As a ceramic artist, Josephine has been pursuing her passion for the visual arts over the past six years. Prior to this, she had a career in education as a classroom music teacher from 2007 to 2015. She grew up in a community of artists in South Australia and now draws inspiration from her exposure to their artistic practices. 

Josephine started exploring the hand-building technique of coiling while she was with her family in a remote South Australian coastal settlement during Covid in 2020. Now, she creates sculptural pieces at her Melbourne home studio.

 Juxtaposed with these stone-like vessels, are more delicate wheel-thrown pieces. She sees these pieces as a canvas on which to paint in a style inspired by her children’s early abstract artwork.

Over the last four years Josephine has been exhibiting in group shows in Victoria and South Australia and is looking forward to her first solo exhibition ‘By Land and Sea’ at Red Gallery and being part of the upcoming ‘Held’ exhibition at the Manly Art Gallery & Museum. 

‘By Land and Sea’, Solo Exhibition, Red Gallery, 17 - 28 April, 2024

The intention of this body of work is to evoke the beauty and awe of where land meets sea. Josephine hopes to portray a feeling of the remote shores she explored while growing up and continues to visit as an adult. The shape and surface of the hand-built forms echo familiar granite boulders, round and organic, while the glaze on the lip and interior suggests the waterline. Using the coiling technique and a reductive process, she pushes and scrapes the clay to reveal the desired form. She leaves the surface unglazed to celebrate the raw colour and texture of the clay and to bring emphasis to the form of the piece. Juxtaposed with these stone-like vessels, are more delicate wheel-thrown pieces. She uses gestural brushstrokes and colour to develop the surface of this work. She is interested in the transparent nature of coloured slip; how colour can be layered and how brushstroke can give a sense of movement. They are a reminder of darting fish or delicate shells found in rockpools or could simply be viewed as abstract paintings that change with turning. When side by side the two approaches complement each other, creating an interesting conversation.