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.

'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

---

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.