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.

Through functional and sculptural forms, surface and character, all three artists explore the vessel as a holder of story, connection and individual expression.

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 that hold the past and the present.

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. 

Using clay to create functional pieces is a matter of course, as natural as breathing. These pieces are an extension of myself. Simple lines, direct design and decoration probably reflect my preferred way of existence. Uncomplicated, inspiring calm, giving comfort, a sense of integrity and sometimes a surprise thrown in for good measure. 

Lee Nelms

My work explores holding —the act of carrying personal remembrance through clay. I ask the material to hold the lived experiences that have shaped who I am, letting it become both witness and storyteller. Clay has given me a way to express a complex past while also becoming the weft and weave of my future.

As I grow older, I’m learning to express myself more fully, and to see myself more clearly. My forms are quirky, distorted, and off-centre, becoming containers for memory, humour, and vulnerability—the parts of me that were waiting to be recognised, remembered, and acknowledged.

Jacqui Keogh

Inspired by my love of 1960s and 70s ceramics, my current work holds memories of vessels that were part of the daily rituals of my childhood. Those objects provided an anchor and a sense of security in what was, in some ways, a harsh reality. These pots also hold my adult self, celebrating the semi-chaotic, the loud, the excitable parts of me. 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.