Prue Venables is one of Australia’s most accomplished ceramics artist. Hear how Prue went from a career in science to pottery; how three tiny porcelain jugs changed everything for her; and her controversial advice for new makers.

Prue Venables makes porcelain vessels - like jugs and beakers, ladles and colanders - that elevate humble domestic objects to exquisite works of art. They are smooth and elegant, with a minimal colour palette of white, metallic black and sometimes red.

The Australian Design Centre honoured Prue as a Living Treasure in 2019.

• Prue Venables http://pruevenables.com/
• Neville French, former Teacher and Coordinator of Ceramics, Arts Academy, University of Ballarat. He taught with Prue for many years. https://www.nevillefrench.com/

Prue's earlier study of music and science became the foundation of how she thinks and approaches her craft. "The thinking and the discipline, the asking questions and exploring things."

Prue credits her curiosity to her science and music teachers, "people who were really inventive and exploratory thinkers....I watched what they did and what they said to me and it just built up a sort of way of being really. "

Using a number of wheels at the same time is standard practice for Prue. She says that with porcelain, it's often actually better to make something on and let it sit and not move it. As soon as you move it in any way, you get this sort of ripple response in the body of the clay, and that could come out in the firing.

Many of Prue's ceramics tools are made by her out of junk, as she puts it - old hacks saw blades ground down into make a little sharp knife or something to almost grate the clay. She says that when she can't find these handmade tools, she can't work. "It's like you become dependent on these little things."

Prue believes the most important technique for working with porcelain is that you have to listen to it because it'll tell you what it'll let you do. She says that what's needed with porcelain is "a sense of, that it's always a developing knowledge.That you start with the material. You have to really feel what the material wants to let you do, and then explore that. And gradually, gradually gradually move the edges and change the parameters as you go. In a way you have to respect what it's telling you."

Prue visited Jingdezhen on the insistence of Japanese potter and director of the pottery workshop there, Takeshi Yasuda. Prue describes how Takeshi used to say, "Why haven't you come? You should come. if you don't come soon, it'll be too late!"

Prue describes it as amazing, seeing ceramic works that she couldn't believe possible like big tiles that have four meters by one meter wide or one and a half meters wide.

"The hardest thing is accepting it's something in yourself that needs that, and then just doing it."

So many times I've met people who've said, Oh, I really want to do this. But everyone tells me that you can't make a living or you can't do this, or you shouldn't, or you should do something more reliable. Often it’s the parental voice talking, but I always say, You have one life. I don't think it is an easy path, but then many paths aren't easy."

Prue's advice to makers is

• to try and always do the best work you can.
• learn to be really discriminating.
• don't keep everything.
• look widely around you and experiment.
• don't ever use social media as your reference material, because the world is so much bigger than that.

Prue strongly believes that to not sell your work until it's really well established. She says if you want to be a really good maker and build a reputation for your work, don't start selling right at the beginning. "Everybody when they first make things, think, Ooh wow, I made that, this is great! But a lot of people are selling within the first year or something. I was lucky at Harrow in that we weren’t allowed to sell anything. It would have meant instant expulsion. Nobody ever did. Nobody ever tried.

Once you start selling, you cut back on your learning."

"I remember Gwen Hanssen Pigott used to say, If you're thinking about selling all the time that you're making, there's a part of your work that will look like the gas bill. And she was absolutely right."

The Living Treasures exhibition enabled Prue to produce a large body of work and to incorporate metal much more strongly in her work, and to present it publicly. She points out that one of the key things is that it's work by a person who makes functional objects and that's very unusual to have to have an exhibition like this.

Winning the Fletcher Challenge Ceramics Award in New Zealand [in 1995] was another key achievement for Prue. She says she almost didn’t send the work because she entered three very tiny jugs, some of the smallest pieces she'd ever made. They were under ten centimetres tall. As she packed them up, she thought, "Well, there’s not a lot of point to this."

Fortunately, she said, Takeshi Yaseda was the judge. "Takeshi said he just walked past them, he didn’t notice them to start with. They were so small. And most of the work in the competition was huge. Huge, almost life-size figures of animals and absolutely extraordinary work actually. There’s a fantastic contemporary ceramics world in New Zealand.

