Porcelain, glaze and lustre

Approx 6cm x 4cm

2024

(@sassypark)

25% of all sales will be donated to The Trussell Trust

Sassy Park is an Australian artist interested in the history of ceramics, objects and ideas. Her work plays with the accepted purposes of domestic ceramics and historical art genres, including ceramic vessels and figurative work. She explores and expands the boundaries of what ceramics are and what they can communicate in contemporary times. The medium of clay, with its embedded transformative nature of strength and fragility become metaphors for everyday themes and debates.

Through exhibitions and residencies, she engages with local themes and collections, as in her current show at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, I have confidence in sunshine. The exhibition is a response to the gallery’s ‘Lindsay Room’, a collection of furniture and objects from the Lindsay family home in nearby Creswick, and art works from the artists of the Lindsay clan. A number of works focus on Ruby and Rose Lindsay who are overshadowed by their more well known brothers and husband, Norman. In 2018, Park was artist in residence in Hill End and looked at the idea of the masculine, heroic miner in this historic old gold-mining town and the role of turn of the century women. Currently in Neumünster, she is artist in residence at the Keramikkünstlerhaus, exploring the local environment and people of northern Germany and how it pertains to ideals of Europe and the art history learnt through books and online in an Australian education. Her strong connection to Germany, combined with an interest in linguistics, will inspire the creation of text-based and painterly
works.

Sassy Park studied painting at Sydney College of the Art and at the Berlin University of the Arts, as well as undertaking a Masters in ceramics at National Art School in 2018. She was the recipient of the 2022 Onslow Storrier studio residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, the winner of the 2021 Muswellbrook Art Prize for ceramics and second prize winner in the Meroogal Women’s Art Prize 2024 and 2020. Previous awards include N.S.W. Travelling scholarship, N.E. Pethebridge Ceramic Award and the Mansfield Ceramics Art and Perception Magazine Award. In 2024, Sassy Park was a finalist in the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.