Alex Bray

Alex Bray is a ceramic artist based in Sydney. A recent graduate of the National Art School, her sculptural ceramic work explores the tension between the built and organic environment; the re-emergence of the natural world over human construction; as well as providing a more personal outlet to deal with loss, death and grief and the rebirth following loss.

Decades in legal practice, working pro bono on behalf of refugees, environmental groups, homeless charities and mental health services have made Alex consider the fragility of existence and civilisation, an overriding theme in her practice. Alex also draws influence  from a childhood in the milling cities of Northern England, where decorative porcelain was collected as a luxury display item from manufacturers such as Coalport and Spode.

Alex’s maximalist visual language is inspired by European Baroque and the medieval hellscapes of Bosch and Brueghel. Her current body of work is rendered largely in fine porcelain, evoking the fragility yet resilience of the natural environment. Works are both visually abundant, dystopian worlds collide with industrial ephemera and more delicately abstract, using organic motifs of kelp forms and Australian native flora conjuring the idea of the environment in flux. Intricate detail is made coherent through simple glazes and slips in a largely monochromatic palette. The work pushes the boundaries of material integrity, working the clay body finer and thinner to enable its activation by light, creating a luminous ethereal quality suggesting the ephemeral and the liminal – the space between light and dark; existence and disappearance.

This sense of disappearance is further evoked by Alex’s death masks – wall pieces created in black porcelain and glazed to an oil-slick iridescence. These haunting relics question ideas of death or collapse as a precursor to rebirth.

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