Ceramic Artist Alex Bray’s Porcelain Works Belie a Hidden Resilience

More resilient than they appear, strength underscores Alex Bray's delicate porcelain works.

Ceramicist Alex Bray spent the first few decades of her working life as a lawyer before making a 180-degree career change and enrolling at the National Art School, aged 53. Completing her degree in fine art proved to the burgeoning artist that she was “no longer the worst in the room” and her graduation show captured the attention of King Street Gallery on William in inner-city Sydney. It’s there that she began exhibiting her ethereal porcelain creations that are like nothing else.

“I find it very pleasing,” she says of the uniqueness of her work. “When I started I thought, ‘Oh, God, these aren’t very fashionable’ but I could only ever make what I could make.”

Exploring the tension between decay and rebirth, Bray’s sculptures – intricate, glossy and feminine – started off with a slightly dystopian feel before a cancer diagnosis reshaped how the artist looked at the world. “I’ve got this giant scar around my stomach,” she says of the surgery that sparked her breakthrough series, Scar. “At first, I’d be in the changing rooms after swimming, huddled and embarrassed. But then I thought, ‘I’m proud of this. It means I’m not dead!” I started making works to celebrate it.”

That’s not Bray’s only nod to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi (the concept of there being beauty in imperfection and the inherent transience of things). “Porcelain is not easy to work with but I refuse to use anything else. It looks incredibly thin and fragile but isn’t as breakable as it appears. My work is fired three times and that process makes it a lot more resilient than it looks. I like that metaphor.”

Exhibited at: King Street Gallery on William, Sydney
Studied: Bachelor of Fine Art, National Art School, Sydney
Awards: National Art School Sabbia Gallery Exhibition Award, 2023; National Association for the Visual Arts Ignition Prize, 2023
Breakthrough moment: Selling almost all of her pieces at the National Art School Grad Show in 2023

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