The Art Gallery of WA presents Fremantle artist Pippin Drysdale: Infinite Terrain retrospective exhibition

Pippin Drysdale is the first to admit working with her on the Art Gallery of WA’s landmark retrospective, Pippin Drysdale: Infinite Terrain, has been a monumental undertaking for AGWA contemporary associate curator Isobel Wise. “She’s been amazing how she’s got through it all with me,” the incredibly candid 82-year-old ceramicist says. “It’s made me realise how lucky I am to have someone really document it and tax my mind on all the experiences of where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and what I’ve created here and there. “I just think it’s wonderful at my age now to have a retrospective, and put it all in some sort of order, which I could never have done.” Spanning 40 years of Drysdale’s practice, the exhibition features 265 artworks, made up of 442 individual ceramics, making this one of the largest AGWA exhibitions by a single artist in terms of the number of objects. When brought together, the works illustrate the breadth of a prolific career in which the Fremantle-based artist has forever had a passion for colour. “She has a complete devotion to ceramics, colour and the act of discovery,” Wise explains. “Curating this exhibition has felt like stepping into Pippin’s world — not just the work itself, but the stories, travels and relationships that shaped it. Many of the ideas for the exhibition emerged through conversations with her in her light-filled kitchen, surrounded by an ever-changing wall of ceramics that acts as a living archive. “Bringing together works from across 40 years has been incredibly rewarding. It has revealed how her forms, colours and ideas evolve, loop back, or open out into new directions. The process has been grounded in close observation yet open to vast possibilities, reflecting the very qualities that define her work.” Born in Melbourne, Drysdale moved with her family to South Perth when she was three years old, before her father, businessman John Hastings Carew-Reid, bought a double block of land in Peppermint Grove. She attended St Hilda’s, her first of three private schools, before putting a halt to her education because “I was only good at drawing”. Among her many endeavours, Drysdale had a business, Pip’s Flowers, in which she imported German crepe paper used to make flowers and posies, before another venture growing and drying medicinal culinary herbs. Discovering her love of clay led to her studying an Advanced Diploma in Ceramics at the WA School of Art and Design in the early 1980s; time in the US at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and obtaining a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) at Curtin University in 1986 on her return to Australia. Drysdale’s adventurous spirit and ability to interpret the world through porcelain sees her artworks inspired by her global travels, yet remaining deeply embedded in the Australian landscape. “Pippin’s work can be described as a poetic remapping of her encounters with places,” Wise says. “Her visual language is rooted in Australian landscapes. However, it is shaped by her travels through Pakistan, Canada, Italy, Russia, India and remote regions across Australia. She approaches the ceramic surface much like a painter, using sweeping lines and fields of colour to evoke ridgelines, atmospheric conditions, desert light, and traces of life across the land. “Yet it is the three-dimensionality of her forms that anchors these gestures, giving the work its rhythm, balance and sense of unfolding terrain. Her works are often assembled into carefully arranged compositions of many parts that reflect the encounters that inspired them, while also offering small surprises and moments of discovery.” Wise says the exhibition’s title, Infinite Terrain, reflects the way Drysdale’s ceramics offer endless pathways for looking and feeling, speaking to the boundless curiosity that drives her practice, her readiness to experience new environments and ideas, and the sense that each piece can be interpreted in multiple or evolving ways. “AGWA chose to present this retrospective because Pippin Drysdale is one of Australia’s most significant and enduring contemporary ceramicists, with a career now spanning more than four decades,” Wise says. “Even at 82, she continues to work with extraordinary energy and purpose from her Fremantle studio, producing works that remain adventurous, relevant and acutely meaningful. “Her work is internationally recognised, yet much of her practice has evolved on the far western edge of Australia, in a place not always in the national spotlight. This retrospective allows us to honour her contribution, bring forward new understandings of her work, and share the remarkable breadth of her achievements with a wider audience.” It is clear the word “retirement” is not in Drysdale’s vocabulary even before the question is posed to her. “No, because what would I do?” Drysdale responds, who was inducted as a State Living Treasure in 2015. “I’ve been brought up as a spoiled little rich girl, and then I’ve known all the right people who have supported me and helped me through my journey. I am a working girl, really, despite all my health issues. I would just hate not to achieve something each day.” Pippin Drysdale: Infinite Terrain is at AGWA until April 6, 2026.