Photographer Selina Ou, image courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria.

Irene Grishin-Selzer is an Australian artist working prodominantly with ceramics and photography. She holds an MFA by Research from Monash University, after graduating with First Class Honours and the Clayworks Australia Award for Ceramic Excellence. She exhibited her Masters research at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) 

Her practice engages with the notion of transience, the shape of time and a sense of place.  All of the natural world is seen as being in a state of flux with transformation and regeneration over the passage of time with all its internal rhythms, patterns, connections and dislocations.

Grishin-Selzer has been recognised as a finalist in numerous awards, including the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, the Manningham Victorian Ceramic Art Award, and the Victorian Craft Awards. Recent collaborations include a design installation at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) for Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse. Her work has been shown at the Melbourne Art Fair and curated exhibitions across Australia and North America, with solo shows in Melbourne and regionally at the Shepparton Art Museum (SAM).

Grishin-Selzer’s works are held in international collections and have been profiled in art and design publications, including the Art Almanac, Art Collector Magazine, The Journal of Australian Ceramics, Architectural Digest Spain, and other print and online publications. Artist profiles include features in the NGV Magazine and three international art and design compendiums published by Thames & Hudson, most recently an artist profile showcased in Earth & Fire, a comprehensive survey of contemporary Australian ceramic artists.

Irene Grishin- Selzer's ceramic practice spans two separate, but interconnected forms. The first is clay tablet paintings and drawings, the second is object-based pieces.
The clay tablets can be regarded as a form of abstracted cartography - sprawling maps where scale is difficult to fathom, but we encounter pockets of energy, the movement of tides, electromagnetic waves, microcosms, and the build up of deeply encrusted topographical layers.

The object based pieces may be thought of as individual points of focus, tiny areas of exploration, sandwiched cross-sections that pierce the surface or enigmatic relics and artefacts that carry the traces of ancient forms of spiritual energy.
Grishin Selzer builds layers of soil, sand and clay loam from her studio locations with clay, pigments, oxides and glazes. The build up of textures enables a scriptlike mark making that fuses together when fired. Her work is a literal and powerful reminder of the interconnectedness of nature where all things both animate and inanimate, past and present are intrinsically linked.