Rachelle Austen
Rachelle Austen — Terra Incognita 02 - Unknown Land, 2025
Abstract Landscape Sculpture - table or wall mount.
Once used to mark unmapped lands, Terra Incognita here traces unseen inner landscapes. Each porcelain form captures transformation and fragility, mapping the thresholds between self and earth. Between the known and unknown. Through tension oxides and glazes, these works reveal the quiet terrain of resilience within the human condition.
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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.
Material: Black Clay with oxide glaze and oxide wash. A porcelain gloss glazed spheroid with oxide splatters mounted to the slab with a brass rod. Oxidation Firing.
Dimensions: approx. 20 x 12 x 14cm