Presenting Aiya Dreaming, recipient of the Sabbia Exhibition and Mentorship Prize for National Art School students.
Winner of the 2022 SABBIA Exhibition and Mentorship Award, Aiya has been working and developing her first solo exhibition between her studio in Sydney and during her stay at the Squatters Residency located in regional NSW, earlier in 2026. Majoring in ceramics Aiya graduated in 2022 in a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Art School. Aiya was the recipient of the N.E. Pethebridge Award at the National Art School Graduate Awards in 2022 and the Winner of the Foundations Mentorship Prize in 2026.
‘Order Up’ is a collection of ceramic sculpture-drawings that embrace, question and observe the impatient world of working to survive. Throughout my life, this survival mode has always manifested in restaurant kitchens. As a young artist, the work felt like a necessary tradeoff: make money to make art. But as my practice shifted into full-time making, I realised I had brought the kitchen with me. The works began in pocketed docket books, a constant companion used to take food orders every night. The drawings are quick, unguarded, and intuitive. In essence, they are visual orders. Rows of small clay canvases carry that same quality; raw, immediate and instinctive. Each is then finished, as any good chef finishes a plate; delicately, thoughtfully. From these drawings, sculptures emerged: three-dimensional translations of the drawn mark. The same hasty line scrawled between tables, now given weight, edge and volume. The order taken in seconds becomes the dish that takes hours to plate. ‘Order Up’ is a celebration of that double gesture: the relentless and the refined.