Kirsten Coelho – The Return

Ceramicist Kirsten Coelho is set to display her largest collection of works at the UNSW Galleries from this weekend through until the end of July.

For more than 30 years, Kirsten Coelho has worked in porcelain, producing distinctive forms and vessels that fuse the precious and the everyday. As she describes, the medium of porcelain is both “mercurial and alchemic, unexpected and poised, unpredictable and disastrous, luminous and silken.”

For this upcoming exhibition Coelho has gathered together pieces which, when grouped together, play with shadow, transparency and abstraction. These poetic ensembles also act as allegories for ideas of convergence and transformation, reflecting porcelain’s long history of trade and exchange, as well as the movement of people and the changing function of everyday objects.

To coincide with the opening of the exhibition, Coelho will also take part in a special in-conversation with author and art critic Wendy Walker, followed by the launch of the new monograph Kirsten Coelho (2020).

Combined this will encompass first major academic publication on Coelho’s practice, spanning some 30 years. Through a series of essays, Walker traces the evolution of Coelho’s practice in which an ever-expanding framework of art historical, literary and cinematic references have driven a succession of formal shifts.

For any art enthusiasts or budding ceramic artists this is a must see event.

May 7-Jul 31. UNSW Galleries, Cnr Oxford St & Greens Rd, Paddington. FREE. Info: www.unsw.to/galleries