Kirsten Coelho, Yearn, 2023. Porcelain, terracotta, satin glaze, cobalt glaze and terra sigillata, 23 x 22 x 15cm. Courtesy: the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.

In classical music, a Lied (plural: Lieder) is a poem set to music and performed by a single vocalist and piano. In her exhibition Hauslieder, Kirsten Coelho does something similar, giving her own expression to existing vessel shapes and forms she then composes into considered pairings and groupings.

Interplay is everywhere in Hauslieder: between formal arrangement and increasingly abstract form/surface fusion, between colour and surface quality, between historical and contemporary reference and between shape and juxtaposition. In this new work, Coelho points to disparate places, disparate uses and differing historical periods, and within the gentle tension between these elements lies the strength of her vision. Using her consummate skill as a maker and her encyclopedic knowledge of the field, Coelho liberates the domestic object to resonate both within and beyond the domestic space.

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