In Conversation with Prue Venables

This conversation was recorded at the Australian Ceramics Triennale on 1 May 2019 at Princes Wharf One, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

Barbara Campbell-Allen was joined by Prue Venables after her conversation with Lisa Cahill about her recent award as an Australian Design Centre National Living Treasure.

http://pruevenables.com

https://australiandesigncentre.com/prue-venables/
Acclaimed ceramicist Prue Venables is the ninth artist in the Australian Design Centre series Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft, which celebrates the achievements of Australia’s most iconic craft practitioners. A series of solo exhibitions honour eminent and highly respected craftspeople, celebrating their mastery of skill, their achievements, their contribution to Australian craft, and the unique place they occupy in the national design culture.

Prue Venables shows a true mastery of materials. She demonstrates a profound understanding of porcelain, that most precious and temperamental of clays, whose fine-grain and opaque qualities are expressed in rigorous works of refined detail. These handmade functional artworks possess clarity, luminosity and a quiet beauty.

The forms are simple and elegant, with a minimal colour palette and subtle exaggerations – an oval lip or an elongated handle – that create a distinctive visual language. The works in this exhibition explore the significance of everyday objects through multiple sequences of forms in porcelain, with additional elements in metal and wood.