Rachelle Austen
Rachelle Austen — Lumen Receptio (Light Received), 2025
DONE/UNDONE
Curated by Joseph Gardner
VISIONARIES 2025: Presenting the future of Australian art, craft and design through the lens of one of the country's most influential creatives.
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Abstract Wall or Table Plaque
Soft light moves across the glazed surface, revealing depth through restraint. A study in stillness, where oxides react with the glaze, bringing the rich iron to the surface.
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Rachelle Austen is a ceramic sculptural artist based in the Macedon Ranges on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. With a background in Industrial Design and over eight years of exploring and working with clay, Austen combines design rigour with artisan hand-building. Working primarily in dense, slab-built clay, she assembles abstract series through slab construction and various components, incorporating controlled cracking, surface finishing, and considered firing. Her practice maintains a dialogue between contrasts—light and dark, delicacy and solidity, control and chance—shaping objects that embody tactile tension and quiet balance, creating space for reflection. Light and repetition are central to her work, where shifting daylight and subtle variations reveal new contours, inviting a slowing of time. Austen’s work exists between material investigation and poetic resonance.
14 November 2025 - 7 February 2026
Joseph Gardner is the 2025 Visionaries curator – presenting Craft's largest exhibition to date: showcasing 50+ artists and 400+ artworks.
Featuring artists across medium, scale and level of experience, they represent the exceptional level of rising talent in Australia.
DONE/UNDONE explores the creative process as a space of constant negotiation — a series of decisions to build, erase, repeat, or let be. It’s about that intuitive moment when a maker chooses to pause, to push further, or to dismantle entirely. These are the choices that define the rhythm of making — choices familiar to artists, designers, and creators across disciplines.
Joseph Gardner is the Style Editor at Vogue Living, with a decade of experience in publishing and styling, and the founder of Sydney-based gallery, Studio Gardner.
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Material: Black clay body with oxides, slips and a tin with a rutile satin glaze
Dimensions: approx. 16.5 x 13 x 5cm
Please note: purchased works are to be collected at the conclusion of the exhibition (7 February 2026).
Shipping costs may be estimates. Please contact us via shop@craft.org.au and we will be available to provide an Art Courier quote or shipping costs for larger items.