Ari Athans (b.1965) studied a Bachelor of Applied Science (Geology) at University of Technology Sydney, before completing her Diploma in Gemmology at the Gemmological Association of Australia, and Associate Diploma of Arts (Jewellery Object Design) at the Sydney Institute of Technology.
Materiality, experimentation and transformative states are constant threads in Athans work. Science informs the process, but so too does intuition and emotion. Using mild steel and enamel, she reimagines geological interactions and events as fantastical new landscapes that represent passages of time and moments of being. Her stacked ceramic forms are a natural progression of this highly sculptural painting style, allowing human interaction in physical space and encouraging contemplation on geologic time and how we relate to it.
Her work in Trace, Grotto, consists of a stack of ceramic objects on a wooden base. Athans with her jeweller’s eye, finds balance within imbalance, and that is the pleasure of these stacks, but here we have what could well be a blue planet in all its precarity. It fully draws us in.
Athans was a finalist in the Moreton Bay Art Awards (2017) and Smart State Designer at the Design Institute of Australia (2008), her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows through Australia and internationally such as Sydney Contemporary (2020) Expanded discrete states, Artisan Brisbane (2018); 15 Artists, Redcliffe Art Gallery (2017); Silver, Museum of Brisbane (2014); Freestyle, Melbourne Museum, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Object Gallery and Milan Museum, Italy (2007); Blurred Boundaries, Kick Arts Cairns (2007); South Project, Santiago Museum, Chile (2006); Self, United Kingdom tour (2004); Schmuck, International Handwerksmesse, Munich (2001); and X-Ray Craft, Queensland Art Gallery (1997).
Her work is in the collections of Toowoomba Regional Gallery and Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital.
