Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft \ Prue Venables

21 August to 2 October 2022

Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft \ Prue Venables presents an outstanding body of work by one of Australia’s greatest artists working in clay.

Acclaimed ceramicist Prue Venables is the ninth artist in the Australian Design Centre series Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft, which celebrates the achievements of Australia’s most iconic crafts practitioners.

A series of solo exhibitions, Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft honours eminent and highly respected craftspeople, celebrating their mastery of skill, their achievements, their contribution to Australian craft, and the unique place they occupy in the national design culture.

The works of Prue Venables show a true mastery of materials. They demonstrate a profound understanding of porcelain, that most precious and temperamental of clays, whose fine-grain and opaque qualities are expressed in rigorous works of refined detail. These are handmade functional artworks that possess clarity, luminosity and a quiet beauty.

Many of the works also feature wood and metal elements formed as handles, joints and other connecting pieces. Prue Venables’s forms are simple and elegant, with a minimal colour palette and subtle exaggerations – an oval lip or an elongated handle – that create a distinctive visual language.

Prue Venables’ major body of work for this exhibition explores the significance of everyday objects through multiple sequences of forms in porcelain, with additional elements in metal and wood.

The Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft\ Prue Venables project includes a touring exhibition, book and film, as well as public programs, digital content and an education kit.

Exhibition Walkthrough

Education Kit

Click here to download the Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft \ Prue Venables Education Kit(PDF, 7MB)

_{Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft \ Prue Venables is an Australian Design Centre (ADC On Tour) national touring exhibition, presented with assistance from the Australian Government Visions of Australia program. The Visions of Australia regional exhibition touring program supports audience access to Australian arts and cultural material, with a particular focus on tours to regional and remote Australia.}

_{Australian Design Centre is assisted by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments. Australian Design Centre is assisted by the New South Wales Government through Create NSW, and the Australian government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.}

_{Image: Prue Venables, Betty's Kitchen (detail), 2017. Image: Terence Bogue}