‘River Bodies – elemental encounters between clay, fire, air and water’

29 Jul 2026 – 23 Aug 2026

River Bodies assembles sculpture, ceramics, sound, moving image and fieldnotes to respond materially and conceptually to my experience of summer bushfires and swimming in nature.

Gallery Details

Galleria Crocodillo 738 Plenty Road Reservoir

Opening hours
Thursday 11am to 6pm, Friday 12pm to 8pm, Saturday 12pm to 8pm, Sunday 1pm to 6pm

Robyn in the exhibition
Saturday 8 & Saturday 22 August 1-8pm

Exhibition Statement

This installation brings together sculpture, ceramics, sound, moving image and field notes to respond both materially and conceptually to my recent experiences of high-country bushfires, swimming in natural waterways, and walking with clay.

My practice explores an approach to ceramics and artmaking that is both carbon-responsible in its firing processes and carbon-explicit in its material outcomes. Drawing on ancient surface treatments, slow-burn techniques and single-firing methods, I create distinctive Blackware surfaces that embody environmental considerations.

River Bodies is a site-specific, embodied installation that dwells within the realities of the climate crisis while tracing connections between myth, human and more-than-human narratives, and our deep relationship with waterways.

With enormous gratitude and love to the Steudle Family and European Timber Windows for their unwavering support. Thanks to the Clay Matters community, whose ongoing ceramic critique continues to expand my practice. Deep appreciation to Sabrina Talarico and family, the Wolf family, and the technicians at RMIT, all for their invaluable audiovisual expertise. Finally, bountiful thanks to Constance Hunter and the Crocodillo community for the opportunity to present this work.

Field note: walking with clay
Friday 30 January 2026
Delatite River, Merrijig, Victoria

I have been holding handfuls of clay in very hot weather. Walking from shade shadow to shade shadow. Along a river bank. Pinching with my left hand, then my right, as I step left, right, left, right. A generative bilateral rhythm: one pinch of clay for every step taken. When the heat is too much, and the clay needs to rest, I slip into the river. The skin of the current slides silkily along my skin. My body and the body of water become one. I look and listen closely to ripples, burbles, and chattering across the river's surface. Beneath it, mineral solids. River-tumbled stones. These handfuls of clay have been compressed into objects holding time spent with: the flow of a cool mountain river a heatwave the aftermath of bushfires a vast bay where I rolled with seals smooth, responsive terracotta clay The Secret of Roan Inish and meeting John Sayles remembering Joy Hester's inked eyes, sensuous mouths, and her proximity to a river the women artists in Jennifer Higgie's The Other Side thinking about the embodied making of the Woman of Willendorf. My body. Clay body. The body of water. Becoming form.

Robyn Phelan

Field note: Blackware firing
Friday 1 May 2026
Rooftop, Naarm/North Melbourne

Wind swirls across the rooftop. All around me. And around the cauldron I am about to stoke. Perhaps today is too windy. Brown, brittle Plane Tree leaves become the first fire. A seasonal layer. An offering to Waring, the Kulin season of wombats. Beneath the leaves, fine sawdust, curled wood shavings are two terracotta vessels, nestled as though asleep. Greenware bedded down. Waiting. I strike the match. The spell is cast. Time. Air. Fire. Material. The sawdust begins to smoulder. Slowly. Patiently. The vessels warm. I wait. Heat gathers. Oxygen slips away. The fire begins to breathe differently. Smoke thick with carbon finds the clay body, settling, entering, leaving itself behind. Smoke escapes the rim of the cauldron. Grey tendrils. Ghosts breathe through smoky alchemy. I become both witch and witness. Waiting for slaty grey, inky black, mercury silver to appear across the clay surface. Hour after hour the fuel becomes ash. The vessels sink, deeper into the cauldron. Into darkness. Into cooling. Twelve hours pass. The lid is lifted. The trace of slow burn remains.

Robyn Phelan