Dani River King

Dani River King is a 25 year old neurodivergent, queer and non-binary emerging artist working on Gadigal land in Sydney, Australia. Dani works across the mediums of ceramics, drawing, photography and poetry and completed a Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in ceramics at The Art National Art School in 2019. Dani now has a studio at kil.n.it in Glebe and is the founder of Fluid Thinking Magazine, a publication centring marginalised emerging artists.

“My art explores themes of identity, gender, neurodiversity and disability as well as objects of sentimentality, comfort and play. My practice features ceramic sculptures, vessels and wall hanging plates and slabs. They are often decorated with references from cartoons and video games such as Pokemon and Adventure Time, children’s toys and include childlike overtones as a way of maintaining a considered mix of light-heartedness and emotional depth. I use images of toy dinosaur and cars in these works—I almost associate them with nothing, they are non-objects which allows them to become vehicles of expressing other ideas. They are so removed from how dinosaurs and cars actually were/are, in size and in nature. They are shrunk into a cute toys that I find a sense of comfort in. I enjoy the shapes and colours I can explore them with and the sense of fun and play they bring to my work, both while I’m creating the works and when the audience is enjoying them Working with ceramics allows me to build my canvas. It helps me integrate the drawing into the composition and makes the drawing feel part of the work instead of on top of the work because I created both. The collaboration between image and medium helps it feel more resolved. These works are hand built of white earthenware clay and fired to 1080. They are decorated with slips and underglaze and finish with clear glaze. They are designed to be hug on the wall and are for decorative use only. “