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Ceramics

About

The hands-on emphasis of the Ceramics program at NAS encourages students to explore and develop a wide range of skills and technical knowledge across the temperature spectrum from raku to porcelain. The Ceramics studios and workshops are among the best equipped in Australia.

The department has a total of 18 kilns offering a wide range of firing options. Students also have access to a dedicated glaze lab, wheel forming and hand building studio. NAS Ceramics offers world-class teaching, facilities and equipment that enable students to develop from expert instruction and peer learning, then further with individual exploration.

Following the studio-based, hands-on model of learning at NAS, all Ceramics students receive intensive face-to-face teaching in small classes and are allocated their own studio in their final year of study in the Bachelor of Fine Art. Postgraduate students also have their own studio on campus.

In the BFA program, all students take Ceramics in their first year as part of their studio rotations which also includes painting, photomedia, printmaking and sculpture. In second year, students focus fully on a chosen studio area such as Ceramics, however there are always opportunities for cross-disciplinary work.

All Ceramics lecturers are experienced practicing artists, providing a dynamic, collaborative and encouraging environment to nurture each student through the development of studio practice, professional practice and research, helping them find their own unique path as an emerging visual artist.

While embracing the traditions of ceramic practice, the department aims to foster a diverse dialogue between all aspects of contemporary arts practice.

The teaching team is led by Head of Ceramics Lynda Draper, an accomplished practising artist who has won many national and international awards and appeared in major exhibitions including Know My Name at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and Clay Dynasty at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS).

Facilities

NAS Ceramics facilities include:

  • Kiln shed with 18 kilns offering a wide range of firing options including gas, electric and Raku kilns of various capacities.
  • Glaze Lab with individual station extraction units, blunger and ball mill facilities for wet mixing.
  • Wheel-forming studio accommodating 19 participants, and 16 wheels available for individual studios.
  • Hand-building studio equipped with clay extruder, clay slab roller and banding wheels.
  • Wet clay processing facilities with four pugmills, including vacuum mixing batch pugmill.
  • Cutting and grinding equipment including wet diamond bench saw and dry cutting and grinding wheels attached to H-class vacuum.
  • Well-stocked store of materials for class and individual research.
  • Individual ceramics studios for BFA3 and postgraduate students.

CONTACT

Please fill in our online enquiry form below or call us on +61 2 9339 8651 to speak to our Student Services Team.

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Alumni

Ceramics graduates from NAS have gone on to successful careers in the arts sector as full-time practising artists, production potters, ceramic designers, art educators, ceramic studio managers, technical assistants, and working on large-scale public commissions.

Explore some of the diverse work of NAS’s recent Ceramics alumni:

Mechelle Bounpraseuth

Casey Chen

Ryan Hancock

Ben King

Holly Macdonald

Maricelle Oliver

Sassy Park

Yul Scarf

Alichia van Rhijn

Core Subject

This outline for Ceramics Studio Elective 1, a core first year subject at NAS, gives an insight into the foundations of the sculpture program.

Ceramics Studio Elective 1

This first year BFA subject aims to further the creative intellectual and speculative capacity of each student informed by a practical studio experience, and to broadly familiarise students with the body of knowledge that constitutes the Ceramics discipline.

 

Subject Content

This subject follows a program of thematically-based class projects and exercises that explore the fundamental methodologies of scale, construction, form and Ceramic technology including:

  • Selection and preparation of clay to realise and articulate complex form and scale, and investigate historical precedents
  • Practice of the stratagems relevant to developing wheel thrown ceramic form and scale
  • Development of high temperature glaze and firing technology using single variable research techniques
  • Critical discussion of work produced by students in the class
  • Engagement with professional standards of studio practice including Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) guidelines relevant to the Ceramics studio

 

Learning Outcomes

Students who successfully complete this subject will be able to:

  • Demonstrate developing technical competence in wheel-thrown ceramics and understanding of the plastic qualities of clay prepared for use on the wheel
  • Demonstrate the creative potential of surface, form, tension and colour utilising high temperature firing techniques and technology
  • Utilise structure and scale to articulate complex form and surfaces using pinch, coil, slab and wheel thrown components
  • Describe and compare the historical and contemporary perspectives that underscore wheel-thrown ceramics
  • Work co-operatively, undertaking all tasks in accordance with Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) standards relevant to the Ceramics studio

Short Courses

In addition to full degree study, NAS offers an extensive range of Short Courses suited to all ages and experience levels. The courses are taught by practicing artists and are run on campus and online throughout the year, covering every artistic discipline from ceramics to sculpture to photomedia. NAS also offers an extensive school holiday program for all primary and high school students. Visit the Short Course pages for more information about what’s coming up.

