Rina Bernabei
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Rina Bernabei has been working in ceramics for the past 5 years, alongside her 30-year award winning practice as a product designer and design educator. Her work explores materiality and process, echoing her research on emotional design and the relationships between handmade craft practices and manufacture. She has brought her love of earthy, clean aesthetics to clay.
As a making practice, ceramics brings together her experience designing products for interiors, and the tactile aesthetics of clay. The experiential nature of the ceramic process enables Rina to explore individuality and freedom of form, texture and ornamentation.
Her ceramic practice uses both handmade/hand thrown and 3D ceramic printing. In 2020 she worked at Kyushu University to establish their 3D ceramic lab and run workshops. She is currently an artist at Kil.n.it experimental ceramics studio in Glebe, Sydney. She has won many awards, most notably Bombay Saphire and has had 2 objects acquired by the Powerhouse Museum for their permanent collection.
Rina has a Bachelor of Industrial Design. She has worked as Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design at the University of New South Wales for 26 years, as well as in design studios in Sydney and Milan. She is co-director of bernabeifreeman, whose award-winning design work has been featured in many exhibitions both locally and internationally, most notably at the Milan Furniture Fair and the Milan Triennale. Her work has been published extensively and she has many written publications.