21/06/2026
Introducing Kartini Thomas.
Meet the artist behind our newest ceramic universe, built from monsters, microbiology and modular toys.
Raised across Southeast Asia and the Antipodes by anthropologist parents, and later trained as a biologist, Kartini Thomas brings two worlds together in clay: the mythic and the microscopic. Her hybrid creatures blur the line between the familiar and the fantastical, the beautiful and the repulsive - sculpted through a meticulous process of multiple firings, glazes and engobes that produce surfaces ranging from powdery matte to metallic brilliance.
Many works are modular, designed to be rearranged into new beings entirely. Others carry intricate cobalt-blue "tattoos," a nod to centuries of ceramic tradition from Delft to China to Japan.
In her own words, her creatures are "prototypes or protozoa, liberated from conventional ideas of identity, belonging, beauty and repulsion."
Now showing at MPV Gallery