Liz Williams: Body Language

Liz Williams: Body language celebrates the remarkable figurative sculptures of Australian ceramicist Liz Williams. In this first comprehensive survey of her ceramics, Margot Osborne traces the evolution of Liz Williams’ impressive body of coil-built ceramic sculptures commencing in the late 1970s. Over this forty-year period Williams’ work was marked by an increasing refinement and technical prowess in her stylisation of the figure and her encapsulation of the subject’s inner life through pose, facial expression and bodily adornment.

Liz Williams: Body language features 70 full-page colour images of Williams’ ceramics and her home/studio by leading photographer Grant Hancock. It also includes essays by Catherine Speck, Damon Moon and Wendy Walker.

When Liz Williams died in March 2017 after a short illness, her friends and colleagues decided to launch a fund-raising campaign towards a publication in honour of her artistic legacy and her contribution to Australian ceramics. This book was made possible by the philanthropy of private donors to that campaign and by the support of Arts South Australia.

Liz Williams’ choice of the artisan medium of clay and her distinctive sculptural approach have made her art difficult to contextualise in terms of contemporary styles in both sculpture and ceramics. This, and her decision to practise from a base in Adelaide, contributed to her relatively low profile during her life. This first retrospective survey makes it possible to fully appreciate Williams’ achievement and her contribution to ceramics in Australia.