Amelia Black – 'Container for Care #6', Sculptural Vessel, 2024

This small bubble vase serves a dual purpose as both a lid and a vessel. Crafted from South Australian clay and finished with a wood ash glaze made from the waste of a local pizza restaurant, it appears blue when thickly applied, while highlighting the natural red tones of the clay body where it is thinner.

A sculptural vessel which forms part of the ‘Containers for Care’ series, made from a mix of terracotta and stoneware clay. Reflecting ideas of care in how these vessels stack, relationships formed in support and the vulnerability of one form made solid and strong through the reinforcement by another. These forms are compact and subtle yet rest upon other vessels in the series with ease.

All works in this series are fully functional vases, made from a blend of stoneware and terracotta clays extracted from the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. All glazes use only fully traceable materials.

“I wanted these pieces to have a felt sense of materiality, so that the way they sit in the hand might be able to project some of the care that I have for these core materials of ceramic practice. Working with such a simplified palette, and the goal of creating functional objects really forced me as an artist to examine the building blocks of my practice and I tried where possible to use traceable materials that are available commercially so that this research could be more accessible.”

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Amelia Black (she/they) is an American artist and material researcher currently residing on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people. Amelia studied Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006) and then lived in London to work on exhibition projects with Michael Petry and Arup. From 2008 to 2020, they lived in New York City, where they earned an MFA in Design Criticism from the School of Visual Arts (2010), in addition to, working in collaboration with artists such as Natalie Jeremijenko, George Trakas; and institutions like the Noguchi Museum, Blue Apron, Google and IDEO.org. Relocating to Australia in 2020, Black focuses on a practice-based research approach to clay and ceramics, seeking a more connected relationship with materials and landscape in response to the current climate emergency.

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Material Provenance

Atrium

May 2 – June 15 2024

Clay Matters presents ‘Material Provenance’, an exhibition featuring four Melbourne ceramicists in Craft’s Atrium comprising outcomes from an international research project created by past and present members of the Clay Matters artist collective.

Read more here