The White Room
With an exhibition name inspired by an album by KLF, Stanley Street's latest group exhibition curated by Sean Morris sets you up to expect the unexpected.
For a bit of context “The White Room” was the fourth and final studio album by British electronic music group KLF, released in March 1991. The KLF were famed for burning all the money they earned in a boat shed on Jura. And as the gallery points out – KLF – Kiln Load Fire! Intriguingly in 2017 (after 23 years) the KLF will be making a statement on why they burned all their money.
However on a more literal note, yes you can expect the theme of white to be a consistent tone throughout the exhibition. The works are linked by their pure tones, with the ceramics pared back to the sources of purity, ritual and light.
A strong showing of ceramicists, the expansive list of interstate and international artists includes Avi Amesbury, Tony Bond, Somchai Charoen, Alice Couttoupes, Lynda Draper, Merran Esson, Danica Firulovic, Vicki Grima, Shaun Hayes, Ingrid, Ruth Ju-Shih Li, Bronwyn Kemp, Chantal Labbe, Machiko Motoi, Cherie Peyton, Natalie Rosin, Simon Reece and Jo Wood.
For Machine Motoi, the artist takes a cross-disciplinary approach to art encompassing performance and ceramics. As the artist states “My art develops from the sequence of activities I perform at work…while I make my works, I am aware of my breathing, my body, the space, the sound, the pople and the relationships I encounter…The perfomative aspect of art making is integral to the objects I create. With this approach, I have taken the journey in producing a new, pure white ceramic for The White Room.”
Opening Wednesday 1 March The White Room is set to be a luminescent showing of diverse and leading ceramicists in their field.
EXHIBITION
The White Room | Contemporary Ceramics
Curated by Sean Morris
Stanley Street Gallery, Sydney
1 – 25 March 2017
Courtesy the artists and Stanley Street Gallery, Sydney
The weekend markets at Fairfield Showground have been one of Western Sydney’s great institutions for more than fifty years. Fresh fruit and vegetables, children’s clothes,...
In recent times, Yorgos Lanthimos has shifted toward photography, noting in a Guardian interview, 2026, that he needs respite, saying, “it might be a couple...
In Australia, political cartoons were altered by several events during the 1960s: the arrival of Les Tanner’s (1927‒2001) instinctual wit at The Bulletin, Bruce Petty’s...
Recognition of the importance of early bark paintings and their link to the world’s oldest continuing culture, is what makes them both highly sought and...
I had come to see my daughter sing in Deborah Kelly’s Creation Choir and was fortunate enough to make it inside the gallery for the...
Cuban-born, Brisbane-based artist Jorge Mariño Brito’s practice unfolds across two material registers that are best understood not as parallel tracks but as entwined explorations. Both...
The first work you encounter in Edge City is a gate, Settlement #8, 2025. Not one to pass through (not anymore), but a threshold nonetheless....
Designed to impress, the number and size of paintings—twenty-nine at nine square metres each and one even bigger—are a spectacle, lifting the exhibition from an...
Skilfully assimilating secondary sources throughout Paris in Ruins, Smee at the conclusion of Part One, “Salon of 1869,” writes that Auguste Renoir’s and Claude Monet’s...