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.
What is 'Wild' Clay?
Amelia Black and Pattie Beerens in conversation
Journal of Australian Ceramics, Vol 63, No 3, November 2024A conversation about language, provenance, and what we lose when we describe some clay as 'wild' and not others. Starting from Pattie's practice of foraging and weaving with clay, the discussion moves into questions of colonial language, supply chain transparency, New Materialist philosophy, and what it means to form a documented relationship with materials on Country you are still learning.
"For me, the 'wildness' of a material is not something that can be taken away, we just lose the ability to see it. Framing it this way positions 'wildness' as an innate or ingrained quality of matter rather than a description of human perspective."
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