28 May – 14 June 2020

about the exhibition

PORCELAIN brings together the work of six highly respected ceramicists: Prue Venables, Keiko Matsui, Kevin White, Neville French, Shannon Garson and Alice Couttoupes. The exhibition showcases the complexity, beauty and strength of this material.

Alice Couttoupes creates exquisitely intricate porcelain sculptures of botanical forms. Her practice revolves around an exploration of our human interaction with the natural world. She says, “I am interested in the categorisations and systems of meaning that are applied to nature, processes of cultural exchange and appropriation, authenticity, ideas of place, belonging, materiality, object-hood, and notions of identity, particularly within the Australian context.” As a result of her recent residency in Paris in 2019, her research directed her to look more broadly at the concept of the garden. “I became interested in investigating gardens as in-between spaces, both public and private, and how those boundaries unfortunately often define our responsibility to the environment.’

Alice Couttoupes graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours from the University of New South Wales in 2013. In 2018, she was awarded the Eva Breuer Travelling Art Scholarship which allowed her to work and study at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France. She was a finalist in the 2020 Muswellbrook Art Prize and in 2017 was the recipient of the Nick Waterlow OAM Highly Commended Award in the Macquarie Emerging Artist Prize. Her works are in several collections including the Shepparton Art Museum and the City of Townsville Art Collection.