Cover image: Vessels, MJAC West Gallery, 2025. Photo by Josh Wells

For the ceramics-curious, this next month is chock-a-block with up to 30 exhibitions of fired clay across the metro area and all the way down to Bunbury.

To coincide with Wedge 2025, which wrapped up last weekend, this confluence of clay and community is on full display at Midland Junction Arts Centre through to November 9.  Creativity, skill and knowledge have been fostered here since the venue opened as a small school 130 years ago – and as a site of cultural practice for Whadjuk Noongar for many millennia before that.

The arts centre is a tranquil haven in Midland’s retail-heavy commercial precinct. It is a quiet pleasure to walk through the doors where the only compelling decision is whether to turn right at the reception desk into the West Gallery or left into the East Gallery.

Neither gallery is very large, reflecting their prior lives as classrooms no doubt, so they make for intimate curatorial spaces that inspire the focused contemplation of some outstanding objects.

Against my ideological nature, I veered right and was rewarded with the reverie of the group show Vessels, curated by Jess Knight. This incandescent collection features 11 international and WA artists working at the leading edge of contemporary practice while steeped in the traditions of handmade objects as conveyances of culture, memories and stories.

Among the standout works are several ceramic urns, boxes and bowls by New Delhi-based industrial and graphic designer turned artist Sakshi Agarwal, who was Artist in Residence for this Midland exhibition and is a guest demonstrator at Wedge 25 in Fremantle.

Radiating a mythical force like ancient reliquaries, Agarwal’s stoneware sits on raised white plinths and antique timber boxes that emphasise their duality as utterly new pieces hand-carved with a refined lineage of centuries-old tradition. As the curatorial notes says: “These meticulously crafted forms are adorned with intricate two-dimensional patterns that transform spatial perception, evoking the essence of woven tapestries and architectural grids and paying homage to philosophical symbols of Indian iconography.”

Vessels not only features ceramic works; it reveals a playful shaping of other materials by artists such as the mother-son pair Fiona Gavino and Solomon Hunter, whose hefty ball and chain suggests a weight much greater than the recycled marine rope from which it is made. Gavino’s solo wall piece of woven steel straps is more suggestive of bamboo basket-making, again pushing the boundaries of expectations.

Similarly, Tanija and Graham Carr toy with the organic materiality of leather to such an extent that their chunky, burnished machine-like vessels beckon you closer to take a good sniff. It’s only this olfactory test that verifies their cowhide origins to belie their metallurgical appearance. Some bronze does feature in the Carrs’ work, however, such as Vessel 3, which suggest the ramparts of a miniature castle complete with gargoyles. Again, it requires a probing nose to determine where the leather ends and the bronze begins.

This exceptional level of technical mastery and artistic expression is evident in other works in the show, from Carmela Corvaia’s dense grove of olive sticks and dyed wool to Philip Noakes’ exquisite wafer-thin intersections of gold and silver goblets, Claire Ng’s delicate glazed pots and Argentinean artist Victoria Martínez Zurbano’s slow-art application of pre-Hispanic clay hand-building traditions.

The use of rope, leather, and other textiles in Vessels, such as the beautiful handmade felted carriers of Martien van Zuilen, resonate assuredly with the ceramics and fibre-art works by emerging artists Nazerul Ben-Dzulkefli and Kasia Kolikow across the hall in the East Gallery. In their joint show Where do We Truly Belong?, Ben-Dzulkefli and Kolikow, both participants in recent years in PICA’s national graduate showcase Hatched, explore the shifting relativity of home and belonging.

Kolikow and Ben-Dzulkefli shared an artistic residency at Midland for this joint exhibition, having first met as students at North Metro TAFE. Kolikow draws on her Polish-Australian heritage and Ben-Dzulkefli upon his Malay-Javanese upbringing in Singapore’s cultural melting pot to create objects infused with meaning about ancestral homelands and new terrains.

Kolikow casts gossamer-like threads linking ethereal photographic black-and-white prints of flowers, furniture and streetscapes with her woven wall hangings of patterned words of home and identity. Among them, Ben-Dzulkefli’s hand-hewn glazed ceramics stand like mini stupa, shrines and small houses in which seem to reside spiritual connections that stretch from distant lands to the quiet room they currently inhabit.

Both exhibitions exist in that place beyond words, where their physical presence and visual acuity – shaped by deep consideration, skill and purpose – transmit an ineffable sense of longing and belonging. They illustrate the power of connection between maker and audience, unmediated by the hubbub and distractions of the world beyond.

Also showing at Midland Junction Arts Centre is Ripairian, an immersive exhibition by Vahri McKenzie and Gemma Ben-Ary, with sound design by Michael Terren. It is a fascinating cabinet of curiosities that showcases the ecological and social complexities of under-bridge sites along the Mandoon Bilya (Helena River) guided by three cues – rubbish, weeds and graffiti. I was particularly taken by McKenzie’s Trash Tail, an assemblage of spray cans, tins, bottles and other detritus gathered on site and transformed by the gallery context.

Vessels, Where do We Truly Belong and Ripairian are at Midland Junction Arts Centre until 9 November. Details: https://www.midlandjunctionartscentre.com.au

Details of other Wedge 2025-related exhibitions here: https://www.australianceramicstriennale.com.au/exhibitions