“Clay’scool”

Works from the Potters of Clayschool Brisbane

13/04/26 - 17/04/26

The Clayschool Show is a selection of 21 artists who are travelling to Clay Gulgong 2026.
Many of the exhibiting artists have been potters and teachers of Clayschool since 2012. They are an example of the breadth of experience and level of skill we are producing in South-East Queensland and surrounds.

This exhibition was open to every student who was making the trip to Gulgong in 2026

Our sincere thanks to Bernadette Mansfield for including us at Clay Gulgong 2026 and to Herve Rousseau for opening the exhibition

Exhibiting Artists:

Sophie Araud-Sheldon  •  Ray Cavill  •  Jenna Catchpole  •  Madeline Cilento  •  Jennifer Collins  •  Ky Curran  •  Gemma Davis  •  Anna Debono  •  Sonja Elliott  •  Carolyn Folland  •  Gaby Hill  •  Jennifer Hillhouse  •  Tracy McDowall  •  Natalie Oldham  •  Jaimee Pickles  •  Clare Robinson  •  Tanya Saxon  •  Sarah Thompson  •  Meleah Wachtel  •  Amber Winter  •  Rebeca Crespin

  • Falling Down the Mountain

    I work with the materiality of this medium and it’s processes. I like to play around the edges from fine delicate pieces to robust forms, combined with extra ordinary glazing and firing processes. 

    This piece is hand formed with gestural carving, multi-glazed and fired in Gooseneck Pottery’s Noborigama firebox standing on it’s edge.  

    To me, it’s a landscape reminiscent of coming off the plateau at Gippsland or Alstonville. 

  • Widow’s Rock Fishpots

    My girl sits on a rock and watches the small creatures beneath the surface of the water. Some scatter quickly; some stick, waiting out a potential poke from her little finger. 

    The scene is fragile. Her childish naivety is changing. The sea creatures teeter. Is this the hand that will pick them up and take them away, squish them dead? Or will the next wave replenish the water in the small pool, they live on for another day?

    For us, this childhood chapter also teeters as she grows into a teen. I’ll miss my child girl and hope her quirks stay a while. These pots, coined “Fishpots” are about our imaginings together at Widow’s Rock, Stradbroke Island. 

  • A Sea of Soliflores

    I have always loved hand building these small bottles, enjoying the process, playing with sizes and decoration and trying to put as much personality as possible in each and every one of them.  When I first started making them, I used to give them away to my friends, in threes, as a sign of friendship and belonging. I have tried to put forward that idea of friendship and belonging in the collection presented here, a Sea of Soliflores.

    This work explores the importance of community on the individual and is a representation of my new life in Australia. Whilst every piece can stand alone, all individual and unique but all similar in some way, together they form an interconnected body of work, strengthening one another and creating something far richer than any single piece alone.

  • Held In The Surface

    This collection explores the quiet language of surface- where repetition, touch, and time converge- existing between use and presence.

    The series draws from the artist’s homeland, New Zealand, where lush natural abundance gives way to the stark, desolate volcanic landscape.

    Working in stoneware with earthy, familiar tones, each vessel is shaped and carved by hand. Its textured surface is built through a slow, deliberate process of mark-making. The patterns echo natural rhythms - weathered terrain, worn stone, falling rain, the imprint of time - while holding the intimacy of something made to be held. These pieces are not only objects, but invitations: to pause, to engage, and to connect through texture, weight, and quiet curiosity.

  • Cutout Fragments

    This collection of hand-built vessels was conceived from a sense of ‘play’ while questioning the concept of ‘functional’ and ‘decorative’ ceramics.

    I work primarily with slabs - piercing, slicing, cutting and layering. The shape of each slab and the way they come together dictate the final form of each piece.

    I have also created a playful assortment of smaller 3D shapes, objects, accessories, and forms that are interchangeable. 

    These pieces can be rearranged to create different designs, structures and vessel forms.

    The imperfections of the distorted and ‘wonky’ elements add to these playful forms - I want the viewer to be able to see how each piece and detail was created - with the artists’ finger prints revealed in each stage of the making.

