About exhibition

The Auckland Studio Potters Artist in Residence programme was established in 2019 to support ceramicists who are driven by curiosity and the desire to push beyond what they already know. At Auckland Studio Potters (ASP), the residency is not just a space to work, it is an active invitation to experiment, to test ideas, to follow unexpected directions, and to embrace the productive failures that open the door to new possibilities.

ASP values the full spectrum of ceramic practice, recognising that innovation often occurs when traditions are questioned, techniques are stretched, and familiar forms are reimagined. The residency fosters an environment where artists can challenge their own habits, encounter new methods and materials, and discover work they couldn’t have predicted at the outset.

The Artist in Residence Exhibition brings together the outcomes of this ethos — works shaped by inquiry, experiment, ambition, surprise, and sometimes failure. These pieces represent not only the artists’ skill but their willingness to step into the unknown. In doing so, they embody the spirit that sets the ASP residency apart: a place where clay becomes a site of discovery, and where the process is as vital and celebrated as the final form.

About Rubes’s work

This installation includes a selection of pieces created during Rubes’s Auckland Studio Potters artist residency from May to July 2025. Rubes’s approach was to focus on experimentation and creative play, resulting in an exploration of texture sourced directly from found objects in their surroundings. Impressions of natural materials, such as rocks and wood, as well as naturally eroded human-made items like chunks of concrete and rusty metal, were created by pressing soft clay directly onto the objects.

The materials used to make the impressions came into Rubes’s focus as a result of their repeated presence in these spaces. A familiarization of these places changed their relationship to them, they hold a new meaning, making the everyday significant. These works record a sense of place.

In this body of work Rubes focused on the texture of objects, the individual curves, points and indentations. The vessels created capture an imprint of the space around the objects, the void left between the parts that were once, but are no longer there. Pushing against the objects the clay calls to the actions that created them, then releases as a record.

Read the full artist statement here.

Works by Rubes

A Void, Now Filled: stoneware clay, Auckland Studio Potters glazes, sea glass, various found sediment, and found rocks from Auckland Studio Potters and detritus from Karaka Bay Beach, dimensions variable

Images by Sam Hartnett