Material Provenance — Amelia Black

Amelia Black

Amelia Black is a ceramic researcher, material artist and writer/facilitator based on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country, Naarm/Melbourne. Her practice centres material provenance, landscape as story, and the ethics of extraction. Her work seeks to relate with material and place to build accountability and relationality into the act of making.

Selected Work

Biography

This practice takes place on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and acknowledge the ongoing relationship between Country, clay, making and storytelling.

Feed

Overview

Material Provenance, 2024

Group exhibition with Claire Ellis,
Jane Sawyer and Kate Jones

Craft Victoria, Watson Place, Naarm/Melbourne
2 May – 15 June 2024

This exhibition forms part of an ongoing open-source material research project developed with Clay Matters. View the research →

Material Provenance formed part of the launch of Conscious Craft, a Craft Victoria initiative showcasing makers and designers who actively considered sustainability and ethics in their production methods and use of materials.

This exhibition formed part of an ongoing open-source material research project of the same name, created by members of Clay Matters. Four artists from the collective presented works made from a limited list of traceable materials, chosen in order to make work from a place of broader understanding of environmental impact, the process of extraction, and the labour used to make materials ready for ceramic application. Materials used: Bennett's clay, ball clay, silica, calcium carbonate, gerstley borate, nepheline syenite and copper.

Containers for Care is a series of functional ceramic vases made from stoneware and terracotta clays from the Adelaide Hills, glazed with materials from traceable sites: ball clay from Axedale, gerstley borate from Boron California, nepheline syenite from Canada, calcium carbonate from NSW, silica from Lang Lang Victoria, wood ash from a local pizza joint, and the iron in the terracotta clay itself.

Containers for Care 2024

Glaze Research

Installation images at Craft Victoria, photos by Sarah Forgie 2024

Conscious Craft promotion, photo by Sarah Forgie 2024