Image: Tarnanthi 2021, Christina Gollan ceramic installation, Art Gallery of South Australia, Catapult mentorship program. Photograph Saul Steed
The Catapult + Tarnanthi 2020 mentorship sees Kaurna, Boandik and Ngarrindjeri artist Christina Gollan undertake mentorship opportunity to further her creative practice.
Across 2020 and 2021, Christina Gollan (with mentor Kirsten Coelho) will dedicate studio time to strengthening technical, conceptual and critical skills, culminating in the showing of works in Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, 15 October 2021 – 30 January 2022.
Christina Gollan will work with renowned ceramicist Kirsten Coelho (SA) to hone her skills in a dedicated ceramics studio. She enters the mentorship with the aim to develop her use of colour and expand her practice to include large works and sculpture, expanding her decorative techniques that can be seen in the carved details on her works.
Shown in Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Gollan’s pieces are a celebration of colour, storytelling and the Australian wildlife. Responding to the natural world with personal narratives delicately interwoven through the colourful hand build pieces, Christina’s work draws your focus to what is often overlooked.
Images: Tarnanthi 2021, Christina Gollan ceramic installation, Art Gallery of South Australia, Catapult mentorship program. Photographs Sia Duff.
‘I was surrounded by so many beautiful ceramic artists. Making something out of a block clay into something amazing is the most wonderful feeling ever.Even the smallest seed pods or Animals can show you life is so precious and beautiful big or small I love making things people might not notice’ – Christina Gollan
Christina has exhibited as a Finalist in the Shepparton Indigenous Ceramic Award, Shepparton Art Museum (VIC) and her ceramic work is available at the JamFactory store, she has exhibited in Adelaide at the Migration Museum, Tanadanya, JamFactory and Adelaide Festival Centre.
Having returned to Australia from London in the late 1990s, Coelho’s concern with the formal archetypes of the historical household turned to the nineteenth-century Australia settler/migrant experience. The extraordinary dreams, ambitions and failings of these experiences are referenced in the luscious thick white glazes and pared back simplicity of Coelho’s works, which consider how objects and art shape history and cultural memory.
Coelho was included in the 2018 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Divided Worlds curated by Erica Green. Recent solo institutional exhibitions include In The Falling Light, Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra (2015), touring to Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle (2015). Coelho accepted an invitation to undertake a residency at Tweed Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah, in 2015 which resulted in a solo exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery the following year.
Kirsten Coelho holds a Master of Visual Art from the University of South Australia. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Sullivan and Strumpf Singapore, Art Basel Hong Kong (2017); PAD London (2018); TEFAF, Maastricht (2020); and Masterpiece London (2019).
Coelho’s work is represented in numerous institutional collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane;; Chatsworth House, UK; and the Boymans Van Beuningen Stichting Museum, The Netherlands. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the City of Hobart Art Prize (2015), the Sidney Myer Ceramic Award (2012) and the Josephine Ulrick Ceramic Award (2005).
Kirsten Coelho’s practice was the subject of the SALA 2020 monograph written by Wendy Walker and published by Wakefield Press.
