Bedforms exhibition
7-21 February 2025
Presented by Cool Change Contemporary and Perth Festival. Pakenham Street Art Space, Walyalup/Fremantle, Western Australia.
Presented by Cool Change Contemporary and Perth Festival. Pakenham Street Art Space, Walyalup/Fremantle, Western Australia.
Bedforms is a journey into the heart of family, culture, and tradition, expressed through the timeless medium of ceramics and contextualised by more recent forays into photography, video, and installation. Ambitious in scope, this exhibition will mark the first major solo presentation of Chongwe’s work, curated by Cool Change co-founder Grace Connors.
Developed while Chongwe undertook an artist residency at Modzi Arts in Lusaka in 2024, the new works in this exhibition consider her time spent reconnecting with family and observing traditional potters in Zambia. For the artist, this is not only a personal journey but a way to celebrate and preserve a cultural heritage at risk of being lost, with many of Zambia’s remarkable female potters approaching elderly age with no successors to their craft, and with the threats posed by urbanisation and technological advancements to traditional ways of life.
Chongwe is guided by a multi-generational connection to ceramics, from her great-great-grandmother, a practising potter in Zambia, to her father, renowned ceramicist Njalikwa Chongwe of Zinongo Gallery (Walyalup/Fremantle). She works primarily with stoneware clays to produce sculptural forms, experimenting with raku firing and traditional techniques to create unique and often unexpected surface treatments. Through this practice, combined with her teaching of ceramics workshops, Chongwe aims to deepen the understanding and appreciation of diverse cultural narratives from the perspective of her Australian-Zambian heritage.
Developed while Chongwe undertook an artist residency at Modzi Arts in Lusaka in 2024, the new works in this exhibition consider her time spent reconnecting with family and observing traditional potters in Zambia. For the artist, this is not only a personal journey but a way to celebrate and preserve a cultural heritage at risk of being lost, with many of Zambia’s remarkable female potters approaching elderly age with no successors to their craft, and with the threats posed by urbanisation and technological advancements to traditional ways of life.
Chongwe is guided by a multi-generational connection to ceramics, from her great-great-grandmother, a practising potter in Zambia, to her father, renowned ceramicist Njalikwa Chongwe of Zinongo Gallery (Walyalup/Fremantle). She works primarily with stoneware clays to produce sculptural forms, experimenting with raku firing and traditional techniques to create unique and often unexpected surface treatments. Through this practice, combined with her teaching of ceramics workshops, Chongwe aims to deepen the understanding and appreciation of diverse cultural narratives from the perspective of her Australian-Zambian heritage.
'As a practitioner of telluric sensibility, Chongwe’s latest exhibition Bedforms borrows its name from a geological feature which can be defined as “a natural structure or pattern that forms on the surface of a sediment bed due to the movement of a fluid, such as water or air, over it.” The term in relation to the work takes on a layered meaning which connects the geological and the personal. Bedforms, in their natural state, are created through the constant push and pull of environmental forces—water, wind, and time—on sediment, shaping the landscape into ripples, dunes, and shifting patterns. Chongwe’s ceramics similarly emerge from an intimate dialogue between material and force, where clay, like sediment, records memory, movement, and transformation. The material memory in the works evokes reflections and questions on migration, identity, and kinship in relation to clay. Identity, like clay, can manifest in states of elasticity—shaped by movement and transformation, by history and the environment. In an intimate reflection on identity and its elasticity and liminality, she shares, “The moist clay colours my skin a deep shade of brown, a shade that I used to long for it to be, an easy explanation for my African name that wouldn’t require awkward responses to unwanted questions.” Here, clay becomes more than a medium; it is a site of negotiation, where belonging is molded and remolded, echoing the fluidity of selfhood.'
Excerpt of review by Banji Chona for Spaghetti Boost
Excerpt of review by Banji Chona for Spaghetti Boost
This exhibition was sponsored by the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, Government of Western Australia.
Thank you to all the amazing friends, family and the Boorloo arts community that supported me during the creation of this project.
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which I live and work, the Whadjuk Noongar people and pay my respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty has never been ceded.
It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.
Thank you to all the amazing friends, family and the Boorloo arts community that supported me during the creation of this project.
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which I live and work, the Whadjuk Noongar people and pay my respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty has never been ceded.
It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.
Exhibition opening:
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Friday, 7 February 2025
w/ DJ Makonde
Free
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Friday, 7 February 2025
w/ DJ Makonde
Free
Artist talk:
6:00 – 7:00 PM
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
Free
6:00 – 7:00 PM
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
Free
Panel discussion:
Summit (Session 2):
Repatriation and Rebellious Objects
3:15 – 4:30 PM
Saturday, 22 February 2025
Perth Town Hall (601 Hay Street, Koorari/Perth CBD)
Ticketed
Summit (Session 2):
Repatriation and Rebellious Objects
3:15 – 4:30 PM
Saturday, 22 February 2025
Perth Town Hall (601 Hay Street, Koorari/Perth CBD)
Ticketed