Cowra Regional Art Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a major touring exhibition Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft \ Prue Venables on Saturday 20 August @ 2pm with guest speaker Prue Venables one of Australia’s greatest artists working in clay.
Prue Venables is the ninth artist in the Australian Design Centre (ADC) series Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft, which celebrates the achievements of Australia’s most iconic crafts practitioners celebrating their mastery of skill and their contribution to Australian craft.
This “must-see” solo exhibition encompasses a unique and 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. Prue Venables handmade functional porcelain artworks possess clarity, luminosity and a quiet beauty. Many of the works in the exhibition also feature wood and metal elements formed as handles, joints and other connecting pieces. Prue Venables’ 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.
“Prue Venables’ ceramic works are at once familiar, echoing domestic forms, exquisitely beautiful in their etched shapes, delicate textures and luminosity, and supremely graceful,” said Lisa Cahill, CEO and Artistic Director of Australian Design Centre.
Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft \ Prue Venables was researched and developed under a Visions of Australia research grant and is the ADC’s major national touring exhibition for 2019 – 2022. The tour is supported by the Visions of Australia program and Australia Council for the Arts.
About Prue Venables
Numerous national and international exhibitions, awards and publications celebrate the fine porcelain work of Prue Venables. Included in many public and private collections worldwide, these pots explore complex and unusual approaches to working with porcelain, challenge the significance of daily objects and highlight the richness that they bring to our lives.
Educated at the Harrow College of Art in London with a Masters of Fine Art – Ceramics from RMIT Victoria, Prue has been practising her craft since 1977. With a distinguished exhibition history, Prue has also mentored and taught generations of ceramicists. Prue’s work is collected by major institutions and public galleries and private institutions in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, UK, USA, Canada, Japan. She is a former President of Craft Victoria, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.
The exhibition opening of Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft \ Prue Venables is a free event however bookings are essential. Go to www.cowraartgallery.com.au/register to book with Eventbrite.
Image: Living Treasures, Prue Venables, Group Of Forms, Black Ovals & Yellow Sieve, 2018. Image by Terence Bogue.