Featured Image: Stilled Composition 101, 2022, Stoneware, collected earthen materials, glaze, timber, acrylic paint, 60 x 132 x 30cm. Courtesy: the artist and Bett Gallery, Hobart. 

Bett Gallery presents new work by Kelly Austin.

An Elemental Persistence is about the simultaneous state of knowing and not-knowing; an ebb and flow between the solid and translucent, heavy and light, two and three dimensional. It is about teetering on an axis between the recognisable and the abstract with the desire to instill wonder and inquisitiveness, and to contribute to the conversation of still life.

This work is contradictory. It celebrates the tradition and history of making and the relentless dedication to one’s craft, while at the same time pushing against the rigour of efficiency and utility, process and practice. From within the discipline of studio ceramics, objects are deconstructed, re-interpreted and re-framed against the background of painting and sculpture.

This work is quiet, focused, attentive, subtle and nuanced. It creates a space for softness, whilst also exploring the materials of this earth and their transformation: the wetness and heaviness of clay and the solidity of rock faces. Fundamentally, it is about being in, and of, landscape: pink sand, turquoise earth, a wall of green against the setting sun’s peach-stained clouds.

Opening night: 8 July, 5:30 – 7 pm