Ian Currie Memorial Lecture with Pie Bolton

CAQ is delighted to announce Pie Bolton as this year’s speaker for our Ian Currie Memorial Lecture, who will be discussing the topic ‘Fragments of a Ceramic Life: Thinking Through Place, Practice, and Process’.

In this lecture, ceramic artist and scientist, Pie Bolton, reflects on a life shaped by geology, clay and place. Drawing on experiences from residencies, fieldwork, travel, and studio experimentation, she explores how deep time informs her practice through the lens of material agency. Weaving together fragments from research, process-based making, and lived experience, this talk offers a layered reflection on what it means to work with ceramics in contemporary Australia—where honouring slow, collaborative work with clay is as vital as the objects themselves.

Pie Bolton is a contemporary artist working on Boon Wurrung country in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. Geology is the driving force in her process-based practice as she considers the laying down of sediments over deep geological time, the continuous slow flow of rocks, catastrophic earth events and earth properties such as gravity. Her practice is multi-layered, a combination of writing, thinking, reading, experimentation and making. She writes briefs and imposes her own deadlines. Her ideas fall philosophically into new materialism, the agency of matter and the flattening of anthropocentric hierarchies.

She researches correlations between geologic and ceramic processes and often dissects her work by cutting with concrete saws and grinders to inspect the interior. She reveals what is usually hidden, highlighting the preciousness of the earth and the care we should be taking of it. Her practice is full of continued conversations and collaborations with materials, combined with a constant attentiveness to their, and her own, capacities and tendencies. It is these collaborations which form the bedrock of her practice, a solid base where process is more considered than the outcome.

In 2022 she was awarded a commission for new work by the City of Melton culminating in a three-month exhibition in the Caroline Springs Gallery. In 2023 Bolton was the winner of an acclaimed Klytie Pate Ceramic Award.

Tertiary studies in both art and science (geology), and her endless quest for knowledge have resulted in a unique, authoritative practice. She has tertiary qualifications in ceramics and has completed an MFA at RMIT University, Melbourne. She was employed professionally as a Ceramic Technician, heading up the workshops at Holmesglen TAFE and RMIT University for more than a decade.

In 2019 Bolton founded The Kiln Room, a unique ceramic resource in Melbourne. The Kiln Room offers a specialist ceramic firing service, education program, technical expertise, mentorship, installation consultancy, artist studios and residency program. In early 2025 Bolton sold The Kiln Room to concentrate on her own practice, development of an expanded practice course and the mentoring of others.

The event will include afternoon tea and a special viewing of the Shifting Ground exhibition, a touring exhibition curated by CAQ member Larissa Warren.

Join us for an inspiring afternoon of ceramics!

Event Details

Sunday 3 August 2025, 2 to 4pm, The Centre Auditorium, 82 Brisbane Street Beaudesert QLD 4285.

To book tickets please click HERE

About Ian Currie

Best known as the author of Stoneware Glazes – A Systematic Approach, Ian Currie was a passional potter and glaze researcher. He studied and worked with clay and glazes for over 30 years in south-east Queensland. His “systematic approach” was the basis of his first course, offered to the Queensland Potters Association (now CAQ) in 1979. The course of 3 hours per week over 30 weeks was well attended, and some of the attendees are still members of CAQ. In this book Ian says, “I learned as much as any of my students …. I would like to express my gratitude to my many friends in QPA who contributed so much to the development of the course”.

CAQ’s annual Ian Currie Memorial Lecture honours the important and influential work of Ian and celebrates the continued work in this field by other leading ceramic artists. Previous presenters include: Dr Steve Harrison, Dennis Forshaw, Paul Davis and Jacqueline Clayton, and Renton Bishopric.

CAQ would like to thank the Currie family for their support in maintaining ongoing access to Ian’s glaze calculator and his related glaze information online.

Further information about Ian’s work and his publications are available: https://ian.currie.to/