Staff

  • Dr Louise Boscacci

    Head of Ceramics

  • Lynda Draper

    Ceramics Lecturer

  • Karen Black

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Somchai Charoen

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Bronwyn Kemp

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Tania Rollond

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Ebony Russell

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Linda Seiffert

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Joseph Purtle

    Ceramics Tech / Sessional

  • Gary Deirmendjian

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional), Drawing Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Alma Studholme

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Alexandra Standen

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

  • Machiko Motoi

    Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Dr Louise Boscacci

Head of Ceramics

BSc (Hons.) (JCU), BFA (NAS), PhD (UOW)

An acclaimed Australian ceramics artist over the past two decades, Louise is an innovative artist educator, interdisciplinary scholar of affect, materiality, and more-than-human relations, and a collaborative author on recent art and the anthropocene. In creative practice and critical pedagogy she asks bigger questions of how art and diverse artists might attune, respond, regenerate and thrive in Oceania and the Asia-Pacific in the twenty-first century.

Louise is an alumna of the National Art School in ceramics and builds on her tenure as a Ceramics Lecturer (2020–2023), and a Sessional Lecturer, Ceramics (2016–2020). She has lectured at the University of Wollongong (2016–2018), co-developing new subject content on contemporary art and climate change as part of the Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) degree. As an interdisciplinary practitioner and thinker, Boscacci has held the positions of Post-Doctoral Research Associate and Associate Fellow (2017–2022; adjunct) and was a founding member of the Material Ecologies Research Network (MECO)/Centre for Critical Creative Practice at UOW.

Louise has exhibited extensively, nationally and internationally, with 14 major solo and 52 group and collaborative two-person exhibitions since 1997, including significant curatorial representations in capstone events, from Clay Energy (Clay Gulgong 2010 invited Master Artist) to Clay Dynasty (2021–3, Powerhouse Museum Sydney). She was awarded the prestigious Australia Council London Studio Residency for her practice in contemporary ceramics, and is a recipient of two New Work grants by the Australia Council for large-scale porcelain works conceived as future archives of extinction witness, and new ceramics and sound investigations. Her distinctive ceramics are held in the National Gallery of Australia, state and regional Australian gallery collections, and numerous private art collections in Australia, the UK, USA, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Boscacci’s recent publications include the multi-author book, 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (2019) and chapters in cutting-edge projects, Postcards from the Anthropocene: Unsettling the Geopolitics of Representation (2022) and Water Lore: Place, Practice, and Poetics (2022).

Courses and Subjects Taught: 

  • STU100 First-Year Ceramics Foundations A
  • STU120 Wheelwork Multiplicity; First Year Co-ordinator
  • CER200 Ceramics 2 Plate Tectonics, Independent Research Project
  • STS 200 Studio Seminar 2
  • CER300 Ceramics 3 Studio Specialisation
  • STS 300 Studio Seminar 3
  • MFA1 CER400 Studio Specialisation; Subject Co-ordinator
  • MFA2 Research Supervision
  • DFA Research Supervision
  • NAS Summer School 2017–2022: Clay, Wheel, Body

Areas of Specialisation – potential MFA and DFA research supervision areas:

  • Regenerative Ceramics
  • Embodiment, the Senses, Affect and Ceramics
  • Clay as Country: Decolonising Clay
  • More-than-human Ceramics
  • Sound and Ceramics
  • Ceramics and Photography
  • Ceramics and Drawing
  • Objects and Affect in the Anthropocene
  • New Materialisms and Situated Knowledges
  • Art/Ceramics and Climate
  • Art/Ceramics and Ecology
  • Art and Environmental Change (Material-discursive Investigations)
  • Feminist Studies in Art and Global Environmental Change
  • Clay/Ceramics and Time
  • Ceramics and Wit(h)nessing
  • Objects and Words/Storying/Worlds
  • Relational Ceramics Practice

