Shiling Wu

Shiling Wu completed a Master of Art. 

Shiling Wu’s ceramic works are visceral and tactile. She is a master of high gloss metallic glazes and raw clay finishes. Her works traverse the worlds of functionality and pure sculpture. Sometimes her finished objects possess both traits – sometimes only one. Either way, audiences are lulled in by an aesthetic that unites futuristic affect with organic substance.  

Originally from Taiwan, Shiling arrived in Australia in 2014 to study painting in a Masters program at UNSW Art & Design. Her creative journey came via the United States and four years spent achieving a degree in music first. The languages of sound, colour, texture, and line are provided an effective, if surprising avenue of expression in clay. 

Her solo exhibition Throwing Notes at Sydney’s Annandale Galleries offered a fantastic display of metallic reflection and intense colour. For the exhibition, Shiling arranged more than 50 hand-thrown cylindrical vessels on a large white bench. Tall and wide and short and squat, viewers could see the distorted reflections of themselves and all surrounding objects in the molten surface of the collective arrangement.