Prue Venables (b. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 1954) is one of Australia’s most accomplished ceramicists. Practising ceramics since 1977, it is through Venables' mastery of porcelain that she plays with ideas of function and the inventive and imaginative possibilities of objects. A final deceptive simplicity emerges, challenging and enabling fresh rhythms, different energies and spatial interactions.
Venables expertly works with high-temperature porcelain. Her process of ‘throwing’ provides a source of components and forms to be altered and reconstructed; procedures in this particular material are complex, risky and require great skill, yet produce an outcome that appears deceptively simple and seeks to deny the inherent difficulty of their origin. Over the past decade, Venables has harnessed the skill of silversmithing, adding new textures and forms to her work.
