Kirsten Coelho joins Sullivan+Strumpf

Words: Annie Tonkin

Ceramicist Kirsten Coelho’s striking porcelain creations can now be found at Sullivan+Strumpf. She joins the gallery’s strong roster of artists including Lindy Lee, Tony Albert, Judy Millar, Alex Seton, Polly Borland and Darren Sylvester, to name just a few.

Coelho’s works are functional vessels that fuse the formal with the abstract. Her work is influenced by the history of ceramics, in particular the aging surfaces of 19th and early 20th-century domestic enamel wares – jugs, flask, bowls, beakers.

Having returned to Australia from London in the late 1990s, Coelho’s concern with the formal archetypes of the historical household turned to the 19th-century Australia settler/migrant experience. The extraordinary dreams, ambitions and failings of these experiences are referenced in the luscious thick white glazes and pared back simplicity of Coelho’s works, which consider how objects and art shape history and cultural memory.

Coelho’s work has been recognised in various collections and awards throughout Australia and internationally. Her work is represented in numerous institutional collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Chatsworth House, UK; and the Boymans Van Beuningen Stichting Museum, The Netherlands.

Coelho will be included in the forthcoming group exhibition An Idea Needing to Be Made: Contemporary Ceramics held at Heide Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition opens Saturday 27 July 2019.

Image: Kirsten Coelho, Ithaca, 2019. Glaze, iron oxide, saturated iron glaze, 35 x 64 x 34cm. Courtesy: the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.