The Scottish Gallery presents Uncertain Cadence by ceramicist Kirsten Coelho. Working in porcelain, Coelho creates functional forms and vessels that attempt to fuse the formal with the abstract. Her work has been influenced by the history of ceramics, in particular the aging surfaces of nineteenth and early twentieth-century domestic metal, glass and ceramic objects – jugs, flasks, bowls, beakers – echoes of the pleasures of daily life which she reiterates in meditations on the history, purity and order of daily rituals and routines.
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 Australian settler and 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.
2022 marks The Scottish Gallery’s 180th Anniversary, and Coelho’s solo exhibition is presented alongside new work from Duncan Shanks.
