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 ceramics and glass. 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 transformation. 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. Shadows are at times intentionally integrated into the composition, 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 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.