks from my local beach on Dharawal Country, carried to the sea via creeks from a long-closed brickworks. These industrial remnants, once part of colonial Australia's expansion, have been worn by waves and time, their rigid forms softened into organic shapes, reclaimed by the ocean and reshaped to belong. In my sculpture, Ruin Sentinels, I use the craft of ceramics to enter into dialogue with these suburban remnants."

Wheel thrown and then altered terracotta elements are paired with the bricks, creating new hybrid forms that blur the lines between ruin and repair, nature and culture.  Longworth's ceramic additions are carefully textured to echo the material language of the bricks themselves, while also marking a gesture of care, attention, and authorship. Ultimately, these works invite reflection: on what we inherit, what we discard, and how we might remake meaning through the careful acts of making, noticing, and placing one thing next to another.

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Chrystie Longworth is an artist based on Dharawal Country. Her ceramics have been shown in various Australian galleries such as MARS, Sturt and Michael Reid Galleries and her functional pieces have been sold through the design stores of the Australian Design Centre, the National Art Gallery and Boom Gallery. Originally trained in Printmaking at Sydney College of the Arts, in 2024 Chrystie completed a Master of Fine Art (Ceramics) at the National Art School in Sydney.

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Shelley Simpson Ceramics Prize 2025

 2 – 30 August

Mud Australia is partnering with Craft to present this year's Shelley Simpson Ceramics Prize. Now in its fifth year, the prize is open to all Australian ceramicists and awards innovative, sustainable and emerging talent with a $10,000 fund to support and accelerate their practice. This year, for the first time, the selected finalists are celebrated in a four-week exhibition in Craft's Atrium gallery space.

The SSCP was established in 2020 by Shelley Simpson – Mud Australia’s Founder and Creative Director – and continues to recognise and support emerging and early-career ceramicists working across the spectrum of contemporary practice.

Read more about the exhibition here: