Antoinette O'Brien
Location
Lismore, QLD
About
Antoinette O’Brien’s work explores the figure within the social and the natural world. Animating O’Brien’s mixed media ceramics are the joys, anger, pleasures, alienation, and deep connections felt for both popular culture as well as sea, sky and soil. Antoinette is an established ceramicist, with her artistic expression extending beyond traditional mediums that include concrete, ice, frozen milk, beer and immersive intervention-style installations, video and 2d image. She is deeply committed to strengthening the connection between people and their environment by celebrating them, as she experiences them.
A video of sculpted feet made of ice drip futilely on the acceleration pedals of a car. A ring of fire raft floats down the Richmond River Lismore to mark the anniversary of the 2022 floods. Ice sculls of various water bodies drip through a ceramic milk crate. The puppies of thylacine suckle on human teats. Tents made of maps blow in the wind in Tasmanian clear fell. Antoinette has long engaged with environment and material as a means of communicating precarity.
Artist Statement
This presentation explores a body of work responding to the 2022 Northern Rivers floods, one of Australia’s largest environmental disasters. Created through a Lismore City Council residency at
Converge Community Studios, the work reflects on the critical role of the ceramics community in recovery – both personally and collectively.
The award-winning piece Sea Spume and Substrate, which won the 2023 North Coast Ceramics Prize, captures the upheaval of floods and landslides, where the Earth’s crust seemed to tear and
reshape itself before our eyes. This layered story mirrors the layered themes of resilience, mental health, and the power of community support.
Underpinning my conceptual practice is the belief that the strength of the arts lies in the community behind the work. This presentation acknowledges those who reached out to help and gives voice to those left behind on the floodplain. It highlights the ceramics community’s practical outreach and its role as a safety net during crisis.
Insights from a 2023 residency in Ōtautahi Christchurch, which examined the role of the arts in post-earthquake recovery, further inform this exploration of how ceramics and community can
foster resilience in the face of adversity.