PERTH.- The Art Gallery of Western Australia presents Pippin Drysdale: Infinite Terrain, a landmark retrospective honouring the extraordinary career of internationally renowned ceramicist Pippin Drysdale.

Spanning over forty years of practice, the exhibition features work from the State Art Collection alongside significant loans. It offers a rare opportunity to explore Drysdale’s adventurous spirit, collaborative processes, and her singular ability to interpret the world through porcelain. Her vast fields of flowing lines and mesmerising colour evoke landscapes both intimate and expansive, inviting viewers into layered readings that intertwine memory, place, and imagination.

"Through ceramics, I immerse myself in the art I love, fueled by passion and commitment. Though discomfort often lingers, it nudges me into the depths of my subconscious, where true treasures are born. In this dance of commitment and uncertainty, I find the freedom to create authentically," expressed artist Pippin Drysdale.

Drysdale, based in Fremantle, Western Australia, began her ceramics journey in the 1980s and continues to produce new work at the age of 82. Her pieces are held in some of the most significant art collections across Australia and internationally, and her reputation as one of the country’s most respected ceramic artists is firmly established.

Her practice is driven by a deep enthusiasm for discovery of place, of self, and of creative and technical breakthroughs. Blending precise craftsmanship with fearless experimentation, Drysdale’s porcelain forms explore the vastness of colour in the landscape, revealing its capacity for both subtlety and intensity.

“Pippin Drysdale’s journeys to new and unfamiliar surroundings have long shaped her practice,” said AGWA Associate Curator of Contemporary Art Isobel Wise.

“She doesn’t necessarily create work while travelling but seeks out visually and culturally diverse environments that stimulate her eye and mind. From Australia’s remote regions to Pakistan, Canada, New Zealand, Italy, Russia and India, these lasting impressions inform her understanding of the world and in turn, her work.”

Despite her global travels, the visual language of Drysdale’s ceramics remains deeply rooted in the Australian landscape. Her mastery of form, surface, and colour has evolved into a distinct dialect, one that captures the nuances of the world through an Australian lens.

The gently curved forms, sweeping lines, and shifting fields of colour in her work offer immediate visual impact. Yet, with time, they reveal deeper layers: hand-carved lines suggest ripples of sand or sea, guiding the eye across a terrain of memory and imagination. Her pieces invite free association, sometimes looping us back to familiar forms, other times drawing our gaze across the room to new resonances offering viewers a profound and poetic journey through infinite terrain.

Pippin Drysdale is a renowned ceramist from Western Australia, highly regarded as one of Australia’s most respected ceramic artists. With an international career spanning over four decades, she continues to create new works at her home studio in Fremantle, where she began her ceramics journey in the 1980s.

Pippin Drysdale was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in 1943 and grew up in Perth, Western Australia from the age of three. As a child, art was the only subject at school that allowed Drysdale to express herself and embracing this, her parents enrolled her in private classes in painting and drawing. After leaving school, Drysdale worked in various office jobs in Perth and Canberra, and later in England, before she travelled through Europe.

She returned to Australia in the early 1960s and moved to Melbourne, where she first made art for sale, creating paper flowers and selling them through local stores. She moved back to Perth in the early 1970s, settling into a cottage in Fremantle that she still lives and works in today.

In the late 1970s Drysdale began experimenting with clay. She enrolled in an Advanced Diploma in Ceramics at Perth Technical College (now TAFE), which she completed in 1982. After graduating Drysdale worked and studied in the USA. Following her return to Australia she completed Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University). Since that time Drysdale has travelled to exhibit work, lecture in ceramics, and participate in artists residency programs in Australia, the USA, Italy, Pakistan, New Zealand, Canada, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

Her work has been included in over 450 group and solo exhibitions, and she is represented in public and private collections internationally. In 2008, Drysdale was named a Master of Australian Craft by the Australia Council for the Arts.

At the age of 82, Drysdale's art remains both technically and aesthetically remarkable. Her works have been exhibited around the world and are featured in some of the most significant art collections in Australia and internationally.