    Surface and colour are as equally important as the construction, with the final mark-making stage being a celebration of colour, line, texture.

    I invite the viewer to question whether these structures are pots, vessels, sculptures, or maybe something else?

  • This collection is a mix of electric- and wood-fired pieces. The forms all started in a study of organic geometry but are chosen here to be a canvas for crystalline glazes.

    The experiment was to push these crystals further, with side wadding and alternative firing techniques. Chrome blushes some crystals pink, and the fly ash in the Anagama kiln lends a particular chaos to the final result. 

    I invite the viewer to examine the surfaces carefully; try to determine which pieces were fired in each atmosphere.  

  • Ky Curran is launching her new series ‘Woodfired pearls’ at Clay Gulgong – consisting of woodfired beads made from porcelain, keenes ruby and woodfire clay glazed with a range of shinos including golden, miwa, carbon trapping and ash glazes. The woodfire atmosphere transforms the clay into metallic, lush and intricate surfaces, each bead an individual artwork. Being a silversmith Curran uses silver, another transformative material to combine for functional adornment for the body.

    Each necklace is a one off collectors item.

  • The collection examines how we bring the beauty of the outdoors into our homes, surrounding ourselves with flowers and symbolic objects which are inspired by nature. The simplified forms of birds and flowers are unglazed, highlighting the unique beauty and contrasting qualities of the different clay bodies. I use white porcelain for its fine texture and reflective qualities, providing a visual counterpoint to the coarse, light-absorbing properties of the dark red stoneware. 

    Ultimately, the work uses the tactile and visual properties of ceramics to bring the organic beauty of nature indoors, and invites us to reflect on the comfort that being surrounded by these objects in our homes can bring us.

  • Carolyn’s method and inspiration mirror the power of elemental forces to reveal the beauty and majesty these bring. In particular, she is currently exploring the tension between the human sanctuary of the cave and the mythos of the peril that lurks within. As with rock, the eye looks for meaning and representation in the forms while inviting touch and discovery.

    Each piece is sculpturally formed with thrown stoneware and glazed to allow raw clay, matt and shimmering gloss to flow over the surface. Form and message outweigh function within these works, but each piece is a vase, inviting further artistic expression from the owner.

  • Control & Release

    I am drawn to the quiet discipline of repeating shapes, lines and textures, allowing the process to build a sense of order and expectation. Yet, within this structure, I deliberately introduce subtle disruptions. Patterns shift, edges soften, and forms bend. What begins as precise gradually becomes fluid.

    These alterations are not accidents, but intentional gestures that reflect the imperfect systems found in nature. I seek to embody the tension between order and irregularity, allowing each vessel to exist somewhere between control and release.

    Through these works, I explore the beauty of deviation. By interrupting repetition, I aim to create objects that feel alive—forms that hold memory of structure, but ultimately celebrate variation, movement, and the quiet imperfections that define the natural world.

  • Life carries us forever forward

    This work reflects life’s transitions, where one stage quietly gives way to the next. Each vessel represents a chapter of life, holding memories, dreams, emotions, and rituals. Together, they build a portrait of a single life shaped over time. The binary text, Life carries us forever forward, expresses the inevitability of movement through life: regardless of readiness, we are always being carried into what comes next.

  • The Mum and Me series marks a midpoint in my life. In September 2025, nineteen years with my mother, and nineteen years without her. Clay remains our shared language. I intentionally create and woodfired works in pairs and families, using each firing to continue the series.

    These tall forms stand as sentinels, mother and daughter, holding space for memory, protection and continuity, alongside Firebox Bloom, a solitary offering to the kiln. Fired within the firebox, its rounded form received ash, flame and shifting embers.

    Fired for 80hrs in an anagama kiln in Middle Pocket, NSW, each work is shaped by time, atmosphere and surrender, holding a quiet dialogue between presence and absence. Through making, I remain in conversation with my mother.

  • Here, the woman returns to her throne, not as victim, but as keeper of flame and tide.

    Two thrones stand in quiet defiance — Each one engages with one of the elemental forces — fire and water — through functional and symbolic means: one operates as a fire vessel, the other as a water feature.

