Arrernte artist Alfred Lowe wins 2024 Shelley Simpson Ceramic Prize with Mud Australia

Mud Australia has awarded Alfred Lowe its 2024 ceramics prize, celebrating the work of a burgeoning First Nations artist. Combining clay and ceramics to explore organic forms inspired by Australia’s Central Desert, the traditional home of the land’s Arrernte people, Lowe’s work is keenly political and visually unique. Embracing a colourful and provocative palette, the pieces magnify Lowe’s voice, identity, and the call for racial justice.

Alfred Lowe’s clay and ceramics

The Shelley Simpson Ceramic Prize was founded in 2020, hoping to provide Mud’s eponymous founder with the means to make a positive difference to Australia’s creative landscape during the pandemic. Between the country’s raging bushfires, tumultuous geopolitics, and the ongoing climate emergency, Simpson was looking to turn her internationally acclaimed homeware business toward helping those closest to her.

Having taken care of her family and team during difficult times, for Simpson, Mud’s ceramic prize became a way to extend this support to younger artists too. Inspired by the Australian government’s ‘New Enterprise Incentive Scheme’, which afforded her the chance to pursue ceramics in her youth, Simpson’s prize awards $10,000 in cash and international exposure to upcoming creatives that have caught her eye. Alfred Lowe is one such artist.

Originally hailing from Snake Well and Alice Springs in the Central Desert, Lowe began making ceramics in 2021, and now practices at APY Studio Adelaide, whose galleries specialise in celebrating Aboriginal art. A neighbour to the painter Clifford Possum during his youth, and a regular at the Araluen Arts and Cultural Precinct, he was strongly drawn toward creative practices and Australia’s racial politics, intertwining his otherwise playful work with a stalwart belief in rebellion and ‘a flat-footed posture of defiance’.

Speaking of his pieces, he describes the importance of their bright colours and fun appearance in holding their presence in a room: ‘a presence that rejects expectations, ignores preconceptions and embraces a provocative sense of rebellion’.

Alongside celebrating Lowe’s work in particular, Simpson is adamant about the political value of the prize itself and using her platform as a vehicle for change. Last year (2023) saw a failed Australian referendum to recognise Aboriginal people in the country’s constitution, sparking widespread anguish at the prevailing political disparity across the continent. Determined to do what she could, despite this alienation from establishment politics, Simpson knew that a First Nations artist had to win the prize this year, especially someone with such politically charged work as Lowe’s.

Steeped in a culture of resilience, of fighting spirit, and dignity in the face of terrible opposition, both Lowe’s work and its champions aim to make small but determined steps forward, and the awarding of Mud’s latest ceramics prize has been a valuable channel for this process. Sometimes, resistance is a battle won by inches, not by the strongest but by those who endure, with both feet planted firmly in the earth. Lowe’s practice is no different.

mudaustralia.com