Lynda Draper

Ceramics Lecturer

B Ed, Grad Dip Visual Arts(UNSW), Ceramics Dip  (National Art School),MFA (UNSW)

Lynda Draper is a visual artist who primarily works in the Ceramic medium. She was Head of Ceramics from February 2022 to January 2023. Lynda has received numerous national and international awards and grants including a Skills and Development grant and two New Work grants from the Australian Council for the Arts. Awards include the:  Sidney Myer fund Australian Ceramic Award, Premier Acquisition Award at the 54th International Competition of Contemporary Ceramic Art, held at the International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza, Italy; 16th International Gold Coast Award, Gold Coast Regional Gallery and the sass & bide COFA Art Award held at COFA UNSW. In 2010 she completed an MFA at COFA UNSW with the assistance of a Planex scholarship. Lynda’s works have been featured in numerous publications including Vitamin C: New perspectives in Contemporary Art and Clay and Ceramics, Phaidon Press.

Lynda’s works are included in significant National and International collections including at the: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza, Italy; Renwick Alliance Gallery, Smithsonian Institute Washington; Artbank, Australia; Shepparton Art Museum (SAM), Victoria; FA Grue collection, Italy; Collection of the Dutch Royal Family; Myer foundation; Campbelltown City Art Gallery; Wollongong Art Gallery,  Gold Coast City Art Gallery University of Wollongong and the IAC Collection FLICAM Museum, Fuping, China.

Lynda is currently represented in Australia  by Sullivan & Strumpf, Sydney  and internationally by Galerie Lefebvre & Fils, Paris, France.

www.lyndadraper.com

Karen Black

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Karen graduated from Queensland College of the Art, Griffith University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Fine Art. In 2019, Karen was the recipient of the Stonehouse Glasshouse residency in France. The residency culminated in an exhibition of ceramics and paintings.

Her work has been exhibited at Art Basel HK, Art Stage Singapore, Art Taipei, and Tokyo Art Fair. Her works are held in prestigious public collections including Monash University Museum of Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Australian War Memorial, Griffith University Art Gallery, Artbank, Macquarie Bank Collection, QUT Art Museum, Museum of Brisbane, Shepparton Art Museum and the Salsali Private Museum in Dubai, in addition to various private collections both in Australia and overseas. Finalist in the Sidney Myer Australian Ceramic Prize in 2017.

Represented by Sullivan & Strumpf, Sydney and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

  • +61 2 9339 8744

Somchai Charoen

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Somchai Charoen is a Thai born ceramic artist based in Sydney who has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Trained in industrial ceramics design, he was a former lecturer at Silpakorn University, Thailand. Since migrating to Australia in 2002, he has worked commercially as a mould and model maker as well as his own art practice.

Mould making and slip casting was once considered the domain of the industrial. Whilst remaining in active use in industry, many artists now utilise this technique to create innovative and extraordinary artwork. With his many years of experience in plaster mould and model making, Somchai challenges his skills by creating moulds that explore the possibilities of what techniques can be applied to make a number of composites, or can be connected in different ways by constructed or flexible arrangement.

Bronwyn Kemp

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Bronwyn Kemp was brought up in Broken Hill, NSW. She completed a Certificate course at East Sydney Technical College in 1973, then a Diploma course at the South Australian School of Art in 1975, before setting up her own studio in Walkerville, SA. A visit to Japan in 1976 introduced her to Shino and Oribe ware. In 1979, she trained at the Jam Factory in Adelaide, SA, for four months, then rented studio space there. From 1980, as well as continuing to produce functional ware, she started to make wheel and slab-built sculptural forms decorated with coloured clay as inlays and slips. From 1983-1988, she took over from Jeff Mincham as Head of the Ceramic Workshop at the Jam factory. She is currently based in Sydney, NSW, working with porcelain to make forms decorated with incised line work that derives from local landscapes and bush flora. Her work is marked with an impressed ‘K’ in a square.

