Featured Artist - Avital Sheffer
Born in Israel, with a background in town planning, building and fashion and textile design, Sheffer brings a multiplicity of personal experience and technical skills to her art practice. She migrated to Australia in 1990 and now lives on the North Coast of NSW. She has a Diploma in Ceramics from Lismore TAFE College and shows her work at the Beaver Galleries in Canberra and the Salmon Galleries in Sydney. She will also soon be exhibiting in Chicago and New York.

Salmon Galleries is proud to present Unearthed II by Avital Sheffer.
Exhibition dates: 11th to 28th May, 2006

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Avital Sheffer’s earthenware vessels are timeless reflections on the past and present. They hover between the realms of the physical and metaphysical. They are exquisite containers of wine, oil, ashes and mysticism, etched and bevelled with the sacred curvilinear scripts of her Middle Eastern heritage. With their complex references to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Sheffer’s ceramic pots take on an iconic status. Her tenderly inscribed, lidded vessels capture and reflect the multilayered histories of Middle Eastern culture.

Their dry earthy surfaces simultaneously invoke the domed cities of the Arabian Nights and the arid landscape of modern Israel. They are finely crafted, hand-built, precisely decorated, and multiple fired.