(Left) Ruth Waller, Sprouting bowl in pink, 2023. Acrylic on timber panel and balsa blocks, 65 x 26cm, 2023. Photo: David Patterson. Courtesy: the artist and Nancy Sever Gallery. (Right) Toni Warburton, Oyster catcher vase, 2022. Glazed raku clay. Courtesy: The artist and Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra.

‘Jardinière’ in English refers to an ornamental dish, a receptacle or a stand in which a potted plant sits. Its function is to bring the wilds of nature into a domestic setting. In French the word denotes a ‘gardener’ – someone who tends to plants, flowers or vegetables, who seeks to cultivate and establish a sense of wonder – much like an artist.

Painter Ruth Waller and ceramicist Toni Warburton share a fascination with the earthenware artefact – vase, jar and figurine.  Their complicity has generated a dialogue in which they adapt and modify their idioms to establish a common ground.

For Warburton the container is an archetypal form. It is energised by associations with the earth. Alluding to coral species, algal blooms, fossilisation, and carapaces – her work is inspired by nature’s diversity. She works between Gadigal and Gundungurra land.

For Waller “the motif of the vase or jardinière planter becomes a holder of the eye, a kind of key to the painting from which to push the play of figure/ground, shape/form and form/space in ambiguous ways.” Waller draws much of her inspiration from urban nature reserves in the suburbs of Canberra on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land.

Opening Event: Thursday 31 August, from 6pm.