Tania Rollond

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Tania Rollond makes ceramics and drawings, often combining these disciplines. Working between representation and abstraction, she makes drawings on (and about) objects to test the limits of recognition and meaning. Tania holds a Master of Fine Arts (Research) at UNSW Art & Design and a Bachelor of Arts (Design) from Curtin University. She studied ceramics at the National Art School and has been a lecturer there since 2004, and has also taught ceramics at UNSW and TAFE. She has been exhibiting regularly since 2001, and her work is held in the collections of Bendigo Art Gallery, Shepparton Art Museum, and FLICAM, Fuping, China, as well as many private collections in Australia and internationally.

Ebony Russell

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Ebony Russell in an artist and educator with broad experience of teaching and arts administration in primary and secondary education throughout Australia. Her art practice is based within the ceramic tradition and engages with a range of issues specifically related to the ceramic medium and craft practices. Her expertise extends across tradition ceramic techniques into experimental ceramics and installation. Ebony has also worked as a project coordinator and workshop facilitator with indigenous art centres and art fairs including the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair and The National Indigenous Art Fair, Sydney. In her administrative roles she has been appointed as Head of Department in multiple colleges and has held the role of regional coordinator – North Queensland Secondary Schools Creative Generation Excellence Awards. Ebony’s work has been exhibited in both commercial and public galleries throughout Australia, New Zealand and internationally. In 2019 was awarded the prestigious Franz Rising Star Award for Excellence in Porcelain.

Linda Seiffert

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Linda Seiffert creates distinctive sculptural forms which inquire into the mystery, diversity and dynamism of nature. Her body of work incorporates both ceramic tradition, natural and found materials with frequent site specific installations and public works.

Graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Ceramics) from The National Art School Sydney, she was awarded the Graduating Student Award for excellence and has since received a myriad of accolades for her distinctive sculptures.

Her recent research and works explore the transitional zones between the man made & natural environment. A consideration of the incongruity of these diverse environs, and her work exists as both testament of human separation from the natural world and is an evocative affirmation of our inarguable place within it.

Joseph Purtle

Ceramics Tech / Sessional

BFA (Hons) (NAS)

Joseph Purtle’s practice focuses on wheelthrowing and expressive high-temperature glazes, exploring variations in the firing atmospheres of gas and wood kilns. He was the winner of the FONAS award, 2012, the Kerrie Lowe Gallery Award, 2013, and the Ashley Dawson Damer Award for Excellence in Ceramics, 2013. He has exhibited in Kerrie Lowe Gallery, Mils Gallery, Rex Livingston Gallery and the Sogetsu Ikebana Exhibition at the Botanic Gardens. He is currently undertaking a Masters Degree in Fine Arts and was recently featured in the group exhibition Bang at Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay.

Gary Deirmendjian

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional), Drawing Lecturer (Sessional)

Gary Deirmendjian is an established Sydney based contemporary artist whose practice encompasses sculpture, photography, video, installation and site-specific intervention. Working predominantly in public/shared space, he is broadly recognised as a sharp observer of the present and for creating thought provoking and socially concerned works of challenging scale and immersive qualities. He has exhibited extensively and received numerous new work invitations and commissions for private and public artworks, as well as site-specific projects, realised broadly in Australia and several internationally. 

Recent points of note include the publication of his multi-voiced monograph A PREVAILING SENSE OF DISQUIET (Hardie Grant Books 2020); award of the NAS British School at Rome, Residency (2017); presence (2017), a major site-specific moving image commission for Wynyard Railway Station, Sydney; and pulse (2020), a major site-specific moving image commission for Federation Square, Melbourne.

He holds an MFA in Sculpture from the National Art School (2006), where he currently teaches (Sessional Lecturer since 2012 serving extensively in the BA Sculpture program and broadly across other disciplines as Post Graduate supervisor).

Prior to turning to full-time artistic practice, he trained as an Aeronautical Engineer (Honours, University of NSW, 1990) becoming significantly active in Defence R & D and then Industrial Design through establishing private practice and teaching (full time Lecturer, Western Sydney University, 1996–2001). He is the author/photographer of Sydney Sandstone (Craftsman House, 2002), which include contributing essays from Tim Flannery and Philip Cox amongst others.