    Once, these elements were the instruments of women’s suffering: flames and rivers that silenced voices, erased bodies, and condemned power.

    Now, they are reclaimed.

    The fire no longer destroys — it illuminates. The water no longer drowns — it nourishes.

    Each chair becomes both throne and altar, a place of rest and reverence. They honour the feminine force that endures, transforms, and rises again.

    In clay — a material of earth and memory — the elements converge, offering a meditation on reclamation, balance, and rebirth.

  • Verdigris

    Verdigris explores an imaginary world of four-legged beasts as extensions of the earth’s primal elements. These creatures are the wind and rain, the soil and wood. They dance, snuffle and feel - living contentedly in ignorance of our ‘very important’ human lives. 

  • Tidal tribe

    The tidal collection draws inspiration from memories of the Australian coastline, exploring themes of individuality, community and belonging through ceramic art. My practice is rooted in respect for the natural world and my humble place within it. Utilising the textures and colours to echo the imprint of memory, along with movement to feel alive with the rhythm of the tide.

    During the creative process I am alert to biofeedback, as materials themselves influence development from conceptual stage through an intuitive process to the final form.

  • Fired for the Feast

    Fired for the Feast is a wheel thrown collection, using Stoneware Ironstone Clay and multi-layered glaze. Each work features curvaceous forms that are alike to a wine chalice, a prominent and recognisable symbol of celebratory homewares. To foster my connection to family timelines and the culture of gathering, I have appropriated significant themes of homeware representations from history, including 18 th century goblets and ancient Grecian vessels. The cohesion of these historical forms through my body of work seeks to challenge whether homewares have really changed through time, as they all serve the same functional purpose to provide food and drink. This emphasises the importance of traditional feasting to connection with family, and how without it we may be far more distant to the ones closest to us today.

  • Inlay Vases

    These inlay vases are made with a rough iron heavy clay body contrasted by clean, precise carving of porcelain inlay, decorated with a nostalgia for Art Deco’s optimism and exultation of clean and fluid lines. Committed to the flames of woodfiring, these lines are either preserved, shimmering, crisply under glossy Sally Wattle ash, or obscured by the moody atmospheres of the kiln. The vases display a tension between the potter committed to refining craft and technique and the woodfirer willing to surrender to the wild and unpredictable process of woodfiring.

  • These three pieces draw on classical pottery forms, thrown on the wheel and completed with coils. Reactive slips and glazes are layered across the surface, producing subtle shifts in colour, texture, and depth as they respond to the firing process. I am drawn to the tension between control and chance: the discipline of enduring forms set against the unpredictability of the kiln. Through this process, each piece becomes both familiar and unstable, balancing tradition with disorder.

  • Sea Level - Above and Below

    This work is inspired by a Lord Howe Island holiday, explores contrasts between ocean and mountain.

    Snorkelling at sea level, where one can float effortlessly and observe vibrant coral and marine life, to hiking 875 metres above, at the island’s highest peak through tangles of palm and banya, highlight how easily accessible the underwater world is throughout the small island, compared to the demanding climb to the summit, which requires planning, fitness, and guidance.

    This juxtaposition emphasizes both physical and experiential contrasts: passive observation versus active effort, accessibility versus challenge.

    The torus, or ring shape, symbolizes this balance. With no endpoints, it represents continuity and the flow of life energy, uniting the opposing elements of sea and land.

  • I have always been a keen observer of the natural world, facilitated by
    travelling and walks I’ve done in different bioregions around  Australia.

    I am also a collector of mementos of my travels, and I was most recently inspired by banksia cones, seed pods and gumnuts collected on my travels in southern Western Australia.

    These interpretive small sculptural forms are hand built from BRT and Fine White Stoneware, bisqued at Clayschool,  and then fired either in a raku kiln or wood fired in  the anagama kiln at Middle Pocket Pottery. I find that the dynamic nature of the 4 day wood firing process lends itself well to the subtle colours, textures, and unpredictable variations of the natural world in my forms.

Next

Alumni Exhibition