Avi Amesbury
Location
About
Avi Amesbury received a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Ceramics), with Honours from the Australian National University (ANU) School of Art (2002), and was awarded the ANU Lyle T. Cullen Memorial Prize. She was a recipient of the ANU International Exchange Programme Scholarship to study at Hong-Ik University in Seoul (2002) and has been an artist-in-residence at the Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center, Israel (2017), the Fremantle Art Centre (2022) and Central Craft (2023). Her work has been selected for national and international exhibitions and has been acquired for public and private collections. Avi has contributed to the arts community through her various professional and volunteer roles.
She was CEO/Artistic Director of Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre (2010-2016), the Founder and Artistic Director of the DESIGN Canberra festival (2014-2015), Chair of Stepping Up: the Australian Ceramics Triennale, Co-judge, 9th International Craft Competition, 2015 Cheongju International Craft Biennale, Republic of Korea, and Treasurer of The Australian Ceramics Association (2019-2020).
Avi is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC) and the IAC Council Member Representative for Oceania. Avi works in porcelain and her practice is inspired by the Australian landscape. She uses porcelain and found clay to create works that explore her connection to place.
Artist Statement
The Self Reconciliation Project
“I strive to keep my journey to understand the culture of my country alive, and know that I will. be forgiven and humbled by my ignorance.” The content of this project is sensitive and requires a sophisticated approach to understand it’s purpose.
Through ceramics and storytelling the project uses the narrative of a settler descendant (the artist) to see, understand and reconcile the injustices of ‘white’ settler history in Australia. The project is not the telling of an Aboriginal story, but a re-examination of the artist’s own ‘white’ past and the illusory ‘white’ history that has gradually been revealed. It is about the notion of ‘self reconciliation’, of stopping, turning and facing truths.
To listen, to hear, to understand. Avi’s research brings together two lines of inquiry and perspectives – examining family history in relation to community attitudes and the laws of the time (an internal lens); and exploring connection to place through immersion in the Australian landscape (an external lens).
The presentation will focus on the residencies undertaken at the Fremantle Art Centre (2022) and Central Craft (2023), the collaboration with composer/sound artist MJ Callaghan, and the processes of engagement in creating new work for an exhibition.