Prue Venables, Resonance I, 2025, thrown and altered Limoges porcelain Installation dimensions variable, 19 x 55 x 30cm (as pictured).
Prue Venables is one of Australia’s most accomplished ceramicists, working exclusively in porcelain. She throws high-temperature forms, then alters and reconstructs them, a complex and risky process that yields work of deceptive simplicity. Her practice has moved from functional vessels to abstract sculptural forms that play with space, and over the past decade has expanded to include silversmithing, which brings new textures to the porcelain. Her porcelain is worked so finely that light enters the walls of each form.
Her solo exhibition, Ma (間) , at Sydney’s Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, focuses on the space between forms. Venables’ attention has shifted from the single vessel to pairs and large groupings, each form balanced against another and understood as a presence within a composition rather than a container. The Japanese concept of ma describes the silence between raindrops or musical notes, an active presence that gives shape to everything around it. It resonates with Venables’ engagement with classical music, where the pause between notes defines the music, and her forms play with the shadows and spaces within and between.
Prue Venables, Gentle Murmurs II, 2026, Limoges porcelain, hand-thrown and altered 15 x 80 x 16 cm.
Image: Fred Kroh , Image courtesy the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.
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