Clay + String
Exhibition Dates: February 26th - March 8th
Opening Night: February 28th 6pm
Online Sales Launch: February 23rd 7pm
Business Hours: Wednesday - Friday 10am - 4pm, Saturday 10am - 2pm.
Exhibiting Artists: Pippita Bennett, Lea Durie, Christina McLean and Karlie Simring
Four artists, each rooted in the mediums of ceramics and textiles, unite in an exploration of materiality. This exhibition invites the audience on a sensory journey of earth and fiber. Through their distinct yet interconnected practices, the artists celebrate the tactile essence of these ancient materials, revealing stories of tradition, innovation, and the profound relationship between maker and medium.
Pippita Bennett
Pippita Bennett lives in Katoomba immersed in Dharug and Gundungurra land. The Blue Mountains and the places I visit, inspire her practice. She captures her experience of place through stitched landscapes.
She collects plants for dye pots to create colour from the landscape on her threads and fabrics. She is happiest when I am stitching by a fire with a cup of tea nearby. Beginning with simple lines of stitch, she lets her needle lead the way as she observes and immerses herself in the environment. She notices and stitches elements in the landscape: trees, rocks, animal prints, and flowers.
Pippita studied art at the University of Sydney’s Tin Sheds as part of her Architecture degree. She is currently studying a Masters of Art Therapy. Pippita has had two solo exhibitions at Platform Gallery in Katoomba and Lyttleton Stores in Lawson. She has exhibited in group shows at Floral Ink, Wentworth Falls and The Cornerstore Gallery in Orange.
Lea Durie
Lea is an artist, ceramicist and small batch maker. She creates works using ceramics, found materials, textiles and paper. Lea’s practice is concerned with our natural and built environment and how we can bring care to the forefront of our thinking. She is interested in places and materiality that is connected to that place, sometimes working with wild clay. Working with the materials of a place, Lea explores the impact of extreme weather and a changing climate and also how connection to place is experienced as a queer woman.
Lea has a Masters of Contemporary Art Practices, from the ANU School of Art and Design. Lea’s work is informed by her art practice an background as a Landscape Architect.
Christina McLean
Christina Mclean is a multi-disciplinary artist based on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia, living on Darkinjung land.
For over three decades Christina’s practice has focused on materials and the marks that are placed upon them, most notably in the medium of clay. Her work explores her connection to place and an endless love of the natural world. Christina has a BA Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts 1991. After completing her degree, she co-founded Chowk Ceramics and for ten years produced unique ceramic tableware collections, sculptural pieces and wall work. After further postgraduate studies in Design at UTS, Christina turned her mark making to textiles and launched her own textile print studio in 2009. Collaborating with leading fashion designers, her textile designs graced many catwalks and formed an integral part of the designers collections.
In 2014 Christina came back to clay with her brand Trade the Mark. Working with stoneware and earthenware clays, she predominantly throws vessels on the wheel and works with slabs to create ceramic wall pieces. Christina uses clay as her canvas, creating bold, one-off ceramic works that are intricately etched with sgraffito decoration. Each vividly coloured vessel celebrates her devotion to a hand-crafted practice.
Karlie Simring
Karlie Simring is an artist and designer based in Inner Sydney on Gadigal Land. Holding a Bachelor of Fashion and Textile Design, Karlie has enjoyed a creative career as a Senior and Head designer in the fashion industry for more than 25 years. Her early education also included a year at the National Art School. More recently, Karlie has explored various creative mediums, including watercolour, ceramics, basketry & weaving. Now an emerging artist, she creates contemporary textiles, focusing on surface embroidery. Art and design are Karlie’s guiding passions, with the world of textiles continually inspiring her process. Drawing from her experience in fashion, she infuses her work with a considered sense of colour, form and detail. Karlie’s process is intuitive, as she explores and observes her surroundings. Her art is an interplay of line, texture and tone, creating stories with a deep appreciation for materiality and tactility. Mark making with thread, brings the viewer into her inner world.
Noticing the thread of beauty and connectedness in our day to day – shapes repeating in nature, the cosmos and the unconscious. Playful forms emerge from my inner world of imagination and connect with the outer world creating a new utopia to inhabit. My hope is that the artworks invite the onlooker to feel wonder and curiousity through the exploration of line, colour and form. I apply traditional and exploratory techniques to reimagine thread and cloth. - Karlie Simring.