Changing Terrain
Anna Guthrie
Changing Terrain (detail) 2026
Earthenware
Soda base and lithium glaze
47 x 7 x 7 cm
About the Artwork
This vessel forms part of my ongoing ‘Changing Terrain’ series, exploring how place is carried through material. The clay was collected from a Moreton Bay building site for new homes before excavation, preserving a fragment of a landscape undergoing continual change in the area around my home and studio. As this land has shifted from bushland to farmland, rural living and now to suburban development, the vessel becomes a quiet repository for those successive histories. Deep atmospheric layered glazes recall the lichen, moss, and weathered earth that has now been removed, not as a direct representation, but as an evocation of the landscape from which the material came. The work acknowledges change and offers welcome to the new people who now live in this area with me.
About the Artist
Anna Guthrie is an artist based just north of Meanjin/ Brisbane, whose practice is centred on walking as both a creative and research methodology. Currently a doctoral candidate at the Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University, Anna channels her walking experiences into her making. Through sustained engagement with the landscapes of Moreton Bay, Anna investigates how material holds memory and how it can reveal changing relationships with place.
Working primarily with low-fired ceramics and plant-dyed textiles, Anna has been a finalist multiple times in the Moreton Bay Art Prize, a finalist in the 2022 North Queensland Ceramic Award (exhibiting as Anna Turnbull), received the Highly Commended Emerging Artist Award at the Queensland Regional Art Awards from Fiona Foley in 2023, and was a finalist in the Siliceous Award for Ceramic Excellence. Guthrie has completed public art commissions mapping environmental aspects of Moreton Bay and regularly facilitates community-based workshops in ceramics, visual arts, and creative practice.