Sam Gold is a  queer non-binary South Australian artist living and working on Kaurna Yerta (the Adelaide Plains). Pinching clay from 2013, Gold turned their hand to further pursue ceramics in earnest in 2016, bringing over a decade of training in Transpersonal Art Therapy (Ikon Institute), Furniture Design (TafeSA) and studies in Contemporary Art (UniSA, ACSA) to the medium. The pinch-style coiled sculptures and vessels, for which Gold has since become known, explore the structural and conceptual capacity and fragility of clay. As objects, they materialise a kinship between Gold’s physical body, environments we inhabit, their psychological and emotional self and the clay body, allowing Gold to explore states of futility, failure, resilience and grit, porousness yet inscrutability. Subtle shifts in organic form, shape and texture – from the pressure of a thumb to the angle of the wrist – produce a somatic archive; “…your body is the only boundary for clay. You are the profile.”

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Gold is a highly awarded artist. They are the recipient of the Helpmann Academy Grant and Undergraduate Award for Excellence (2019),The Helpmann Creative Investment Fellowship (2021), and the University of South Australia’s Australian Ceramics Council Award (2018) and Merit Award for Academic Excellence (2019). Gold has exhibited extensively throughout South Australia and interstate and notably features in Primavera: Young Australian Artists 2021 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Currently a studio associate at JamFactory, Gold is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide.

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- Words by Belinda Howden