About Jessie

Jessie Yvette Journoud-Ryan's sculptural use of repurposed ceramics and vintage crockery draws from of a decade of Fine Arts training in Melbourne, an education at a National Ceramics School in France, including a studio tenancy at Burrinja in the Dandenong Ranges.

Jessie commenced her Fine Art studies at a National ceramic school in Burgundy. During this time, she completed an internship in the South of France, working in an established ceramicist’s studio, where she was inspired by the art of Trompe l’œil. In Australia, she pursued university Fine Art studies in Melbourne and was awarded with the Monash University Faculty of Art and Design Research Masters Scholarship. Over her career in Australia, Jessie has been involved in numerous art initiatives and has been the recipient of several prizes and awards, including the Acquisitive Prize for the 2017 Burrinja Climate Change Biennale.

In an age where we are becoming increasingly aware of the excess inundating our domestic spaces and what this means for the environment: upcycling as a creative process is a comment on our current existence and state of the world. These sculptures - largely created by crockery, donated by the local community or discarded treasures found in the dark recesses of local op shops - reflect somewhat an embarrassment of riches and pay tribute to nature... the very thing that our consumerist propensity to ‘stuff’ threatens in our day and age.

As a French-Australian artist and Fine Arts educated on both shores - Jessie's work also reflects her personal narratives of migration, belonging and cultural heritage. In her most recent series Anhinga, exhibited at Tacit Art in Melbourne in 2021, her rendition of the Australasian Darter Bird is a representation of her double cultural belonging. The geometric patterns in their plumage are specific to the glazed roof tiles of Burgundy – a distinctive architectural feature of the region, dating back to the 14th century in France.

Jessie is currently working from her home studio in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, Australia.

Photo: Cathy Ronalds Photography
Photo: Cathy Ronalds Photography