Narelle White

Image by Annika Kafcaloudis

Narelle White is an artist working on Wurundjeri and Wadawurrung lands. She engages clay, glaze and other stuff in experimental ceramic processes. Through sustained enquiry and material poetics, White considers the ways we relate to matter. Her works propose an ethic of empathy and recognition, embodied in the organic and animistic qualities of porous, lively things. White listens carefully to the ways her materials speak, and is drawn to themes such as material growth, contingency and transformation.

‘[My work’s] material profiles are distinctively raw and delicate; imbued with the peculiar mineral properties of their origins. Their porous walls query the time-honoured notion of containment – so often embodied in ceramic vessels – to instead suggest breathable membranes’

A recent graduate of the Honours program at the Victorian College of the Arts, she also holds a BA, MA and BFA. In late 2019 White undertook an intensive residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre in Oisterwijk as a beneficiary of an Ian Potter Cultural Trust grant. In 2021, White was invited by McClelland Sculpture Gallery to create an edition of sculptural works for public acquisition. Recent exhibitions include UNPREDICT: Imagining Future Ecologies with Ian Potter Museum of Art and Faculty of Fine Arts and Music VCA; and SKY, SURFACE, SOIL with Cluster Crafts for London Craft Week 2021. White is currently in residence at the Kingston Arts Centre.

Wominjeka (Welcome). We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. Yaluk-ut Weelam means ‘people of the river camp’ and is connected with the coastal land at the head of Port Phillip Bay, extending from the Werribee River to Mordialloc. The Yaluk-ut Weelam are part of the Boon Wurrung, one of the five major language groups of the greater Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the land, their ancestors and their elders—past, present and to the future.