Ebony Russell's cultural digest for February  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏
 
 
Ebony Russell, Siren Collection (2023)
porcelain and stain, dimensions variable.
Photo by Simon Hewson.
1. What are you looking forward to seeing?

Louise Bourgeois's exhibition Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This is a huge exhibition and I know I will have to visit more than once. Also...Prof. Mary Beard is talking at the Sydney Opera House in early Spring and I’m currently listening to a podcast about her essay Women and Power. I am definitely looking forward to seeing her talk in March!

You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure. - Mary Beard

Ebony Russell, Suspiciously Beautiful (2023)
porcelain and stain, dimensions variable.
Photo by Simon Hewson.
2. What are you looking forward to watching?
I indulge by watching films in the summer holidays and long flights. I just watched Everything Everywhere All At Once - I'm looking forward to watching it again and taking in the details. Women Talking was another highlight of my summer movie binge.
3. What are you looking forward to listening to?
I'm listening to women. My friends and family. The women who support me, care for me and live their lives around me. My daughters are entering their teens - listening to them tell me stories and share their experiences as they navigate the world of double digits and the first year of secondary school is the highlight of my day. Listening to them being girls now in the 21st Century - I'm listening to them, trying to learn and understand the world from their point of view, knowledge and experience.
Ebony Russell, Suspiciously Beautiful: Love Tunnel (2023)
porcelain and stain, 87 x 32 x 20 cm
Photo by Simon Hewson.
4. What are you looking forward to reading?
I've been reading the works of Virginia Woolf since my visit to her country home in Lewes last year. It is almost 100 years since she first gave the essay A Room Of One's Own. I will complete Jacob's Room and then begin To the Lighthouse. I'm reading Rebecca Solnit's essays - I love her writing...and, I'm eagerly waiting for the next novel by Australian author Nikki Gemmell to be published.

My favorite book is The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood - I read it every year. It keeps me on my toes.
Ebony Russell, Superfluous: Blue with Bows (2021)
porcelain and stain, 72 x 20 x 20 cm
Photo by Simon Hewson.
5. Tell us more about your body of work?
I'm a sculptor. I work with clay. Sometimes porcelain, sometimes terracotta. I make works using the tools of cake decorating and royal icing which has a historical connection with porcelain production in Europe and matrilineal craft practice. Craft and hand making is meditative and creates a loop in my practice. The ideas form the making, and the making forms the ideas. It’s like a continuous cycle – my experience is the basis.

My works all begin from an autobiographical point in some way or other...I’ve been working with pastel hues more recently, the pinks and blues directly relate to the gendered colour palette of my childhood. A recent commission for The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney allowed me to focus on Jasper blue well known as the signature colour for Wedgewood pieces spanning the last two centuries. Coming up, I have a solo exhibition mid-year at the New England Regional Art Gallery of my Canyon works. And, soon a new body of work will be exhibited with Cynthia Corbett Gallery at Collect Art Fair in Somerset House, London!
 
Portrait of Ebony Russell. Courtesy of the artist.

Ebony Russell (@ebonyrussell.art) is an Australian artist who uses an unorthodox approach to construct ceramic sculptures. Her unique technique was developed out of an interest in gendered aesthetics, labour and traditional craft practices where Russell methodically pipes porcelain in series of intricate layers to build gravity- defying forms. Challenging the traditional making processes of decorative vessels; in her works the decoration becomes the structure, and the boundaries between the two are erased. Exploring established perceptions of cultural and artistic practices that were once exclusively coded as feminine and thus insignificant, Russell’s work celebrates the decorative, promiscuous aesthetics and politics of purity; the superficial, excess and delight – with pleasure. Russell completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Honours) at Monash University in 2003 and in 2019 graduated from The National Art School Sydney with a Masters of Fine Art. Russell has won many awards including the Franz International Rising Star Award in 2018 and the Meroogal Women’s Art Prize, 2022. More recently Russell received the Highly Commended Award in the International Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Art Prize, London. Major exhibitions include Young Masters Art Prize, London (2023), 1001 Remarkable Objects: The Powerhouse Museum Sydney (2023), Think Pinker, Gavlak Gallery Los Angeles (2023), SABOTAJE ESTEìTICO, Yusto Giner Gallery Spain (2022), Halcyon Days, Modern Eden Gallery San Francisco (2022), Clay Dynasty: The Powerhouse Museum (2022).

 

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