Russell’s work looks like confectionery but refuses to behave like it. She pipes porcelain as if it were icing, building up dripping, spiky, foamy forms that only pretend to be vessels. Many are hollow, open-based, structurally unstable in appearance. She openly rejects the idea of “woman as vessel” and plays with absence, orifices and openings instead. Her pieces sit in tension between attraction and discomfort, using sugar-coated surfaces to question what femininity and “decorative” labor mean.

Russell’s career has accelerated quickly. After studying ceramics at Monash University, she spent around 15 years teaching full-time before returning to complete an MFA at the National Art School in 2018. Since then she has balanced motherhood, part-time lecturing and an intensive studio practice from a self-designed workspace at home. She is represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery in London and Martin Browne Contemporary in Sydney, and continues to pursue residencies and research into traditional women’s crafts, including in Malta and Sicily.

For institutions dedicated to contemporary ceramics, Russell’s trajectory is crucial. Her practice reframes techniques historically coded as “women’s work” and brings them decisively into the field of sculpture and conceptual art. At the Fine Arts Ceramic Center we follow this type of work closely: it shows how clay can hold feminist discourse, personal history and technical innovation at once, expanding what ceramic art can say and who it speaks for.