With three decades of passionate collecting and creating to her name, Churchill Fellowship scholar Kylie Johnson has dedicated her life to championing the art of the handmade. An indispensable member of Brisbane’s clay community, her studio has not only introduced the artform to countless patrons, but has also helped support the careers of our city’s most prolific potters.
We’re inviting you to take a special tour of Clay: Collected Ceramics where Kylie and her guests will lift the lid on the potter’s process, before settling in at our beautifully laid shared table stacked with edible treats.
Set against the backdrop of our sunlit Dome Gallery, this special Tea and Tour experience is a warm and inviting way to dig deep into the cult of clay.
We invite guests to bring their own ceramic cup for tea to help spark conversation about your shared love and memory of clay. Alternatively, use one of the cups provided by MoB.
Schedule of special guests:
More dates and guests to be announced soon.
Kylie Johnson is a maker, purveyor and collector of ceramics and a writer, with a combined home, studio and retail gallery in Brisbane’s inner west.
Kylie grew up with craftspeople parents in a Brisbane home full of locally created items. From childhood, she imbibed the ideology that each handmade object has a story and a connection to another human being. While studying film and visual arts in the early 1990s she joined the Amfora group of urban artists and potters. During her 12 years with Amfora she wrote three volumes of verse. Murdoch Books published her poems in 2008 and 2010.
In 1995, Kylie founded paper boat press, first making printed cards and later, text-based ceramics. In 2012 she began selling her range in her own studio and gallery in Ashgrove. Now, more than 100 Australian stores stock her wares, and she has a lively online business. Her many social media followers await posts documenting not only her journeys, but her washing-up.
Since 2007, Kylie has travelled regularly throughout Japan, learning from makers and returning with treasure for her home and gallery. A Churchill Fellowship in 2017 enabled her to spend an extended period there, observing how the culture of the handmade is nurtured and undertaking an intensive study of kintsugi, the art of repairing ceramics with powdered gold. In Brisbane, she has exhibited the work of Japan-based artists as well as that of many local makers, including Nicolette Johnson, Kenji Uranishi and Bonnie Hislop.
With her sister, Tiffany Johnson, Kylie wrote Utsuwa: Japanese objects for everyday use, published in Australia and the UK in 2021. Their second book is Earth and Fire: Modern potters, their tools, techniques and practices, released in Australia, the UK and the USA in 2023.
