Rachelle Austen — Vestigia 01, 2025

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.