The river winds through a landscape collecting its possessions as if gathering memories. Some items dancing on the surface, while others travel unseen until they resurface somewhere further downstream. As described beautifully by Olivia Laing in her book To the River – “A river passing through a landscape catches the world and gives it back redoubled: a shifting, glinting world more mysterious than the one we customarily inhabit.”

This work is part of an ongoing exploration into the use of objects as tools for contemplation and the relationship this has to memory and imagination. The work aims to explore the overlap between creating objects that provide space for contemplation and capturing memory through ceramic form.

Each piece quietly evokes a unique story to its viewer. This subtlety allows memories to resonate or stories to be imagined, shifting like the ebb and flow of the river.

This exhibition is presented in partnership with Craft Victoria and Stockroom Kyneton as part of Craft Contemporary.

Pip Byrne is a Naarm/Melbourne-based ceramic artist. Her practice manipulates scale, form and texture to capture moments of playfulness, simplicity and scenes of light. By experimenting with hand-building techniques, her works extend the limits of traditional forms and ideas and tell the tales of the medium’s contrasts – strength/delicacy, grounding/lightness, fluidity/rigidity. Pip's background in landscape architecture informs her understanding of the space around us. She is fascinated with the process of creating with clay, and the wandering of spaces within that the practice allows – exploring our inner and outer worlds.

Image: Photography Annika Kafcaloudis