The work Stilled Composition No.25 was a finalist in the Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery's signature program, Still: National Still Life Award. In 2017, this award was expanded from having a focus solely on still life painting to include artworks in all mediums. As a high quality, abstracted still life arrangement executed in ceramics, this work signals a striking contemporary interpretation of the still life genre and new direction for the gallery's collection. The still life genre is the specialist focus of the Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery’s collection, with still life artworks identified as the first priority in the gallery’s collection policy, Section 2.4.2 (1): “Works in this section reflect the still life genre, as per artworks acquired through the National Still Life Award (Still) as well as through donation, purchase, transfer and bequest.”

Kelly Austin is an emerging artist, based in Tasmania, who has been achieving considerable success in national art awards and is establishing an impressive exhibiting record. She takes an instinctive and conceptual approach to ceramics, working with a reduced palette to explore the aesthetic of polished ceramic, relying solely on glaze for colour and texture. Working with sharply-defined geometric forms, her ongoing series of minimalist still life assemblages emphasise quietness, delicacy and restraint. These works explore resemblances between objects, which is a fundamental and consistent line of enquiry throughout the history of the still life genre. These series pose a thoughtful contrast to much of the ‘noisiness’ of contemporary art practice and politics, inviting contemplation of how we actually look and how we make meaning out of form, surface, colour and object relationships.

[Written by Jo Besley, 29 March 2019]

Still-life sculpture comprised of multiple pieces, ceramic, glaze, wood, acrylic paint.