Sassy Park
Sassy Park
Unicorn 2024
21×22.5×8cm glazed ceramic
$1100
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. She has been a finalist in the Tom Bass Prize for Figurative Sculpture and the 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
Margarinfigur Bauer (Margarine Figure – Farmer) 2024
23.5×21×8cm glazed earthenware
$1950
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
1982-1985 BA Visual Arts, Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney
1983 Guest student, Hochschule der Kunste, Berlin
1979 Pre-foundation, Heatherley’s School of Fine Art, London, UK
Awards & Residencies
2024 Keramikkünstlerhaus Scholarship Neumünster, Germany
2023 Finalist, Portia Geach Memorial Award, S.H. Ervin Gallery, N.S.W.
2021 Onslow Storrier studio at La Cité International des Arts, Paris, France
2021 Finalist, Portia Geach Memorial Award, S.H. Ervin Gallery, N.S.W.
2021 Finalist, Meroogal Women’s Art Prize, Meroogal House, Nowra, Museums of History, N.S.W.
2021 Winner, Muswellbrook Art Prize for ceramics, Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, N.S.W
2021 Selected, Ceramix, Manly Art Gallery, Sydney, 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
2023 Little Saints, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2022Masculin Féminin, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
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
2024 Word Clay, Paper Boat Press, Brisbane, Queensland
2024 Tiled, Kil.n.it group show, Australian Design Centre, Sydney
2024 Everybody Wants to Live Together, Kil.n.it at Michael Reid Northern Beaches, Sydney
2023 Rendered, Boom Gallery, Geelong, Victoria
2023 Clay: Collected Ceramics, Museum of Brisbane, Queensland
2023 Paper & Clay, Arthouse Gallery, Sydney
2023 26.04.23, Home at735 Gallery, Sydney, New South Wales
2021-2023 Clay Dynasty, Power House Museum, MAAS, Sydney
2022 Candles + Sticks, Fitzroy, Melbourne
2022We Are Kil.N.It, Raft Space, Alice Springs/Mpantwe, NT
2022 The vase and flower show 2, 7 Clovelly Rd, Clovelly, Sydney
2022 Homies, China Heights, Sydney, programmed by Mackenzie Rowe and Sam Stephenson
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
2021Dr 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)
2019Essay, Ceramics Suits Me, I am used to Disappointment: Making Objects of Contemplation, Ceramics: Art + Perception, vol. #113. 2019, pp. 92-101
2019The 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
