Drawing on a background in architecture, ceramic artist Georgia Stevenson of Georgia Stevenson works with materials sourced from local construction sites, translating them into tiles and objects defined by process and chance. Her work is grounded in material research and making.
Here, she shares her approach and the ideas that underpin her material-led practice.
Adair Winder: Lovely to speak with you Georgia. Let’s talk a bit about your background. You originally trained in architecture? How has that background shaped the way you approach your ceramics practice?
Georgia Stevenson: That’s right. I studied at QUT [Queensland University of Technology] and completed my bachelor’s degree. I didn’t continue on to the master’s or go any further than that. After graduating from my bachelor’s, I worked at a firm in Brisbane for three years.
It’s definitely given me a strong context and background to situate my work within now. I still find myself getting drawn back to the same architecture and design crowd. I think that comes from developing a shared language from my time in practice. Being able to speak to what they need and anticipate that has really helped me with the projects I’m doing now. I’m not working in architecture anymore – I transitioned into ceramics after those three years.
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AW: I wanted to ask you about your Breaking Ground research project, which seems pretty central to your work. Could you talk a bit about that project? How did it begin, and what questions were you trying to answer at the start?
GS: You’re right in saying that it’s central to my practice – it kind of almost has become the practice now, and is the direction I’d like to continue in. The Breaking Ground research project started through a couple of different things. There was always an interest in the material itself, and a curiosity about where it comes from – what properties gave it certain colours or textures, whether it comes pure from a mine or is local, and where that extraction is happening, which I feel lends itself to architecture and systems thinking. And then there was also a family friend who had some clay from their house [in Queensland], who had approached me and asked if I’d wanted to make something with it – I hadn’t worked with a local clay before, so that was my first experience.
I took the clay and did some research online, but there was just such a saturation of information online that what’s in front of you ends up guiding the process anyway. So I separated it into batches and started testing it in different ways – whether I could use it as a slip, as a surface treatment or as the actual clay body itself. I also experimented with mixing it with commercial clay to try and introduce more predictable properties or tweak the colour, and then seeing how it worked with glaze. That was a first test run in understanding the breadth of the material, and trying to really follow a material-led approach to making.
Then, when I moved to Melbourne from the Sunshine Coast, I thought I’d continue collecting local clays and working with those. I started reaching out to builders, architects and anyone connected to a site to collect clay, but kept running into roadblocks. In Melbourne, I was presented with a very urban context and found that there were so many construction and demolition materials around, often in abundance and heading to landfill. I also began to feel unsure about the ethics of collecting clay, which can be a sticky conversation and topic. Looking at what else was available on site, it felt more intuitive to go with what was already in abundance. That led me to using materials like brick, concrete and glass, as well as construction by-products.
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AW: So, at the start you were reaching out to builders and architects to source materials. Is that still your process for sourcing “waste” materials?
GS: At the start, I sourced a lot of materials, and it was amazing because there was a real sense of community around it, and I had quite an overwhelming response from other like-minded people who also wanted to integrate that into their own practice. But I ended up with so many materials in my studio that I wasn’t actually using. Even now, people still keep offering materials for me to come and collect, and I’m like, “I’m so sorry, I’m really at capacity.” Now it’s more of a commission-based situation.
That early work was really valuable for establishing a baseline – gaining knowledge, for instance, that if I work with this specific colour of brick, it might turn into that colour of clay. It was about testing a variety of materials, sometimes the same materials from different sites, and learning their properties in a broad sense, even though they’re all unique. Now that I’m doing commission work, I can draw on that background as a kind of material library. I do a lot of cataloguing, record-keeping, documentation and photography of what I collect and what the resulting material tests are. When new commissions come in, I can assess what’s available on site and make an informed prediction about the result.
The way I work now is always collaborative – I’ve been blessed with amazing collaborators who are invested in the process and understand that I’m collecting materials from a site, so the outcomes are always unique and can’t be fully predetermined. They’re really along for the ride, and in a way it becomes a collaboration between the three of us: me, the material and the client.
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AW: That idea of it being a dialogue between the maker, the material and the client is really interesting. I guess the other point you’ve just mentioned is that you can’t fully control the outcome, you can’t really achieve the kind of perfection or uniformity that consumers might expect from more predictable materials.
GS: Absolutely and that’s the beauty of it. It’s interesting because if an architect were to specify this as a product, which is an interesting way to describe it, as a product, I sometimes struggle to articulate that, because I think of it more as a permanent artwork. But if you were to specify it as a product, you’re more specifying a range of colour, but we won’t really know the outcome until the end of the process. It’s almost like testing a loosening of boundaries around how you can define and specify something, and how to describe it in advance.
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AW: Could you walk me through the broad process transforming waste into a usable ceramic material?
GS: The first thing is really getting on site and collecting. Sometimes I’ll do a quick survey first to see what materials might be appropriate. After collecting, I sort the material, for example, if I’m collecting bricks, there might be bricks that still have mortar attached, or there might be different types of bricks, so I separate what I can because I then have more control over how I can reincorporate and recombine different elements. It’s like having more ingredients to play with.
Most materials then need to be pre-crushed. So, that’s just me crushing things by hand with a mallet or a chisel. Then most things go through a rock-crushing machine that I co-own with some other potters. It has a small chute about the size of your hand, so that’s why pre-crushing is necessary. After rock-crushing, the material usually comes out somewhere between a fine powder and coarse sand. I then bring the crushed material back to the studio, where I sieve it into different grades, which gives me a good range to start testing with. If it’s still too coarse, I’ll put it through a ball mill, which refines it further into a consistent powdery mix.
