ABOUT ARTIST
Acclaimed ceramic artist, respected teacher and curator, and a leading figure in the ceramic art community in Australia, Barbara Campbell-Allen has quietly and generously made a remarkable contribution to Australian ceramics over several decades. 

Campbell-Allen was introduced to clay through high school art classes and the immediate affinity she felt for the material has not only stayed with her but directed her life. This was not her only interest, however. She was fascinated with natural environments – with the earth, rocks and water-courses and the processes that created them – which led her to a double geography degree (Bachelor of Arts, Macquarie University 1975) where she specialized in geomorphology, the study of the formation of landscapes. It’s a field that still excites her. But in her mid-twenties, to accommodate a young family into her working life, she returned to clay and trained in ceramics at the National Art School, Sydney, where she developed a passion for wood-firing. Graduating in 1981 she became a full-time production potter for eight years, intense and demanding work, before taking up teaching at the highly regarded Workshop Arts Centre, Sydney, and establishing her own art practice.  

Bio / CV
Through the Gippsland Centre for Art & Design, part of Monash University, Campbell-Allen completed a Graduate Diploma of Arts in 1994, the year of her first solo exhibition, and a Master of Arts (Visual Arts) in 2000.
She was president of the Australian Ceramic Association in 2005 and 2006, and for these efforts and much more, in 2010 she was awarded the Clay Energy Hamada Medal for her contribution to ceramics. 
Campbell-Allen built her first Anagama kiln, a Japanese-style wood-firing kiln, in 1988 and her work has been devoted almost exclusively to wood-firing ever since. For the last 15 years that work has been inspired by the many hikes, treks and camping trips she has taken with her husband through the remote landscapes of Australia. In response to her immediate experience of these extraordinary places she would intuitively create new bodies of work. The nature of the work she made evolved through these years, as she adopted a more conceptual and experimental approach and embraced installation and collaboration. Notable amongst more recent exhibitions was a collaboration with video-artist Alex Kershaw at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2013, where his Fantasticology Tokyo: Faults, Flesh and Flowers was complemented and given material substance by Campbell-Allen’s Aftermath, created in response to the Japanese tsunami of 2011.

Other solo exhibitions include Terra Alterius: Land of Another, at Ivan Dougherty Gallery, UNSW, Sydney, in 2004 which then toured regionally in the eastern states; Overland: From the Cradle to the Lake at The Incinerator Art Space, Willoughby, Sydney, in 2013; and From Both Sides Now, at MU Ceramics Studio Gallery, Mosman, Sydney in 2014.  

Along with these and other solo shows, Campbell-Allen has exhibited in scores of group shows. Her work has been collected in Australia and abroad, and publicized in the leading ceramics journals in Australia and the United States.

Formally and conceptually distinctive, Campbell-Allen’s work is distinguished by strength, restraint and often richly detailed surfaces. The highly personal aesthetic she has developed eloquently evokes the two powerful wellsprings of her motivation – her intimate appreciation of the art of wood-firing and her deep emotional connection with natural landscapes. Through the refinement of her artistic process these two are embodied as one.

Jan Howlin BVA (Hons I), MFA