BECKY RICHARDS
Becky Richards is an Aotearoa New Zealand artist who works across ceramics, sculpture and installation. Her ceramic works capture the animacy of organic forms, while emphasising the physical properties of clay. Each object exists as an individual creature with a distinctive personality; holding a story of care, gesture and action, and emanating a sense of liveliness. Becky’s work has been exhibited in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.
Also a writer and educator, Becky is the current editor of Ceramics NZ magazine. In 2020 she founded MUD Studios Limited, a shared ceramics studio based in Auckland, Aotearoa, and currently works as the studio director, alongside a team of dedicated makers working in clay. She holds an MFA from the University of Auckland.
Represented by Artor Contemporary
Becky Richards, Seabean Queen, 2025, Artor Contemporary
Becky Richards, Installation view, Tethered and Wild 2025. Working across sculpture and installation, Becky Richards’ recent practice has centred on the development and realisation of a hand-made, fictive realm. Her sculptures emerge from a gleeful remixing of visual data pulled from existing landscapes, aquatic life, mammals and arboreal forms, with each new ceramic creature adding to an ongoing process of fantastical world-building. Fascinated with the lumpen, unfolding realm of organic growth, Richards’ entities draw on the animacy of nonhuman forms – with playful reference to mature trees, boulders and hillocks. Familiar shapes are stylised and exaggerated, rendering the works cartoonish – they unfurl, stretch and puff out their chests.
There is a palpable transparency of process in Richards’ hand-built sculptures; their surfaces wear dappled records of fingers and palms – preserved conversations with pliable matter. Handles, lugs, flanges and dangling hoops retain soft gestures of formation, while adding ambiguous notes of implied practicality to unweildly forms. Following a child-like desire to build increasingly large constructions, some works stand as feats of creative engineering – their dynamic heft emphasising the physical properties of clay. These sculptures emanate a robust physicality, sensual tactility and material strangeness.
Richards’ installation-based projects are immersive and replete in textural detail; combining elements that range in scale – from tiny to towering – creating scenes that are often absurd yet enchanting. She strives to make work that captures a sense of the joy and nourishment that may be found in the abundant and intricate shapes and surfaces of the natural world.
Installation view: Tethered and Wild 2025
Becky Richards, Mount Peabody 2025Ceramic, glaze, 200mm W x 500 H
Becky Richards, Bright Eyes 2025Ceramic, glaze, epoxy, glass, (300mm dia x 550mm high)Becky Richards, Lolly-loop Dapple Flank, 2025
2024, Into The Wild, Group exhibition, McLeavey Gallery, Wellington2025, Tethered and Wild, Group exhibition, Artor Contemporary, Auckland2024, Into The Wild, Group exhibition, McLeavey Gallery, Wellington2023, States of Flow, Group exhibition, Sanderson Contemporary, Auckland Lumplandia, Solo exhibition, The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt 2022, Wonderlump, Solo exhibition, Objectspace, Chartwell gallery, Auckland2021, Kiss me Hardy! (but not like that), Group exhibition, The Suter Gallery, Nelson An Egg, A Seed, A Stone, Auckland Art Fair, Projects section, Auckland2020, A few too many hang-ups, Group exhibition, AucklandSand-pit, Solo exhibition, Rm gallery, Auckland 2019, CATCH, Group exhibition, Tinning St Gallery, Melbourne 2018, You are a force of nature, MFA graduate exhibition, Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland Slow-time, Group exhibition, Tacit, Hamilton 2017, To watch, with your mind’s eye, the world floating quiet
Solo exhibition, Blue Oyster Project Space, Dunedin Homeshow, Group exhibition, 90 Canon St, Christchurch 2015, Recipe, Solo exhibition, The Casting Room, Ilam SOFA campus, Christchurch
The wee showcial, Group exhibition, The Christchurch Exchange, Christchurch
They Ghosted up the River, Group exhibition, SOFA Gallery, Christchurch Select, Group exhibition, SOFA Gallery, Christchurch 2014, Domestos, Group exhibition, Tinning St Gallery, Melbourne Blueprint, Group exhibition, Brunswick Art Space, Melbourne —
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