Shannon Courtenay, This Is Temporary, 2022. Stoneware, 25 x 33 x 17cm. $1,250 each. Photo: Federico Pagola. Courtesy: the artist and Broker Gallery, Frankton.
Amber Creswell Bell
Program Director Emerging Art, Michael Reid Galleries
Central to Shannon Courtenay’s trio of slip cast ceramics is her compelling narrative of river ecology. There is no doubt that she is skilled in her ceramic practice – but it is the journey of selecting the right rocks with the right marks, casting the rocks, displaying the rocks and then returning the rocks to their original location that underpin the power of this work. The ceramics stand as a haunting reminder of the slowly formed rocks, that will continue on their journey of evolving erosion.
Benjamin Clay
Gallery Manager, Olsen Gallery, Sydney
Courtenay has created a very thoughtful work in This Is Temporary, drawing inspiration from the natural world around to comment on ideas around time and material degradation. The artist’s ceramic forms become kinds of tablets or ruins, inscribed by the very same marks scored upon the river stones from which they were cast. Unlike their original counterparts, the divergent replicas will not age – protected by the film of a fine art setting. Beautiful and rigorous, This Is Temporary also provokes reflection, a unique characteristic of Courtenay’s sculptural practice.