Alma Studholme

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Alma Studholme is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher working across ceramics, mixed media and multimedia installation, sculpture, performance and video. She holds a doctoral degree in Arts and Social Sciences from the University of Sydney for her interdisciplinary research in cognitive sciences, neuroscience, contemplative traditions and art practice.

In 2022 she was also awarded a Doctor of Fine Art degree in Ceramics from the National Art School, for a project that extended her ceramic installation practice into further
exploration of time, haptic experience, affect theories and Karen Barad’s onto-epistemology. Alma regularly exhibits in Australia and internationally.

Alexandra Standen

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Alexandra Standen is a practicing contemporary artist with graduate and postgraduate degrees from The National Art School (2011) and UNSW Art and Design (2018) respectively. She is an artist who explores the potential of clay as a ceramic form; subverting the long-held association between ceramics and utilitarian function. Having exhibited within Australia, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Jakarta as well as working on large scale public art project in recent years.
Practising from her studio in Glebe, Standen exhibits with Chalk Horse gallery, Sydney and This Is No Fantasy Gallery, Melbourne.
Standen has also undertaken a number of artist residencies over the last 4 years at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, Tel Aviv, Geneva, Istanbul the UK and rural NSW and Northern Territory. Winner of the Sidney Myer Award for Ceramics, Shepparton Art Museum 2012, Standen was a finalist in awards including the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, Gold Coast Ceramic Award and the Wynne Prize.

Machiko Motoi

Ceramics Lecturer (Sessional)

Machiko is a multidisciplinary artist working in ceramics and in the expanded field of drawing. She has exhibited with and/or performed at .M Contemporary Gallery, Stanley Street Gallery, Gallery Lowe & Lee, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Casual Powerhouse Arts Centre, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Bankstown Arts Centre, Hazelhurst gallery, Clay Gulgong, Squiggle Space, and STACKS Project Space.
Machiko is currently a sessional lecturer in the Ceramics department at the National Art School. She also teaches art and ceramics at Bankstown arts centre and regularly runs community workshops in Sydney.
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This holiday season, give the gift of creativity.

Whether your loved one is eager to begin their artistic journey, or they wish to continue learning and making art, a National Art School Gift Card will help them unlock their creative potential.

Give a gift that inspires. Buy a National Art School Gift Card today.

Learn more at the link in bio.

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Dec 19

Open
This holiday season, give the gift of creativity. Whether your loved one is eager to begin their artistic journey, or they wish to continue learning and making art, a National Art School Gift Card will help them unlock their creative potential. Give a gift that inspires. Buy a National Art School Gift Card today. Learn more at the link in bio.

Congratulations to all HSC students receiving their end of year results today! And to our future students, we look forward to meeting you in 2025.

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Dec 17

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Congratulations to all HSC students receiving their end of year results today! And to our future students, we look forward to meeting you in 2025.

On Tuesday 10 December, the National Art School celebrated the achievements and success of our students through awarding of prizes and scholarships. We would like to congratulate the award recipients for their hard work and thank our lecturers and technicians for their outstanding dedication and commitment to each and every student.

All of the prizes and scholarships awarded have been generously provided by our benefactors and sponsors, and we also thank you for your support.

Major Prize winners (pictured left to right): Oliver Abbott, Caleb Slater, Megan McKenzie, Freyja Fristad, Sarah R. Serfati, Ellen McCalmont, Benjamin Akuila, Chile Bainbridge, Elena Larkin. Photography by Peter Morgan.

View the full list of awards and recipients at the link in bio.

View

Dec 11

Open
On Tuesday 10 December, the National Art School celebrated the achievements and success of our students through awarding of prizes and scholarships. We would like to congratulate the award recipients for their hard work and thank our lecturers and technicians for their outstanding dedication and commitment to each and every student. All of the prizes and scholarships awarded have been generously provided by our benefactors and sponsors, and we also thank you for your support. Major Prize winners (pictured left to right): Oliver Abbott, Caleb Slater, Megan McKenzie, Freyja Fristad, Sarah R. Serfati, Ellen McCalmont, Benjamin Akuila, Chile Bainbridge, Elena Larkin. Photography by Peter Morgan. View the full list of awards and recipients at the link in bio.
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