Adrienne Richards

A graduate in Fine Art, Canberra School of Art, Adrienne Richards lives in Springwood, Blue Mountains and has a studio at Kil.n.it Experimental Ceramics Studio in Glebe, Sydney. She makes hand-built ceramic forms, with applied drawings, surface decoration and glazing techniques, which explore issues around the environment and humans’ place on Earth. Her work has a direct link with science through her past experiences in the museum sector, including the Australian & Powerhouse Museums, the State Library of NSW, and her many return visits to museum collections. Adrienne regularly makes trips into the Australian landscape to draw and paint en plein air, recording her observations in ink and watercolour, as inspiration for her studio-based ceramics. Recently she has been investigating under the microscope, to draw and understand the invertebrate aquatic life of the rare upland swamps of the Blue Mountains and other waterways such as the Mehi and Gwydir Rivers near Moree.

I make hand-built ceramic forms, with applied drawings, surface decoration and glazing techniques to highlight environmental issues and humans’ place on Earth. My plates are embedded with blue and white scenes from everyday life where humans interact with the natural world or places inhabited by rare creatures. The borders are embellished with pressings and drawings of shells, corals, animal teeth & bones, sedge-grasses and mingled with human- made decorative flourishes. The scenes show a canoe journey across Glenbrook Lagoon, the flight path of an endangered Giant Dragonfly in a Rare Upland Swamp of the Blue Mountains, a flying fish out in the open ocean and an endangered Koala running through a public park by the Mehi River in Moree, NSW.