Samantha Mackie - Quiet Evidence
Exhibition Dates: October 11 - 24 online
Online Sales Launch: 8pm October 11
Sam Mackie is a Sydney-based artist working from her studio in Avalon. Originally working with paper, she was drawn to the durability & permeance of ceramics & completed a Diploma of Ceramics in 2024
Working in porcelain, Sam creates linear forms to explore memory, place & the significance of everyday objects. Using delicate slabs built through hundreds of brushstrokes, her work reduces landscapes, structures & familiar objects into their most distilled form. Left unglazed & free of colour, the work is quiet - almost ghostly - sometimes acknowledging its origins, sometimes abstracted beyond recognition. Light is also integral, with the fine porcelain slabs letting it move through forms to mark the slow cadence of passing time
She is interested in the structures that surround & shape our relationships & memory: the house as an archetype of shelter & belonging, architectural forms as markers of place & everyday objects as containers for memory. She uses her work to ask (& sometimes answer): How do landscapes become part of our identity? What traces do places leave in us & what traces do we leave in them? Can an object hold memory? Can making become an act of remembering? What does it mean to feel anchored & what happens when we don't?
She often reflects whether her fascination with houses & ideas of shelter stem from her father who was a bricklayer & the school holidays she spent watching him transform simple materials into enduring structures that became a backdrop for people’s lives & sense of belonging. It felt like important work & that feeling has stayed with her
Sam’s work has been selected for numerous exhibitions and prizes, including the North Sydney Art Prize, Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, Little Things Art Prize & the Corner Store Mini Series Prize. Sam is expanding to include metal in her practice. She works as a photographer & creates workshops for other artists to learn how to photograph their work.
