Lorraine Dean — 'Hush', Sculptural Pair, 2024 — Winner

Winner of the 2025 SSCP

Lorraine's creative journey is one of self-discovery, guided by the tactile intimacy of clay. Through relentless experimentation, Dean challenges the material’s limits—sculpting vessels from within to expose a dialogue between vulnerability and strength. Each piece becomes a meditation on the human condition, revealing the layered complexity that shapes who we are. Dean has developed a process that fuses both porcelain and fabric in a single firing, allowing these contrasting materials to merge in delicate tension. Through folds and layers, Dean explores the "emotional resonance and the quiet threads that connect us— echoes of memory, relationship, and lived experience."

 The use of unglazed surfaces allows the material’s raw honesty to emerge, unfiltered and unadorned. These sculptural forms invite an intimate pause. They ask not only to be viewed, but felt—inviting a deeper awareness of self and of others, and of the shifting space we inhabit in both body and memory.

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Lorraine is a ceramic artist whose sculptural vessels explore the intricate relationships and shifting dynamics of family. Her practice is rooted in experimentation—challenging the conventions of form, texture, and firing. Often working with single firings and unglazed surfaces, Lorraine allows the clay to speak in its most honest and unembellished state. Through intuitive touch and deliberate mark-making, she captures the quiet intensity that exists within silence, absence, and emotional connection. Her vessels become contemplative forms—expressions of memory, vulnerability, and the unspoken tensions that shape familial bonds.

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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: