Steve Lees
Steve Lees — Bleach Round Vase I, 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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This series explores deterioration as both process and surface language. Wood and leaf ash are used not to darken but to lighten, bleaching the black iron glaze beneath. These rounded forms carry this transformation on their surface, where ash settles to reveal subtle shifts in tone and texture.
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Steve Lees (b.1988) is an emerging ceramic artist based in Trentham, Australia. He began his creative career in graphic design, earning a Bachelor of Design (Hons) from Swinburne University, before discovering a deep connection to ceramics. Since then, he has honed his practice under the mentorship of Shane Kent and Kate Wischusen at the School of Clay and Art (SOCA).
Drawn to nature’s constant state of change, Steve’s work explores how elements exist, interact, transform, and deteriorate over time. He reinterprets these natural processes through form, surface, and decoration, specialising in functional works created using wheel-thrown and hand-built techniques.
14 November 2025 - 7 February 2026
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Joseph Gardner is the 2025 Visionaries curator – presenting DONE/UNDONE: an exhibition of 50+ artists, and one of Craft’s largest exhibitions to date – featuring artists working across medium, scale and practice, representing exceptional Australian talent.
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: Stoneware, glaze, oxides, wood ash
Dimensions: approx. 19 x 17 x 17cm
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.