EBONY RUSSELL

Australian ceramic artist Ebony Russell talks to Dominique Corlett about birthday cakes, childhood mementos, and piping clay

- Simon Hewson

Asymmetric, teetering, and entirely composed of candy-coloured piping, the urns, vases and columns of Australian ceramic artist Ebony Russell are a startling and unexpected feast for the eyes. While the shapes largely resemble traditional vessels ~—with some made in the familiar forms and colours of Wedgwood pottery — the woozy layers of piped porcelain, which perfectly mimic buttercream icing, create a more surreal impression. You can’t help but wonder if they might be the creation of a slightly crazed wedding cake decorator who didn’t know when to stop.

In reality, Ebony is nothing like this. Her cake baking is confined to the occasional child’s birthday cake, and she has never actually piped icing. The Sydney-based artist is rather a rising star on the international ceramics stage. Her confections this year won her the Brookfield Properties Craft Award —the UK’s leading contemporary craft prize — making her the first international winner, and leading to the V&A acquiring one of her pieces. These were the crowning achievements of a successful few years, including showing at the Crafts Council's Collect Art Fair, exhibiting at Homo Faber in Venice, and being highly commended for the Maylis Grand Ceramics prize at the Young Masters awards.

Not bad for an artist who only graduated from her MA in 2019. But Ebony’s journey to making her pieces starts longer ago. Much of her inspiration comes from her childhood fascination with the kitsch. ceramics that pervaded her Roman Catholic upbringing, from the religious statues in church, to the miniature angels and Madonnas given as party favours at weddings, christenings and holy communions. She loved, too, the girlish ephemera — that filled her bedroom shelves growing up in small-town Australia in the 1980s, against a backdrop of firmly established gender stereotypes.