Where Form Meets the Body

PELL▲ — Porcelain Jewellery; A Study in Form, Surface, and Material Intelligence

There are moments in a practice where something begins to condense.

Not as a departure, but as a refinement — a drawing inward. A distillation of what has been learned through years of working with material, into a new scale, a new intimacy.

PELL▲ emerges from this place — as both continuation and release.

After years of working with clay in sculptural and vessel-based forms, I found myself drawn toward a smaller field of attention. Not smaller in significance, but in scale — where the body becomes the site of encounter. Where an object is not observed at a distance, but worn, held close, and carried through the rhythms of daily life.

Jewellery, in this context, becomes a different kind of conversation.

It asks for precision. It asks for restraint. It asks what can be said with less.

At the foundation of PELL▲ is porcelain.

A material I have spent over a decade learning to work with — not mastering, but coming into dialogue with. Porcelain carries a particular clarity. It records pressure, holds memory, and responds acutely to the smallest shifts in handling. At this scale, those qualities become amplified. There is no excess. No room to disguise imbalance or indecision.

Each piece is formed through a process of careful attention — cut, shaped, refined, and fired multiple times to arrive at a state of quiet resolution. This is slow work. And it is this slowness that allows something else to emerge.

The FOUNDATION collection establishes the material language of PELL▲.

Working exclusively in pure white porcelain, these pieces explore geometric base forms — circles, ellipses, kites, hexagons — held in balance and proportion. Across their surfaces, subtle interventions begin to appear: lichen-like growths, raised slip dots, small accumulations that interrupt the clarity of the form.

These are not decorative additions. They are references to living systems.

To the quiet complexity of surfaces found in the natural world — the way lichen maps itself across stone, the way moss gathers, the way growth occurs incrementally, without announcement.

In translating these observations into porcelain, I am not replicating nature, but responding to it. Allowing its logic — its pacing, its restraint, its accumulation — to inform the surface language of each piece.

There is an inherent tension held within the work.

Between geometry and growth. Between control and emergence. Between the architectural and the organic.

This tension is intentional.

It reflects a broader concern within my practice: how structured systems and living processes intersect. How clarity can coexist with complexity. How something can remain resolved, while still holding evidence of change.

At this scale, that negotiation becomes more exacting. Every decision is visible. Every mark carries weight.

Jewellery also introduces a new kind of relationship.

Unlike sculpture, which often exists as an object to be encountered, jewellery is lived with. It moves with the body. It gathers meaning through use. It becomes part of personal rituals — worn daily, gifted, carried through time.

In this way, each piece extends beyond the studio. It enters into the life of the wearer. And over time, it accumulates its own quiet history.

PELL▲ is not a departure from my sculptural practice. It is a continuation — a reorientation of the same concerns into a different form.

A commitment to material intelligence. To attention. To restraint. To the slow articulation of ideas through making.

If the larger works ask the viewer to pause and observe, PELL▲ invites a closer relationship.

Something held. Something worn. Something carried.

Each piece is a considered object — shaped by hand, informed by living systems, and intended to be worn and collected over time.

Launch Note

PELL▲ will be released for the first time during the Bay of Fires Winter Arts Festival.

The FOUNDATION collection will be available in the studio at Binalong Bay as part of the Secret People, Secret Places Open Studio Art Trail in the Bay of Fires, East Coast Tasmania.

Studio Release
June Long Weekend

Saturday 6 June, 2026
2:00pm

A short reading and introduction to the collection will be held at this time. Refreshments will be served.