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.
Venables was selected as the Australian Design Centre’s ninth Living Treasure, Master of Australian Craft; World Craft Council Asia Pacific Region Craft Master; and the first Australian to be a finalist in the Loewe Craft Prize, NY. She is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London.
Her work has been widely shown internationally, including at Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Nancy Margolis, NY; Galerie Besson, London; V&A Museum, London. Alongside exhibiting, Venables is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London. Venables work is widely collected and held in important private and museum collections globally.
