Ideas in Hand

10 October - 8 November 2025

Opening Night

6 – 8pm Friday, 10 October

Curator

Jan Guy
Installation view, Ideas in Hand: contemporary sculptural ceramics, 2025. Photo by Docqment
Allyson Adeney, Canbora Bayraktar, Cybele Cox, Jan Guy, Aedan Harris, Allegra Holmes, Raymond Huynh, You Meng-shu, Luke Ryan O'Connor, Yasmin Smith, Maro Sugimoto, Amy Teng
Curatorial Statement

By Jan Guy

When LNL's gallerist, Jin Lee, invited me to curate a sculptural ceramics exhibition for her, I was excited but hesitant. As an art educator, I have crossed paths with many committed, talented and sometimes brilliant artists completely enamoured with the medium of clay. I have included twelve artists in this exhibition from those just starting their explorations to those already recognised on a national and global stage. I could have easily assembled another three or four exhibitions of a similar calibre and number, but time and space have not permitted. Perhaps, one day, I will get the chance.

The immediacy and chameleonic nature of clay allow the artist to fluently express an innumerable range of personal and worldly ideas of representational and abstract tones. The contemporary artist working with sculptural ceramics can take a speedy or slow approach, but their ability to convey their intended ideas is bound to an accumulative, intimate knowledge of their material - a willingness to listen to the medium, to take note of what it physically will and will not do with their hands, and learn from the cultural and social histories marked in its substance by those who came before them.

These qualities are evident in varying ways throughout the ceramic works shown here in Ideas in Hand: contemporary sculptural ceramics. While the artists Yasmin Smith, Aedan Harris and Raymond Huynh alert us to the enduring, unbiased beauty of nature and an awareness of the toxicity we place upon it through our oft, thankless attitudes towards it, Canbora Bakyatar, You Meng-Shu and Maro Sugimoto give wry and astute commentary of the Everyday and Popular culture through personal reflection. Ally Adeney, Luke O'Connor and I excavate the internal, procedural histories of craft's forms to merge the traces of human endeavour with our emotional and mnemonic relationship with the present cultural moment. Cybele Cox, Allegra Holmes and Amy Teng give a contemporary voice to our marginalised histories, directing us towards a cultural revaluation of sexual and spiritual aspects of the human condition.

As our AI future rushes towards us with all its uncertainty and potential to transform what it means to be human, it seems, to me, that our sentience will only continue to thrive in the creative act. It will be in our visceral agency, in art, in our ability to gather up wet earth in our hands and give thought physical shape with all its errors, inconsistencies and virtuosities that will sustain us.

Request Catalogue
Aedan Harris, Uneri Series, 2025, Black clay 30 x 28 x 10 cm

Enquire

Aedan Harris

I have always found the natural environment inspiring; its ability to design without fault, elegance or clear intent. I take note and refer to these principles when creating my work. Each piece, through a balance of volume, line and gesture, embodies a sense of evolution and incessant growth. The material space of each of these works is not mute, but rather full of intent, potential and meaning.
Canbora Bayraktar, Sunset by the Sea, Anti- Wrinkle Cream, Collagen, and Fake Tan, 2025, Glazed ceramic, 45 x 28 x 12 cm

Enquire

Canbora Bayraktar

My art practice explores the relationship between objects and collective memories through forms that combine industrial object making techniques and traditional ceramics decoration methods. In order to achieve this amalgamation, I develop novel production methods with unorthodox use of materials. The process consists of predominantly mould making and slip casting, as well as hand building, experimental material additions in ceramics forming methods, multiple firing techniques and ceramic surface decoration techniques.
Luke Ryan O'Connor, Grid, Gloss Turquoise & Green, 2025, Earthenware, glaze, formply and epoxy, 24 x 24 x 4 cm

Enquire

Luke Ryan O'Connor

I am a Sydney-based ceramist who has exhibited across Australia as well as in recent international shows in New Zealand and Germany. My practice combines wheel-thrown techniques with hand-building and slip-casting, demonstrating a developed understanding of the ceramic medium. Some of resulting forms are unique, textured, and have a microbial appearance, featuring various growth-like shapes and glaze deposits on the surface. Others lean towards a logical, soft architecture with an emphasis on replication. I blur the lines between function and form. The distinction between where the clay ends and the glaze begins is ambiguous for me and I hope intriguing for the audience.
You Meng-shu, Breath 1, 2024, Porcelain, metal frame, 47.2 x 17.2 x 3 cm

Enquire

You Meng-shu

My studio practice is presently focused on the logic and philosophy of block toys or so call “lego”. The idea of Lego is about constructing the reality piece by piece, with bright and glossy plastic texture. In my works, I have tried to twist the reality of Lego in different ways, by experimenting with contemporary sculpture strategies. Ceramics is part of my ongoing creative investigations. In the “Beyond Lego” Series, I use porcelain to cast the negative space of the back of Lego blocks, and smoke fire with natural wood dust after bisque. Then I re-puzzle the blocks towards traditional ink paintings.
Cybele Cox, Homage to KB, 2025, Hand built glazed ceramic, 32 x 20 x 15 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ames Yavuz

Enquire

Cybele Cox

My practice explores representations of women in the Western art canon through motifs drawn from ancient feminine symbols and occult mysticism. Using hand built ceramic totems and figures, painting, drawing and more recently costume, I hybridise human and animal form, fusing symbols from the mythic world with fantasies. In doing so, I reconstruct a new belief system from remnants of old ones, discarding the broken, hegemonic narratives and elevating those which were previously underestimated or hidden. The works function as a means of entry into imagining a new version of events. They invite viewers to unstick and unstack themselves, and then rebuild piece by piece, in a call for a re-flowering of the spiritual, and ultimately, a new feminist order.
Yasmin Smith, Lower Pieman, 2019, stoneware with Celery top pine wood ash glaze, courtesy the artist and The Commercial, Sydney © the artist.