He said that he wandered around the exhibition for a few days. He didn’t notice my work to start with, and when he did, he realised they were very complex. Anyway, he awarded them the first prize and it was after that, that people started to notice what I was doing. "

Prue believes that functional objects can actually change your life. They can change your thinking. They can alter how you feel and that they are key things in our lives.

"It [Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft] has a very important role to play for anybody who wants to make functional things. It provides good encouragement that you can actually do that. That you can treat that as your serious work. That you don’t have to make something else, and then do functional work as an aside. That’s a major, major thing that it’s done for the ceramics community."

Lola Greeno is an award winning Tasmanian Aboriginal shell worker and artist. Lola uses maireener shells, sometimes called rainbow kelp shells to make shell necklaces. It's the oldest continuing cultural practice in Tasmania. Learn about the role of insects in making a traditional shell necklace, how Lola creates for kids as well as adults, and what she wants every Tasmanian Aboriginal woman to know.

The Australian Design Centre recognised Lola Greeno as a Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft in 2014.

She lives and works on Palawa land in the north of Tasmania. Lola Greeno is an elder of the Truwana people from Cape Barren Island.

• Lola Greeno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Greeno and https://handmark.com.au/artist/lola-greeno/
• Stephen Goddard, Graphic Designer, Curator and Lecturer who curated Lola's Living Treasures exhibition https://goddard.net.au/
• Richard Mulvaney, former Director of the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, where Lola's Living Treasures exhibition was exhibited. QVMAG later acquired the exhibition. https://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/

Lola Greeno uses palawa kani language to greet Lisa Cahill. Ya Pulingina means hello, or welcome.

Shell necklace making is the oldest continuing cultural practice in Tasmania.The traditional necklace was threading the King Maireener shell, the biggest of the species of the Maireener in Tasmania. Lola refers to old images of the tribal men wearing shell necklaces, as well as photos of Fanny Cochrane Smith, the last surviving fluent speaker of any Tasmanian Aboriginal language.

Lola remembers her mother's grandmother making shell necklaces, and believes it went back about six generations. Lola learned from her own mother, how to go and pick the Maireeners from the seaweed the traditional way, and to 'rot out' and put them in jars outside, under a tree.

Lola stresses the importance of not over-collecting the Maireener shells. She always leaves some there for it to re-breed, as they breed over a twelve month cycle that finishes at the end of April.

Lola's first exhibition was with her mother, in a commerical gallery in Brisbane. She said it was the start of her becoming a maker. "Mum was very excited and she got me excited about us working together." The very first shells she made with her mother were 'mother-daughter patterns'.

When Tasmanian Aboriginal women started to use needles to make necklaces, they also experimented using diferent shells - such as the tiny 'rice' shell, the 'toothy' and the 'gull' shell, featured in the Cape Barren Goose necklace that Lola describes. And there's the 'penguin' shell – named not for its colours, but because this shell is in the shape of a penguin.

Lola shared this story of her as a young kid, living on Cape Barren, Tasmania.

"Apparently my Uncle Ted was one day, had an echidna and he was cleaning it. And so he had it dipped in a bucket and was pulling the fur and the quills out. But I ran in and said to Dad, “Do you know what Uncle Ted's doing?” Dad said, “No, what's he doing?” And I said, “Oh, he's out there cleaning the chook, Dad. But first of all, he's got to take out all the splinters.”

As Program Officer for Aboriginal Arts Tasmania from 2000 to 2013, Lola revived the traditional crafts of shell necklace making and basket weaving. The tayenebe exhibition included baskets and kelp carriers made by more than twenty women aged from 7 to 87 years of age.

Lola says that being recognised as a Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft by the Australian Design put shell necklace-making "on the map". Local, national and international galleries and museums brought necklaces into their collections, and "it really did open it up to the world." After Lola's Living Treasures exhibition toured nationally, the Queen Victoria Museum and Gallery in Launceston acquired the entire exhibition.

One of Lola's shell necklaces was projected onto Parliament House in Canberra in the 2021 Enlighten projection festival.

