Women’s Work is an annual exhibition curated by Sydney artists Allegra Holmes and Kristi Pupo. As both artists have a studio practice based in ceramics, Women’s Work was born from the pervading sense in contemporary art that one must justify ceramics as a valid medium. In this way, ceramics is something of a metaphor for the way women continue to have to justify themselves as artists. Drawing on the legacy of artists like Mary Kelly and Mierle Laden Ukeles, this exhibition contests the conventionally accepted ideas of who artists are and what art can be. Women’s Work challenges the validity of the enduring attitude that there is a ‘type’ of work that women artists make, while shining a light on the inherent negativity attached to the term ‘women’s work’.

Allyson Adeney lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Her work makes use of many mediums, including ceramics, glass, textiles and found objects, to explore notions of everyday memory, nostalgia and relationships within the physical and psychological environment. Adeney has studied Visual Arts (Fashion Design) at NAS, Honours in Fine Arts (Sculpture and Ceramics) at SCA and she is currently studying a Masters in Contemporary Art through Sydney University. She enjoys taking part is in group shows, including ‘Love letter’, ‘Re-magine’ and ‘Maker’s matter’ at GAFFA. Recently Allyson’s work has been part of outdoor sculpture walks including Harbour Sculpture, Art on the Greenway, and Rookwood’s ‘Hidden’. Her collaborative work with ceramicist Jan Guy forms part of an international collection in Finland, while her own artwork can also be found in private collections across the world.

Anna Battersby; With a deep material engagement, Anna’s practice focuses on the creation of gestural porcelain works where the intertwinement of the elemental within the medium of clay is explored and brought to the fore. The relationship between material and the process is illuminated, inviting the viewer to contemplate the poetic and the imaginative. In this series of unique gestural works in traditional porcelain and cobalt, the artist seeks to highlight material vibrancy and our entanglement within and of it, whilst also allowing fluid interpretations of the forms.

Sophie Cox is a multi-disciplinary contemporary artist, who has exhibited in galleries both local and international, from the Christensen Heller Gallery in Oakland, California to the ARTBAR in Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Cox employs craft-based art techniques such as cross-stitch and clay modelling to make works which comment on the everyday and how this can be elevated into something of poetic beauty through art. This also relates to the play of the public with the private, a tension which runs through many of her pieces. Her cross-stitched works are gathered from the streets of the city, a place of frenetic movement. By contrast the pace of stitching is slow and careful, methodical and labour-intensive. This process is one that connects Cox to the generations of women who have stitched before her, and those who continue to stitch today.

Victoria Hempstead is a Sydney based artist, working between the mediums of mark-making, sculpture and installation. Driven by a fascination of binary relationships and a celebration of the ephemeral, Hempstead’s pieces engage with ideas surrounding ecological issues, the craving for a deeper connection with the world around us and our basic struggle between constancy and change. Hempstead’s materials and processes play into the dialogue of her pieces, allowing her mediums - whether metal, wood or glass - to map their own path. Her approach to these solid materials is to de-compose and subvert their structures. Her recent practice uses naturally-made liquid solutions to break and strip back the strength of the steel, to reveal a new, continuously changing texture.

Allegra Holmes is a matricentric feminist artist. Her work centres on investigating and materialising concepts of maternal embodiment, feminism and intimacy, and the transformative potential of mothering. Holmes’ studio practice is innately linked to the daily work of mothering, drawing on the experiences and materials of raising children to make art. Holmes is a current Masters of Fine Arts candidate at Sydney College of the Arts, where she is furthering her research into the anarchic power of the maternal body and physiological mothering practices. Her most recent publication will be featured in the next issue of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, available in late 2019.

Kate Hughes is a multidisciplinary artist working in print, textile and photo media living and working on Gadigal land. Her work is delicate, feminine and technically refined. It explores the ties between identity and place enticing the viewer with detail, texture and intimacy. Her artistic practice is informed by her current work in cultural materials conservation and her history working in adult media. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts Printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts and a Master of Cultural Materials Conservation from the University of Melbourne. After completing her BFA she worked in adult media, leaving her with a lasting passion for sex worker rights and an appreciation of the body as a medium for self-expression. In 2011 she moved to Sydney where she has been working to preserve the cultural history of New South Wales while developing her artistic practice. Her work has been shortlisted for numerous awards including the Glover Prize, Heysen Landscape Art Prize, Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award and Fremantle Print Award.

Alexandra Jonscher is an emerging artist currently completing a Bachelor of Visual Art (Painting), with Advanced Studies in Philosophy at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. Her practice emerges out of painting with a focus on exploring how shifting dynamics of perception and experience are affected in the contemporary age by the internet, social media and neoliberal ideologies. Her work is defined by an interest in the expanded semiotics of painting, exploring the potential expressions of authorship through experiments with the painted gesture. Her work has taken shape in many interdisciplinary approaches across painting, photography, sculpture, video, installation and performance.

BK DIECI is the alter ego for Brooke Krumbeck, who works as a visual artist, writer and designer. Her art practice has been evolving over the last four years as she has continued to explore the concepts of perfectionism in relation to the female form, chronic illness and environmental themes with particular attention to endangered flora and fauna.

Laura Nolan is an emerging artist based in Sydney. Currently a research candidate of a Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Sydney College of the Arts. Working with hot glass as a predominant medium also incorporating a diverse range of expanding disciplines within sculptural installations. Nolan is a finalist in the 2018 National Emerging Glass Artist Prize, a finalist in 2018 Clyde and Co Art Awards, A finalist in the 2018 Greenway Art Prize and a finalist in the forthcoming 2020 Wollongong Acquisitive Sculpture Award at Wollongong Botanic Garden. Nolan is passionately motivated to make art in response to current social, political, spiritual and environmental issues.

Kristi Pupo is a Sydney based artist, curator, designer and mother. Pupo graduated from Sydney College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Visual Arts/Honours in 2011. Between 2012 and 2017, Pupo travelled the islands of Indonesia, exploring her inner truths and examining earth bound relationships with people, places and material objects. This has lead to the contemplation of alternate fields of existence, which Pupo continues to explore in her practice predominately through installation, performance and ceramics; with dalliances in painting.