Owen Rye: A Review

Gallery LNL is delighted to present a solo exhibition of recent and rare works by Owen Rye, on view from 14 November through 13 December, 2025. As Rye’s first solo show in Sydney in nearly a decade, the exhibition brings together his mature anagama fired pieces, exemplars of a practice which established him as one of Australia’s most celebrated wood-firing ceramicists, alongside his more recent explorations beyond the anagama tradition, into experiments with glaze and play with vessel forms.

The exhibition’s anagama pieces mark the last of Rye’s works with anagama firing, following his retirement from them in 2016. These works show Rye’s superb command of the wood-firing process, which demands a mindful integration of all stages of making. In the selection of clay, the shaping of form, the setting of temperature and atmosphere, everything must be a staging for the firing, as the fruition which tests at once the entire sequence. Rye’s reflection on the process moves him towards a broader reflection on those processes of nature and making, at whose intersections the works form.

Down the towering surface of Jar (2015), the pour of ash glazes reaches earth-ward towards the opaque and lichen-like markings which climb sky-ward from the base. The work rests as mediation between the natural processes of earth and sky, and becomes a viewpoint into those inner involvements of nature which sit always slightly beyond the reach of human understanding.

In his most recent work, Rye experiments with a variety of glazes and glazing techniques. In Blue/White Jar, he works with Nuka glaze, a glaze produced using rice husk ash, whilst for the playfully warbling form of Conical Jar (2024), he selects beaded glaze, with its larval connotations. These works in glazes express Rye’s consistent aesthetic concern with capturing an “endless complexity and layering of surface”.

"Beginning in the 1980s, I focused on woodfired ceramics from anagama style kilns. The earliest of these works were inspired by my love of abstract expressionism in painting, developed by seeing every painting exhibition in Sydney through the 1960s.

Later, more deeply involved in ceramics, I became aware that there was a wider interest in Japanese woodfiring, particularly from Bizen, Shigaraki and Tamba. I felt a relationship between the two interests and began to explore it. Some of my American friends had worked in Japan, but in Australia we tended to build some kind of large woodfired kiln and then discover what came from firing it. In my case it was definitely a process of experimenting and discovering rather than following any specific Japanese model.

By the late 2010s, I was losing interest in this path. My work was becoming repetitive and repetition is a slow death, Poor lung health intruded, indicating that continuing breathing wood smoke was a slow form of suicide. Hence, the last firing of my anagama was in 2016.  After 2016, I concentrated on developing glaze, aiming to preserve the loose and imperfect character of the vessels. The later works in this exhibition represent a small portion of the hundreds of glaze experiments and play with vessel forms.

I am happiest not knowing what will come out of the kiln, constantly trying something new."

- Owen Rye