About...

Jennifer Conroy-Smith is British born fine artist, lecturer, and researcher based in Naarm / Melbourne, whose practice is grounded in material thinking, with a particular focus on explorative methods in ceramic practices. Viewing materials not as passive substances but as dynamic participants, Jennifer’s work emerges from an ongoing dialogue with the unpredictable properties of matter. Rather than existing in isolation, materials and ideas evolve through a densely layered network of dynamic forces, and interconnections. This intricate interplay fosters an environment where creative outcomes are shaped by the reciprocal influence of relational encounters throughout the making process.

At the core of this practice is a fascination with uncertainty, liminality, and emergence. Her work investigates the energetic processes that animate materials, exploring how forms develop through constant negotiation with evolving material and experiential conditions. Surfaces, bodies, and spaces are engaged as terrains of movement and exchange, where boundaries blur, distinctions dissolve, and new possibilities for sensation, perception, and interaction arise. 

An experimental approach to working with ceramics is grounded in an investigation of material agency and the dynamic interplay between the artist and elemental forces such as gravity and time. Rather than exerting total control over form and outcome, scenarios are engaged with where materials are invited to act, enabling gravity to partially shape the flow of clay, and allowing time and kiln conditions to produce gradual, sometimes unexpected changes. By collaborating with these forces, sometimes setting parameters and sometimes relinquishing authorship, the work foregrounds the unpredictable contributions of nonhuman forces, cultivating a creative practice where both making and outcome are the results of shared negotiation between human intention and the inherent vitality of material, matter, and atmosphere.
Shadows are at times intentionally integrated, extending the material dialogue beyond the physical material itself. They subsequently function as mutable agents, revealing, obscuring, and redefining spatial experience, prompting reflection on the interplay between the visible and the undefined liminal aspects of each encounter.

As a lecturer at RMIT University in Melbourne and a dedicated researcher, Jennifer is committed to exploratory methods of material language development, continually seeking new ways for material practices to express the mutable, relational, and often unpredictable nature of lived experience. Through this open-ended and investigative practice, she challenges the conventions of materiality, fostering environments where uncertainty becomes a generative force for discovery and transformation.