Shell necklace making is a family story, passed down through Tasmanian Aboriginal families. Lola proudly describes her granddaughter leading her first workshop: "I hadn't written anything down for her. And she talked as though I was talking. She was trying to describe the penguin shell. She said, 'If you hold it up in your thumb and your forefinger, it's a shape of a penguin, as though it's walking down the beach. It's not the color of a penguin.' And I thought, Wow, she's just taking this on, you know, oral history. That's the way we’re meant to hand it on. And that will be her family story."

Explore the Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft Series

More about the exhibition Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels

Purchase Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels catalogue in Object Shop

Jeff Mincham AM is one of Australia's most prominent ceramic artists. Hear what it was like to witness the birth of the Australian Crafts Movement, how Jeff deals with success and failure, and his characteristically blunt advice to makers.

Jeff is known for his large, coil built, earthenware vessels. On these vessels are his dramatic, painterly interpretations of the South Australian landscape - the patchwork fields of the Fleurieu Peninsula, the sand dune grasses of the Coorong and the leafy surrounds of the Adelaide Hills.

With over forty years of professional practice, he was awarded an Order of Australia for his services to the visual arts. Jeff’s work is held in over one hundred permanent public collections including the National Gallery of Australia.

As a master of Australian craft, Jeff was made a Living Treasure by Australian Design Centre in 2009, and his exhibition toured around Australia from 2009 to 2012. Jeff lives and works on the ancestral lands of the Peramangk and Kaurna people, in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia.

• Jeff Mincham www.jeffmincham.com
• Kylie Johnstone, who has worked with Jeff through Sabia Gallery in Sydney for fifteen years. https://sabbiagallery.com/
• Sandra Brown, ceramic artist and former Curator/Tour Coordinator of Jeff's Living Treasures exhibition http://www.sandralbrown.com.au/

Jeff comes from five generations of farming in South Australia. He was the first to break the tradition.

While Jeff never followed in his family’s footsteps, he sees his connection to agriculture as ongoing. After initially studying painting, he discovered ceramics and was overwhelmed. “It was blood and guts and real.”

The Australian Crafts Movement was underway when Jeff studied art and teaching. He describes how there was ‘no horizon’ and the accepted idea was that craft could be your profession.

People have often said to Jeff, “Jeff, are you retired?” And his answer to that is, artists don't retire. They just die.

Jeff is firm about following your own core beliefs and path. He says that if you rely on people telling you what you should be doing, you're not going to last long because people keep changing their mind.

To recover from setbacks, Jeff returns to the basics. For him, it’s making Japanese tea bowls. “This is why that good, strong core of basic skills are important when you do get lost. They'll rescue you. They're the compass you can pick up and find your way again.

Jeff has ridden the wave of ceramics being popular, and then for other mediums (hello, glass!) to take the limelight. Many ceramic artists gave up and only ‘’a core group of us remained.’ Sceptical of the current trendiness of ceramics, Jeff says, ‘’After the last time, I'm very cautious.’

“The growth and success of your profession and the success of others makes the field grow, and expands the opportunities for everybody.” This ethos saw Jeff take on management roles in many Australian arts organisations like the JamFactory ceramics workshop and the Helpmann Academy Foundation.

Jeff argues that the arts in Australia are suffering from a lack of strong, powerful advocacy. “We're not playing the politics of the game strongly or determined early enough.”

For Jeff, arts policy goes deeper, stressing the need to “put ourselves into a deeper frame of mind here, about the genuineness of art to the people of the country of Australia. It’s a big big big idea.”

When the Australian Design Centre recognised Jeff Mincham as a Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft in 2009, he said it changed him a lot. So much, that he finds it “hard to imagine how the next ten years or so would have evolved without it.”

Explore the Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft Series

More about Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft/Jeff Mincham exhibition

Purchase a copy of the book Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft \ Jeff Mincham: Ceramics in Object Shop

Meet seven creative Australians who've dedicated their lives to mastering ceramics, jewellery, metal and textiles. Why does their work matter? How do they keep going? How does working in Australia impact their work? What’s their advice for makers now? 

Prue Venables, Jeff Mincham, Lola Greeno, Liz Williamson, Les Blakebrough, Marian Hosking and Robert Baines are recognised by the Australian Design Centre as 'Living Treasures' because of their contributions to contemporary craft and design.

In Season 1 of Object: Stories in design and craft, find out what makes them tick, how they've mastered their craft, and how they advocate for craft and design in Australia.