Full Circle: International Celebration Exhibition

Wednesday 5 - Sunday 23 February 2025

Click here for artwork in the exhibition

A group exhibition that brings together past ceramics students and lecturers from the late 1980s/early 1990s at RMIT.

Mainly featuring ceramics (whilst all continue with their art practice, some have branched out into other mediums), this exhibition will include works by artists David Ray, Sharon Muir, Fiona Hiscock, Liz Danby, Fleur Rendell, Marianne Huhn and Danny McCubbin along with past lecturers Sally Cleary, Kim Martin and Christopher Sanders. What adds an extra dimension to the exhibition is that as well as Melbourne and regional Victoria, individual artists are based in the UK, Italy and France.

Initiated by Liz Danby (now living in Yorkshire in the UK), she tracked down some of these past students and lecturers. Liz has witnessed the closure of art colleges in England and Australia and this prompted memories of her art student days, making her keenly aware of the artistic training, skills and opportunities being lost to future generations.

Art is often viewed as not vocational enough and yet here all these artists, thirty plus years on, are making their careers in the arts industry. 

Full Circle is dedicated to the memory of Dorothy (Dot) Lugg (1926-2023), Liz Danby's mother, mentor and inspiration.

Sally Cleary (based in France) is Inspired by wild landscapes and architectural ruins from across the world. She reimagines the journey as a coil, like a curious explorer, using a continuous piece of coloured porcelain mixed and hand-rolled into segments. Her work examines order and disorder, balance and movement, the transformation of the material and arrangement of different elements and forms.

Liz Danby (UK) Liz’s home and studio are surrounded by the stunning landscape of the Yorkshire Pennines. Musing the question of What is Yorkshire?, she decided to capture the changing beauty of her surroundings through the year and create a series of glass panels depicting the glorious Pennine Way. The series takes inspiration from both the natural and industrial elements.

Fiona Hiscock (Melbourne) - ceramics is the chosen material for capturing her interest of direct observation in nature. The earth supports our habitat and for her, clay symbolises our connection to land, soil and growth. Functional ceramics, in a western historical sense, has often been ascribed to the feminine gender for use within the domestic confines of the family home, and Hiscock acknowledges the presence of this as a subtext to my vessel work.

Marianne Huhn (Melbourne) and her work arises from a personal inquiry into belonging. It explores themes of migration, the search for place, and the complexities of home. Be-longing, be-ginning, be-leaving, be-side, be-fore... How do our surroundings shape our perception of the world? How do our histories shape who we are? How do place and past define where we belong?

Kim Martin (Melbourne) Reflecting on her ancestral Celtic history Kim Martin explores elements of symbolism and landscape imagery through images and forms of the vessel and spiral. Reflecting on subconscious and conscious influences, the past is connected to the present. Experiences with the two dimensional surfaces of painting and the three dimensional forms of ceramics are linked and provide opportunities for ongoing exploration and evolution of ideas between mediums, metaphors, emotion and sensibility. This blending and cross-referencing of creative processes informs her current art practice.

Danny McCubbin (Sicily) unlocked a personal lifelong dream with the purchase of a one-euro house in the remote Sicilian town of Mussomeli. Abandoned for over 15 years, in this little house traces traces of the family who once called it their home still lingered in every drawer and cupboard. Objects found were placed in neglected rooms, made into arrangements and photographed. The result is the beauty in the overlooked—the everyday objects that often fade into the background of our lives.

Sharon Muir (France) is particularly interested in the notions of reminiscence and sentimentality that old and discarded objects evoke and how re-contextualising them into new formations can alter their meaning and function. Her current practice in particular involves selecting pre-existing mass-produced ceramic objects and incorporating them into new hand built forms.

David Ray (Yarra Vallery) - also known as The Duke of Dirt - has built a reputation for his wild and flamboyant Baroque creations that incorporate an abundance of colours, textures and decals onto handcrafted vessels. He provides wry commentary on the somewhat absurd nature of contemporary life, often using political, environmental and consumerism themes that often intertwine, reflecting the interconnectedness of societal systems, individual behaviours and environmental consequences. Subverting classical forms with contemporary concerns and often exploring the complex relationship between beauty and ugliness.

Fleur Rendell (North East Victoria) finds still life is a favoured genre. A printmaker who no longer works in clay, vases and vessels are a constant theme throughout her works. Objects or arrangements ignite her curiosity along with the stillness and connection that comes when absorbed in the processes of drawing, carving and printing the blocks. It is a meditation and other cares slip away. 

Christoper Sanders (Melbourne) has, in recent years, extended his interest in photography and the arid regions of South Australia. A sunburnt country of sweeping plains, of droughts and flooding rains, his photography tries to come to terms with this aridity and its extremes whilst celebrating the light, colour and forms. The accompanying chun glazed bowl symbolises water, the life essential.