Light & Heat

This exhibition is a collaboration between two sisters – Jane Kelly, a Sydney based professional photographer, and Josephine Townsend, a Canberra based ceramicist. The sisters chose a botanical theme with images of flowers, trees and ferns as the start point for developing the exhibition. Jane’s images are presented in high quality prints and are reinterpreted on Josephine’s pots.

Strong composition, styling and subtle lighting are the hallmark of Jane’s images, whilst Josephine’s forms are essentially tactile, with surfaces, colours and curves that invite the touch.

The works in the exhibition successfully marry two-dimensional images with three-dimensional curved continuous surfaces. There is a conversation between the photographs and the forms that gives new meaning to both the ceramics and the images. Where flower images leap off the wall in bold colour out of a deep black background, on the soft curves of the ceramic works they are reinterpreted as monochrome images on coloured backgrounds. On some ceramic works the images are crisp and bold and on others they float quietly under a tranquil glaze.

One of the major challenges of collating the exhibition was the tyranny of distance, having to make decisions on the basis of phone camera images and text messages.