We are pleased to present this captivating exhibition by Alex Bray, winner of the 2023 Sabbia Mentorship and Solo Exhibition Award for National Art School Ceramics graduates.
Alex is a ceramic artist working on the Central Coast, NSW on Darkinjung land. She is represented by King Street Gallery on William, Sydney where she recently had her first solo show. Alex completed a BFA at the National Art School, following a long-held interest in the fine arts as both a viewer and maker and is currently undertaking a Masters of Fine Art. Living for several years in both London and Paris gave Alex the opportunity to be steeped in centuries of artistic practice, a sense of awe and beauty that she now brings to her celebration of the Australian environment. Alex’s maximalist visual language is inspired by European Baroque and the medieval hellscapes of Bosch and Brueghel, abundantly accessible during her time in Europe.
Decades in legal practice, working pro bono on behalf of refugees, environmental groups, homeless charities and mental health services have made Alex consider the fragility of existence and civilisation, an overriding theme in her practice. Working with vulnerable people living on the fringe of society, be it through mental health issues, lack of legal status or lack of stable housing revealed a liminal state where belonging is questioned and certainties are lost. A recent serious illness has further caused Alex to consider the random, chaotic and precariousness of life. Notions of uncertainty, flux and loss are central to her work.
Alex draws influence also from a childhood in the milling cities of Northern England, where decorative porcelain was collected as a luxury display item from manufacturers such as Coalport and Spode. Her early dislike for the knickknackery of her mother and grandmothers has turned to a fascination with the idea and purpose of decoration in the female space. Alex reads extensively, fiction with a dystopian bent and scientific and philosophical material that examines our responsibilities to our planet and technological innovation that may yet save us.
‘My sculptural ceramic work explores the tension between the built and organic environment; the re-emergence of the natural world over human construction; collapse and regeneration as well as providing a more personal outlet to deal with loss, death and grief and the rebirth following loss. This current body of work is rendered largely in fine porcelain, evoking the fragility yet resilience of the natural environment. Works are both visually abundant and more delicately abstract, using organic motifs of kelp forms and Australian native flora conjuring the idea of the environment in flux. Intricate detail is made coherent through simple glazes in a largely monochromatic palette. The work pushes the boundaries of material integrity, working the clay body finer and thinner to enable its activation by light, creating a luminous ethereal quality suggesting the ephemeral and the liminal – the space between light and dark; existence and disappearance’. Alex Bray, 2025
