ELEVATE… matter and concept

Joanne Searle, Colin Hopkins, Kenji Uranishi, John Daly

August / September 2026

Skepsi Gallery

JOANNE SEARLE

Glitch - My practice investigates the slippage between natural phenomena and the systems we use to record them. Porcelain becomes a material that holds pressure, memory and disruption. Drawing on the visual language of data and repetition, I create forms that behave like physical glitches. Sitting at the intersection of material process and digital logic, these folded and stratified surfaces, echo geological strata and disrupted information. They reveal how memory, place and data can fracture, overlap and reform within the body of the ceramic object.

COLIN HOPKINS

Splitting, cracking, curling, twisting, peeling – this is the rust and ochre infused language of autumn – and also my ceramics. These works begin their lives as simple circles and rectangles. As moisture gradually evaporates from the paper-thin clay, however, forms buckle, surfaces fracture and edges curl, undergoing a transformation over which I have little control. The clay then responds further to the extreme heat of the firing in its own unpredictable way, introducing an additional element of chance into each work.

In a process that mirrors an improvised musical performance, this body of work has allowed me to embrace and celebrate imperfection and the joy to be found in letting things go. Perhaps, unwittingly, I am also exploring something even more familiar – the quiet and humbling reality of growing old.

A special note of thanks to Ilona Topolcsanyi for her unfailing support and her ability to see things in my work I do not see.

KENJI URANISHI

‘Through the Clouds’ explores the spaces between the earth, the sky and the world beyond. The shifting nature of clouds creates fleeting moments of beauty, as they reveal and conceal what lies beyond. The series draws on memories of places, imagined worlds and the changing light between day and night.
Working with clay, glaze and the heat of the kiln constantly brings an element of surprise, as the materials can change in unexpected ways during firing. Variations in the thickness of the clear satin-matt glaze create different shades and textures in the blue pigment, while firing can cause some slab-built forms to swell or shift.
These unexpected outcomes become part of the work, reminding us that our environment is constantly changing and that we are one small part of something much larger.

JOHN DALY

I grew up watching my parents work clay, amongst a landscape of remnant ecologies and altered agricultural land on Wiradjuri Country in Central West NSW. That landscape taught me to always look closer, to read the passage of time, to see the changes that have happened, and the potential for broken things to be transformed into something with a future. A science degree in geology gave me a second language with which to describe these instinctual observations, a new understanding of how matter moves and changes state. An understanding that eventually drew me back to clay.

But a growing unease around the use of virgin materials pulled me towards the broken things, and now my materials of choice are those that others have discarded, brought back into use rather than left to become waste. A broken window. An empty champagne bottle. Both are crushed to a powder and fired back into glaze, as the glass briefly remembers its liquid nature. Bronze dust, salvaged from the waste bins of a Slovenian foundry during a recent symposium, is allowed to express its colourful chemistry as the copper it contains is returned to its elemental state by the reducing atmosphere of the kiln.

Throughout these explorations I have found myself preoccupied with the movement of light. Diffusing over the ceramic surface, reflecting off the metallic glaze, and transmitting through the imperfections of fused recycled glass. It seemed only natural that the ceramic form, synonymous with a vessel that holds the nourishment of food and drink, should become a vessel for light as well. And perhaps for ideas. The idea that no matter how broken, there is always the potential for a future.

ELEVATE… matter and concept

Joanne Searle, Colin Hopkins, Kenji Uranishi, John Daly

August / September 2026

Skepsi Gallery

Photographers: Art Atelier Photography, and artists.