Nothing exists alone, 2024

To work with ceramics now means to work with a tactile, slow medium during a period of time in which the pace of life is forever quickening, and this human drive, with its building cadence, is leading to the detriment of our ecosphere. This is why as I slowly make sculptures, I create work that I view as a form of world-building. My sculptures could be viewed as the inhabitants of a new world in a speculative future or a remnant of a past forgotten history. I want to use clay to question what may be possible in our future, and how life, humans included, may evolve. They may feel familiar, as they’re inspired by the lifeforms of here and now such as botanical species, mushrooms or corals, but as I think forward and back in time on both sides of the Anthropocene these forms become more otherworldly. “Nothing exists alone” is included in this larger ecology of sculptures. It is hand-built using an amalgamation of slab-building and coiling techniques. Its title references Rachel Carson’s quote from Silent Spring: “In nature, nothing exists alone,” positing notions of interconnectedness and life’s ephemerality.

Kohl Tyler is an Aotearoa/New Zealand-born artist who’s been based in Naarm/Melbourne since 2018. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design in 2016 and was awarded the Artist Alliance Graduate Award in 2016. In 2017, she won the Estuary Art and Ecology Award at Malcolm Smith Gallery in Auckland, NZ. Recent exhibitions include; Ceramics Now, MARS Gallery, VIC (2024), Ceramics, Australian Galleries, VIC (2024) and solo exhibitions in Aotearoa and Australia including: All is Ephemeral, FELTspace, Adelaide, SA (2024), Signals, Printmaker Gallery, Melbourne, VIC (2022), and Moving Past the Sun, Weasel Gallery, Hamilton, NZ (2020). In 2022 she presented Offerings, a social art installation held at the UNESCO heritage-listed Carlton Gardens in Naarm, Australia, supported by the City of Melbourne Art Grants. Her work is held in the collection of the Gippsland Art Gallery, VIC and in private collections throughout Australia, Aotearoa and the U.S.A.