Bling Bling
15 MAY – 14 JUNE 2026
Opening Preview: 6.30pm Thursday 14 May
Bling Bling brings together the work of Canberra region ceramic artists Liz Crowe, Lee Nelms and Jacqui Keogh for a contemporary exploration of decoration and the vessel. Embracing the aesthetic, affectionate, excessive and even derided aspects of bling, the exhibition celebrates spectacle while inviting viewers to consider the deeper cultural, personal and artistic meanings that underpin the works.
Bling is both sparkle and contradiction. This exhibition explores the duality of adornment and cultural commentary through contemporary ceramic art.
Liz Crowe works with lustres, copper wire, shiny glazes and engobes to explore her love of colour and texture, with touch and the tactile central to her hand-built and wheel-thrown vessels and wall pieces. Lee Nelms walks the tightrope between functional and sculptural, with her colourful and playful forms becoming containers for memory, humour, and vulnerability. Loosely inspired by a mid-century aesthetic, Jacqui Keogh leans into quirkier forms finished with heavy metallic glazes and lustres applied to carved surfaces in repetitive and block patterns.
Crowe, Nelms and Keogh met at Old Saint Luke’s Studio in Gundaroo, where a shared commitment to clay sparked an enduring creative friendship — realised here in their first collaborative exhibition.
ARTIST STATEMENTS
Liz Crowe
As a child ceramic boxes, containers and vases were particularly special. We didn’t have much. My mother would strive to bring beauty into the home. I was often as enamoured of them as she was. I learned the value of such things went beyond their cost; they made my mother happy.
Working with lustres, copper wire, glossy glazes, underglaze and engobes, I am guided by a love of colour. Texture and touch lie at the heart of my practice, giving rise to tactile vessels and wall pieces, handmade and wheel-thrown. Displayed alone or gathered together, the works enter into conversation with my co-exhibitors through shared colour, form and intention.
Lee Nelms
In this exhibition, I move between functional and sculptural forms in a spirit of colour and play, knowing that if I fall, the sculptural side will always be my ‘soft’ place to land. My forms are often quirky, and playful. expressing humour and celebrating the joyfulness of bling and the ways in which it animates the forms.
Jacqui Keogh
Loosely inspired by a mid-century aesthetic, my ceramic pieces drift toward quirkier forms, their carved surfaces enlivened by metallic glazes and lustres layered through repetition and bold, block-like patterning. I lean into that off centre pot, use bright colours, bold forms and strong patterning to exaggerate the character which emerges from the vessel.
IMAGE: BLING BLING, 2026. Photo by Anne Stroud.
