The school art room was always a safe and welcoming space for Sydney-based artist Ebony Russell. “From my earliest memories it was my favourite place to be,” she recalls. “I can remember feeling that I could do good things and they came naturally.” Clay was a preferred material from the start. “Clay was something we only did every now and then, so it had a specialness to it. By the time I got to my secondary years, I wanted to do clay full-time.”
Living near the coastal communities of the Otways in Victoria, Russell began to pursue her clay practice outside of school hours. Spending time with a group of local ceramicists, Russell expanded her skill set by learning from a range of artists including a porcelain doll maker and the potter John Golding. A point of continued interest for Russell were the depictions of femininity seen in her childhood toys and retro Australian Women’s Weekly birthday cakes. “After completing my Honours degree at Monash University in 2003, I began making dreamscape environments centred around ballerina cake toppers. I wanted to create the environments I had imagined as a child – if you could go into the jewellery box or join the ballerina on the cake, what would it be like? It was all a bit Willy Wonka-ish.”
Inspired by cake decorating and craft techniques passed down from her grandmothers and aunties, Russell’s ceramics echo the elaborate sugar sculptures created by confectioners for the royal courts of Renaissance Europe. Constructed as displays of wealth and indulgence, sugar sculptures went on to inspire structures made of porcelain, a material prized for its resemblance to the frosty white consistency of hardened sugar.
Using porcelain as her primary medium, Russell evokes this connection to sugar sculptures by piping it through bags like icing, building up her forms through layers of repetitive strokes and delicate rosettes. “Usually you need a form like a cake to add decoration to,” Russell explains. “Decoration is often added to embellish areas or conceal joins. The way I create work allows ornament to become the whole structure.”
Despite their highly decorative facade, there is an inherent strength and individuality to Russell’s ceramic objects. They are not perfect. They teeter, slump and crinkle, yet each glossy pastel frill is hard and strong, fortified by countless layers of piped porcelain. Drawing upon her teenage experiences of listening to female-led grunge and ska punk bands like Hole, Garbage and No Doubt, Russell’s practice is deeply influenced by feminism and seeks to question why seemingly innocuous objects are purposefully gendered. “Up to that point, I knew every decision I had made had been centred around whether I was going to be a mother, wife, princess or ballerina – in my early life all these things were sold to me or told to me. In my teen years I started to feel very uncomfortable with these ideas and began trying to find a way through that.”
Looking to artists like ceramicist Lynda Draper, the UK’s Tracey Emin, South Australian photographer Deborah Paauwe and late Italian Australian performance artist Katthy Cavaliere, Russell is also intrigued by how objects can become imbued with personal meaning. “Their artwork is often connected to objects,” she says. “It’s like you carry mnemonic devices embedded in these objects. You can’t let go of them, you need to speak through them to get past them.”
Following a long stint as a specialist art teacher working in schools in Victoria and Queensland, Russell completed her Master of Fine Arts at the National Art School in 2019. She currently divides her ceramics practice between Piped Dream Studio, where she creates and sells functional pieces like vases and candleholders; and a sculptural practice that allows her to freely dabble with new concepts and experimental ways of making. Working towards a solo exhibition at Sydney’s Artereal gallery in November, which represents her, Russell is continuing to explore and challenge historical depictions of femininity and ornament. “I’m interested in making really outrageous urns and vases,” she says. “I’m very inspired by the aesthetic of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton, especially how women dressed and embellished their gowns with lace, and the connection to how objects and interiors were similarly decorated.”
Featured image: Artist Ebony Russell at Artereal Gallery, Sydney. Courtesy the artist and Artereal Gallery, Sydney.