Kirsten Coelho (b. 1966, Denmark) is a leading Australian contemporary ceramicist living and working in Adelaide, South Australia. Coelho works in porcelain, producing reduction fired works that attempt to fuse the formal and the abstract. Her work has been recently influenced by nineteenth and early twentieth century enamel wares and the abstracted surface possibilities these objects can show as they begin to age.
“My ceramics practice focuses on the exploration and reinterpretation of utilitarian ceramics, glass and metal wares. Many pieces are made in white porcelain, some with an added iron rim – suggesting an everyday metal object whilst being made in a material like porcelain that has such a wide-ranging history and associations of desire and commodity. This can create a juxtaposition between the precious and the commonplace.”
Coelho completed a Bachelor of Design (Ceramics) at the South Australian School of Art at University of South Australia, Adelaide, graduating in 1988 before moving to the UK where she worked for a number of years in a London studio. Since returning to Australia in 1998, Coelho has been a studio tenant at the JamFactory Centre for Contemporary Craft and Design and in 2004 completed a Master of Visual Art at the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia, Adelaide.
Holding regular solo exhibitions since 2002, Coelho has also been included in major group exhibitions including the 2018 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Divided Worlds Worlds (curated by Erica Green, Director, Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide), the nation’s longest running survey of contemporary Australian Art. Recent solo institutional exhibitions include In The Falling Light at the Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra which also toured to Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle in 2015. In the same year, Coelho was artist-in residence at Tweed Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah, which precipitated a solo exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery in 2016. Coelho recently received the Arts South Australia Fellowship, with the resultant release of a monograph and exhibition at the Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide in 2020.
Coelho is represented in major Australian public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. She also features in the international public collections of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, UK and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
