Francis Carmody
Caspar Connolly
Billy Bob Hawkins
Yvette James
Katie Ryan
Spring 2024
35°19’06.5”S 149°00’35.3”E
Yale-Columbia Refractor Ruin,
Mount Stromlo, Kamberri/Canberra
︎ View exhibition catalogue
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In the beginning, there was fire and there was clay. Hands moulded the clay and set it to fire to make forms. Hollow vessels soon begat implements for agriculture and storage. Memetic figures gave life to spiritual beings and legendary creatures, for ritual use, for mortal devotion. Mathematics and writing were established through cuneiform markings on ceramic tablets. It was the dawn of civilization, Sumer, third millennium BCE – a formative epoch that resonates in the present day.
“Clay Pit” is an exhibition about creation, growth, and metamorphosis.
These artists cultivate material forms through an analysis of how the structure of the natural world influences human behaviour, spawning complex processes of adaptation, invention, and extraction.
Through an exploration of the symbiotic structure of relationships between people and place, the past and the present, these artists work to reveal the tensions at play between realms of human and non-human experience, knowledge, allegory, and feeling.
This project was assisted by 2024 Canberra Art Biennial
Curated by Oscar Capezio