Inside The Sunny Garden Shed Studio Of An merging Ceramic Artist

Despite being stranded without a studio for most of 2020, there were some upsides to last year for graduate artist Anni Hagberg. For one, she was selected to exhibit at Fresh! – Craft Victoria’s annual exhibition of outstanding graduate artists. For another, she took out The Design Files Emerging Maker Award AND The John Wardle Architects Craft Prize while she was there. Not bad!

Her prizewinning work was a collection of porcelain sculptures titled ‘Integrity’. Made from a combination of scrap metal and broken glass, and coated in a glaze made from leftover wood ash and gold lustre, these works reflect Annie’s interest in working predominantly with found materials, to create her industrial-feel pieces.

‘I usually start with collecting waste materials which I use throughout my works – this can be anything from broken glass and scrap metal to charcoal or residue from welding,’ Anni says of the first steps in her multi-stage creative process. ‘I then form metal structures, around which I build layers of glass, ceramic, glazes, stains and waste additives. The works are then carefully dried and fired once, as high as the form’s structure will allow.’

From inception to completion, each piece takes anywhere between a few weeks to several months to finish.

A recent graduate of RMIT’s Bachelor of Fine Art, Anni’s practice is centred around a fascination with form: experimenting with structure, questioning its traditions, and pushing materials to their limits. She finds the way her substances calcify the most inspirational part of these investigations.

‘The ceramic process has an incredible ability to capture and communicate the lively and indeterminate nature of materials,’ she explains. ‘I have become increasingly interested in the unique transformations that occur in the kiln, depending on how the materials are fired, and what other materials they are in contact with.’

Future plans are bubbling for this promising young artist, who has just been accepted into a graduate research degree in the RMIT Fine Arts department, to commence in the next few months. But for now, she has a new studio all of her own to enjoy: a sunny garden shed located in the bottom of her backyard in Yarraville.

‘I especially love the worn-down brick wall and missing window panels which let me peer out into the yard while I work,’ Anni says. We do, too!

Keep an eye on Anni’s work here.