Yasmin Smith

My works engage with the specific histories of place and lived experience. Through ceramic forms and processes, I gently expose the material and chemical entwinement of geography, botany, fauna and human activity within an expansive chronology of Deep Time. Lower Pieman is an extension of my work for the Australian Ceramics Triennale in Tasmania in 2019. This later iteration is an edition of a piece that was commissioned for 'Tree Story' at Monash University Museum of Art in 2021. It is a cast tree stump from the flooded forest of Tasmanian's hydroelectric scheme at Lake Pieman on Tasmania's west coast. The Ash glaze consists of 'hydrowood' celery - top pine from that harvested during underwater water forestry operations in the lake. Glaze is full of manganese giving the purple/brown colour.
Jan Guy, Nothing Between Us (Version 2), 2019-2025, Various clays, underglazes, slips and glaze, 19 x 36 x 34 cm

Enquire

Jan Guy

I often think that the way one experiences the world is something that is equally shared by others, and for the most part this is true. But it can take almost a lifetime to realise that the way we are put together differs by degree. It can also take time to realise that our values and understanding of our own make-up are not the result of a constant reality. The embedded nuances of a personal disposition are forever challenged by shifting collective ideas. As a child, I thought nothing of staring for hours at the hairs on a blade of grass or fixating on the texture of my mother's roped woollen cardigan as she chastised me. My world has been predominantly remembered and emotionally felt through the sense of touch. It is no wonder that the directness of clay has remained an important part of my material vocabulary as an artist.
Maro Sugimoto, Altar, 2025, Porcelain, Dimensions Variable

Enquire

Maro Sugimoto

My practice started on unceded Wallumattagal country. I am inspired by the things that remain unchanged in people, regardless of who they are. The artworks are usually concerned with dreams, hope, and prayer.
Raymond Huynh, Logs from a Forest of Seduction and Fear, 2024, Handbuilt ceramics, porcelain, hot sculpted furnace and uranium glass, Dimensions variable

Enquire

Raymond Huynh

I am interested in capturing the trace or essence of things, placing emphasis on materiality, process, material transformation, and virtuosity with materials, as the impetus for my conceptually crafted objects, constructed environments (installations), and hyperrealities to facilitate an audience’s experience. Often working with ceramics and glass (at times hybridising them), I draw influence from my lived experiences; focusing on the human condition I present facets of my introspective thoughts and existential concerns.
Allyson Adeney, Mnemonic Reprise, 2025, Stoneware, glaze and natural textiles, 36 x 8 x 8 cm

Enquire

Allyson Adeney

I use ceramics, textiles, and found objects in my practice to explore how people come to understand themselves. My aim is to discover if our sense of self is formed through a mix of memory, matter and connection. Recently, I have been transforming conversational data into sculptural forms and scientifically dissecting thrown objects to expose the inner workings. I hope to make known the chaotic algorithm that makes us who we think we are.
Allegra Holmes, Girls in the Garden (Lilith and Eve), 2025, Ceramic and stoneware glazes, 70 x 60 x 50 cm

Enquire

Allegra Holmes

My practice is centred on the concept of empowered ontological embodiment, interrogating the physical body as the primary site where identity, meaning, and experience are made. Drawing on theories of abjection, anarchism and matricentric feminism, I seek to disrupt cultural narratives that present female biology as inherently oppressive and reframe the body as a locus of agency. Central to this is the interrogation of the archetypical Mother, Witch and Artist, examining and reimagining their meanings as both symbols and lived realities. By materialising these ideas through artistic practice, I seek to articulate a conception of the Anarchic Woman – a figure who defies containment through ontological embodiment and reclaims the lived experience of the body as a source of possibility rather than limitation.
Amy Teng, Moon Light, 2025, Stoneware, 27 x 11 x 16.5 cm

Enquire

Amy Teng

My artistic practice explores the relationship between memory and the construction of self-identity. Through acts of remembrance and documentation, I position myself as a conduit linking the past, present, and future. Art becomes a form of free writing, a continuous gesture that follows fleeting illuminations in the mind, tracing pathways through the fissures of everyday life. Within these shifting spaces, I navigate, question, and search across multiple identities, seeking the possibilities of artistic practice. In recent years, my work has turned toward cultivating a profound connection with nature through meditation. Within this quiet dialogue, natural elements, esoteric symbols, and personal imagination converge, transforming into sculptural forms and patterns. Through this convergence, my art embodies both inner contemplation and the resonance between the self and the natural world. As life unfolds in continual renewal, the essence of my practice has gradually shifted-from an earlier focus on questioning and negotiating the roles of the self, toward embodying a spiritual presence rooted in the immediacy of the moment. My work now seeks to honour this evolving state of being, tracing the subtle balance between memory, nature, and the living present.
Installation Shots