Sassy Park
solo exhibition
19 April – 11 May 2022
view here
Clay is Sassy Park’s social media. Her work plays with the history of domestic ceramics and its genres, including pots and figurative works. Ideas of vulnerability and fragility are expressed through scale, intimacy, and humour. Pots speak of their own fallibility and painted figurative sculptures express an empathy through her subject matter of poignant characters. Her work draws the viewer in, to look more closely, to notice detail and engage with the object.
Ceramics is well suited to memorialising the small stages of life and the intimacies of the everyday and it is these quotidian matters that find their way into Sassy Park’s pieces. The domestic sphere, where affections are expressed and issues are put on the table, allows the work to say the otherwise unsayable. The small scale holds power and the unobtrusive seeping out of ideas and thoughts. The ceramic surface becomes a place for commentary on which she paints, writes and draws. Sassy Park’s making and painting of ceramic objects for contemplation challenges and continues clay’s extensive sphere of cultural production.
Sassy Park is a ceramics masters graduate from the National Art School, Sydney. She is the recipient of the 2022 Onslow Storrier studio residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France and was 2nd prize winner of the 2020 Meroogal Women’s Art Prize. Previous degrees and awards include Bachelor of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts in painting, N.S.W. Travelling scholarship, N.E. Pethebridge Ceramic Award and the Mansfield Ceramics Art and Perception Magazine Award. This year she was a finalist in the Tom Bass Prize for Figurative Sculpture and the inaugural McClelland Small Sculpture Prize in Victoria.
Her work is represented in national public collections including the Powerhouse Museum, Bathurst Regional Gallery and Art Gallery of Ballarat.
Sassy Park
article in Sydney Morning Herald about Sassy's apothecary pots at Australian Design Centre Sydney
to read article click and zoom in
Sassy Park
Three of Sassy's Isolation plates in Clay Dynasty at Powerhouse Museum Sydney. Plates purchased by Powerhouse Museum from Robin Gibson Gallery for their collection. Photo courtesy Karl Schwerdtfeger
Sassy Park
born Sydney, lives & works in Sydney
Education
2017-18
Master of Fine Arts, Ceramics, National Art School, Sydney
1986
Postgraduate Diploma, Visual Arts, Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney
1983
Guest student, Hochschule der Kunste, Berlin
1982-1985
BA Visual Arts, Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney
Awards & Residencies
2021
Finalist, Portia Geach Memorial Award, S.H. Ervin Gallery, N.S.W
2021
Winner, Muswellbrook Art Prize for ceramics, Muswellbrook Regional Arts
Centre, N.S.W.
2020
2nd prize, Meroogal Women’s Art Prize, N.S.W.
2020
Finalist, McClelland National Small Sculpture Awards, V.I.C.
2020
Onslow Storrier studio at La Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, National Art School
2020
Selected, Ceramix, Manly Art Gallery, N.S.W.
2020
Finalist, The Tom Bass Prize for Figurative Sculpture, N.S.W.
2019
Hill End Artist in Residence, N.S.W.
2018
Recipient, N.E Pethebridge Ceramic Award
2018
Recipient, Mansfield Ceramics Art and Perception Magazine Award
2016
Runner up prize winner, Handpicked Handmade, Gallery Klei
2016
Residency, Shiro Oni Studios, Onishi, Japan
2011
Studio Residency, The Trophy Room, Sydney
1987
Recipient, Desiderius Orban Art Award, N.S.W. Travelling Art Scholarship
Solo Exhibitions
2021
Apothecary now!, Object Space, Australian Design Centre, Sydney
2020
Pottery is my poetry, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2019
Looking for Gold, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2019
Looking for Gold, reprise, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, N.S.W.
2014
Menopause Memorial Ware and Other Souvenirs, solo exhibition, Chinaclay, Clovelly, Sydney, N.S.W.
2011
The end of life as I know it, The Trophy Room, Sydney, N.S.W.
2011
Sassy Park Ceramics, The Curio – A collectors cabinet, Sterling
by Gaffa, N.S.W.
