Michelle takes us through the inspiration for this collection and her creative process and shares how the works pushed her boundaries in new ways.

What inspired you to create Dopamine Days?

A few things! There’s a lot of pieces in the exhibition that speak to my life on the Gold Coast and how I feel about this city since the arts scene really began to flourish and we’ve gathered a real community. The landscape that’s a burst of flowing shapes and vibrant colours is very much so inspired by the burgeoning arts scene and the way it’s influenced the cultural landscape of the Gold Coast. If I’d made this work years earlier it would have looked a lot different. I wanted this work to be joyous and accessible.

There’s also works in there that are reflections of smaller more personal moments of life here on the GC, like the phone-gazing self portrait called ‘I can’t remember why I came to this room’ that references those relatable scrambled brain moments that spending too much time on your phone can create.

Lastly I was thinking about the medium of clay and the different states it goes through from creation to final work. I wanted to create pieces that expressed all of these states. The clay starts off fluid and malleable as a squishy clay body, then it then becomes fragile and delicate once it’s left to dry before it’s fired and then once it’s fired it becomes strong and rigid. There’s work that spills from shelf to shelf, characterising that fluidity, there’s pieces that are stacked and balanced precariously embodying the fragility of unfired clay and finally all the works in their final form are inflexible and strong.

Can you walk us through your creative process for bringing these pieces to fruition?

The concepts start out as 2D sketches and I play around with colours and patterns. I really enjoy 80’s inspired patterns and it’s also a little nod to the decade I was born. For some of the pieces I can go straight from finished sketches straight into making the ceramic version but for others I need to make a small maquette first. By making a smaller version I can problem solve the assembly of the works a little easier and with a little less risk than going straight to the larger piece. Once the maquette is finished I’ll then measure it and decide how much I want to increase the size of the final form and work out what percentage to scale up from there. Some of the works change a little as they’re being built. You realise quickly when you’ve drawn something that defies physics and can’t be replicated in a 3D form. The works are all then put through their first firing and then underglazed in all their bright colours and patterns and then I add the last coats of clear glaze and the pieces go in for their final glaze firing.

You joined us in 2021 for HOTA’s ArtKeeper program. What have you been up to since ArtKeeper?

I’ve been working from a shared studio space that I successfully applied for through the Gold Coast city council and Level Up gallery + studio. I’ve been hosting workshops at various events and spaces across South-East Queensland and speaking at the international summit CreativeMornings. I’ve been continuing the work that I started in ArtKeeper and will actually be showing those pieces in Melbourne at Off the Kerb gallery at the end of July. Just announced also, is a collaborative sculpture I’m working on with fellow artist Tessa Bergan that will be in Swell Sculpture Festival this September.

How does this exhibition fit into your overall artistic practice, and did it push or expand your creative boundaries in any way?

The work for Dopamine Days is a nice reflection of the direction my practice is heading in. Larger scale, more intricately created pieces. The work was a push of my creative practice, both in technicality and in scale. These works are the biggest works I’ve created to date and also the most technically difficult. It was a great opportunity to push some boundaries and see how I could stretch the limitations of the medium my abilities. The precariously stacked shapes were a fun (and daunting) feat to pull off and I quite literally maxed out the scale of what I could create. Some of the works had to literally be pushed into the kiln as there was no room left around them for them to be lifted into the kiln.

Explore Dopamine Days on Level 5 of HOTA Gallery or find out more about Michelle's time as an ArtKeeper here.

_{Photography by Ellamay Fitzgerald}