Juz Kitson

Juz Kitson lures her audience into an opulent garden and casts them out renewed: an encounter with her sublime installations provokes deeply affective responses, suggesting a form of contemporary shamanism at play within the gallery.

Kitson’s talismanic objects – memento mori meets animist fetish – combine the dexterous arts of ceramics, textiles and drawing with a strong sense of materialism and process. Overtly seductive, the works’ tension lies in resisting the conventions of craft such as the throwing wheel and the plinth, both central to ceramic traditions. Bound with mystique and feminine power, Kitson’s suspended chimeras become both captivating and unnerving, touching gently on a raw, surrealist nerve.

A wanderer and gatherer of no current fixed address, Sydney born Kitson is a serial artist in residence who divides her time between Australia (where the bush is a rich hunting ground) and Jingdezhen, the ‘porcelain capital’ of China, a country she first visited in 2009 to work with renowned installation artist Lin Tianmiao.

While completing Honours in ceramics at the National Art School, Kitson’s Formations of Silence was acquired by David Walsh for his Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania. Featured in The Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera 2013 and Art Dubai 2014, she was also recently included in the 2016 Adelaide Biennial. Kitson’s work is held in public collections, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Artbank and RMIT University, as well as in private collections in Australia, Germany and the UK.