2009
The Smoking Girl and other Tales, Pablo Fanque, N.S.W.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2022
Call and response, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria
2021
Christmas Group Exhibition, Mars Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria
2021
Clay Dynasty, Power House Museum, MAAS, Sydney, NSW
2021
Good Grief, Damien Minton Presents, Sheffer Gallery, Sydney
2021
Ceramix, The Australian Ceramics Association and MAG&M, curated by Sophia Cai, Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Sydney
2021
Out of the darkness: A survivor’s journey, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria
2021
EZY ART SHOW 2, EzyMart, curated Brodie Cullen, 302 Liverpool St, Darlinghurst, Sydney
2021
Muswellbrook Art Prize, Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, N.S.W.
2020
The vase and flower show, 7 Clovelly Rd, N.S.W.
2020
Object, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2020
My Imagination, Edwina Corlette Gallery, Brisbane
2019
Home, J Block Studio, Sydney
2019
Blooming Christmas, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2019
The Curiosities, Mailbox Art Space, Melbourne
2018
Released, Postgraduate exhibition, National Art School, Sydney
2018
Ceramics (Now), Adelaide Perry Gallery, Sydney
2018
Invitational, Home@735 Gallery, Sydney
2017
Text, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Sydney
2016
Onishi Ceramics, Shiro Oni Residency exhibition, Gunma, Japan
2016
Private lives, the artist as collector, S H Ervin Gallery, Sydney, as part of Tom Carment’s collection, Australia
2015
Artisans in the Garden, Lion Gate Lodge, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney
2015
CUPS………..Runneth Over, in honour of a humble and treasured domestic object, Chinaclay, Clovelly, Australia
2015
Collectors Space, curated by Glenn Barkley, Art Month Sydney as part of Noel McKenna’s collection, Surry Hills, Sydney
2015
Impromptu II, Group exhibition of Sculpture and other non functional object, Chinaclay, Clovelly, Australia
2014
Volcano Garden, Published Art, Sydney
2014
Cultivate, Artisans in the Garden, Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney
2014
Compassionate Voices, Voiceless, Koskela, Sydney
2013
Useful, Here and Now, Carriage Works, Sydney
2013 Artisans in the Garden, Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney
Curatorial Projects
2020
Curator, The vase and flower show, 7 Clovelly Rd, N.S.W.
2016
Co-Curator with Dr Miles Park, Beautiful Obsolescence, U.N.S.W.
Collections
Art Gallery of Ballarat, V.I.C.
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, N.S.W.
Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, N.S.W. Manly Art Gallery & Museum, N.S.W. Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, N.S.W. Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, N.S.W Private collections: Australia, Japan, U.S.A.
Published Writing
2021
Pakula, K., Bunnings sausage sizzles and AstraZeneca: what will these pots reveal about us, Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 5, 2021
www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/jars-bear-artistic-meaning-in-a- world-gone-to-pot-
20211205-p59ew7.html
2021
Talking practice: Sassy Park, Sculpture Club Journal, Tom Bass Sculpture Studio School, online https://www.sculptureclubjournal.com/journal/eumxl0r544mwt2sn3b7ddba78 hp0ub
2021
Dr Jones-O’Neill, J., Ceramics that speak, Untitled Issue 7 (Autumn 2021), Art Gallery of Ballarat Association, pp. 6-9.
2020
The Journal of Australian Ceramics, Volume 59 No 1, April 2020 (Contemporary Practice Issue)
2019
Hill End Artist Residency, N.S.W report, The Journal of Australian Ceramics, Vol 58 No 3, November 2019. p.135. (Porcelain Issue)
2019
Essay, Ceramics Suits Me, I am used to Disappointment: Making Objects of Contemplation, Ceramics: Art + Perception, vol. #113. 2019, pp. 92-101
2019
The Journal of Australian Ceramics, Volume 58 No 2, July 2019 (Sculpture Issue)
2014
Ceramics review, Gourmet Traveller
2011
O’Malley, Nick, Palettes loaded, lines drawn, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 December, 2011
