Jen Kerr, Picnic at Paynes Find, 2024, ceramics, dimensions variable.

For her first solo exhibition, Picnic Terrain, Jen Kerr displays a collection of ceramic plates, platters and vessels that continue her exploration of the in between - the spaces and places, where one way of being meets another- where the land meets the sea, the forest meets the river, the salt meets the lake and the track meets her feet.

Kerr’s “picnic ware” are relaxed and playful responses to places she has camped, picnicked, walked or travelled through. The terrains revealed on the surfaces of these vessels include the stark white clay and gravel quarry of The Statham Wetlands on Nyaania Creek, Whadjuk Boodja; deep mysterious Blackwood River rock pools, (Goorbilyup), on Bibbulman Boodja; rivers and granite rock beaches around Mt Many Peakes (Yoolberup), on Menang Boodja; and salt lakes of Ballardong and Dumbleyung Boodja.

The carved and hand-pinched vessels are an ongoing creative meditation on place, the process intimate, slow and meditative, requiring days to complete and sometime made on location. The plates and share platters, by contrast, are made by slumping slabs of clay over plaster moulds and adding elevation with coiled foot rings. The bisque fired forms become canvases for glaze to flux, fuse and flow in a reduction firing. Kerr’s practice is an ongoing experiment with glaze combinations that evoke connections to and awe of our stunning ancient land.

She is supported in the studio by her ceramicist husband Bernard, in the Jarrah-Marri Forest on the Darling Scarp – Katta Morda, on Noongar Boodja.