From there, I start testing. I’ll incorporate the mix into a clay body or apply it as a glaze, always starting small in case there are issues like off-gassing that could damage the kiln. Once I’ve confirmed it’s safe, I continue testing – sometimes focusing on glaze, other times on the clay body. It’s really just different rounds of testing that keep going through the kiln until we’re happy with something that works for the application, and then it can move into production.
AW: Do you have a favourite waste material to work with?
GS: I really like demolished concrete. I love it because it’s quite unassuming – it’s grey, it’s a bit dull, it’s almost everywhere. But after going through the kiln, it transforms into some really amazing glazes. I’ve even had glazes come out that are almost like a khaki colour with gold speckles in them and little gold crystal formations. It’s a material I’m really interested in continuing to research and develop further. I think the material holds a lot of promise because demolished concrete typically ends up at recycling facilities and then goes into things like road base or other civil infrastructure projects. I think there’s real potential in rethinking its value.
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AW: What are the biggest technical challenges you have come across throughout this research?
GS: Because I like to incorporate a lot of different materials into the clay body, I run into issues with plasticity. I’m essentially adding materials that don’t have any plasticity into the clay, and then trying to work with them in a ceramics context – that’s where the biggest challenges come up. But it’s been really interesting to lean into that and think, “Okay, I need to let the material lead the way again.” That’s pushed me to ask what other techniques the material might suit. For example, I used to do wheel throwing, and now I’m doing a lot more hand-building, like rolling, because the material responds better to those approaches. I’d also like to get into slip casting in the future, because I think it works really well with materials that don’t have that plasticity.
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AW: That sounds like your architectural training coming through again – working within constraints and leaning into them rather than resisting them. What roles can these materials play in architecture? How have your creations been applied in architectural projects so far?
GS: Yeah, they’ve mostly been applied as tiles so far. I’ve done two smaller projects – one in a residential context and one in a cafe – each about one square metre in scale. I’m now working on a much larger 20-square-metre residential project in collaboration with Studio Bright. These are tile projects, but I think there is a lot of potential beyond that. I would love to take these materials into landscaping, urban design and public space contexts. There’s an element in this work that speaks to provenance, history and the memory of materials, which I think could translate really well into public art – where you can explore narrative and meaning embedded in a material. Those are future ambitions.
More recently, through collaborations with Studio Bright, I’ve also been exploring how these materials can be processed and used as pigments with other craftspeople and across different outcomes. I think it’s a really amazing use of the materials and exciting to be able to collaborate with others too. We’re collaborating with Heather Thomas, who works at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, but we’ve done some testing with mineral pigments for fabric dyeing, and then also using the pigment for a concrete blend.
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AW: What do these materials that you’ve created offer architects and clients that maybe conventional ceramic tiles and finishes don’t?
GS: I think it offers a more handmade approach. It also offers something that’s local and meaningful to the client. In these recent projects, the materials have been things that clients already have a connection to. In the case of Studio Bright, for example, it’s excavated material, so there’s a direct relationship with the site and what’s already there. Similarly, in other projects, I’ve worked with demolished school bricks at Balam Balam Place that held a lot of meaning. I’ve been able to transform these materials through my process and the heat of the kilns, reinventing them while still retaining a connection to their original site. Ultimately, it’s about giving materials a new life and a new sense of character – they’re not off-the-shelf, but objects with history.
AW: How do you find clients and collaborators typically respond to the idea of using “waste” materials in finished spaces?
GS: All of my collaborators have been really on board with it, to the point where it’s not really even talked about as “waste.” It’s more just seen as an existing resource – something already there. That’s been amazing, working with people who already have that understanding. There’s also a broader shift happening, where what used to be called a “demolition plan” is now being reframed as an existing resource plan, or a material reuse plan. So in that sense, it’s not really seen as waste, but more as a by-product.
People have been really open to seeing these materials appear in the finished tiles or other works. Often that becomes the talking point too, like “Why are these brick pieces irregular?” or “What’s the story behind them?” And they’re usually really proud to share that story with visitors in their homes or spaces. There’s also been a lot of openness in the design process itself. When choosing colours and finishes, collaborators and clients have often been willing to make bold choices that really celebrate the finished material, rather than tone it down or make it more neutral.
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AW: You talked before about cataloguing – have you found that a lot of this information didn’t previously exist in a formal way? Is this new knowledge that you’re effectively collating and making publicly accessible?
GS: In a ceramics context, there is some information out there, but a lot of it is quite old, from books and some online resources. The online material tends to be more anecdotal, like blogs or home potters sharing experiments like “I mixed this with this and got this result.” I think there’s now starting to be more documented research through material libraries and online databases, but when I started, it was mostly that kind of informal, anecdotal knowledge alongside what I could find in books.
I have a section on my website that functions as a material catalogue, which grew out of an exhibition I did at No Vacancy Gallery a few years ago. I began documenting the characteristics, data and observations of different materials, and that’s now all online. Also, whenever I make cups and objects, I’ll add a QR code at the base that takes you to a webpage about the material, for example, it might say that a cup is made with 80 percent brick from Fitzroy, and then you can see where it was actually collected from and what the original material looked like.
Another project I’m involved in and co-founded is called Alternative Ceramics Supply. Through that platform, we’ve compiled data on about 10 materials – things like brick rubble, concrete rubble, glass, different types of stone, and bone ash. It’s similar in approach, but more focused on providing accessible material information for potters to work with.
I think knowledge sharing is really important. I mean, one of the key aims of this work is to reduce the amount of material going to landfill, and part of that is empowering other potters to look at their surroundings differently. It’s about encouraging them to create work that carries another layer of meaning, and to take more control of that part of the supply chain themselves.