Los Angeles based artist Bari Ziperstein is the 2018 judge for Portage Ceramics Awards, Aotearoa’s best-known survey of contemporary ceramics.

 Working in mixed media sculpture, Ziperstein’s primary focus is in ceramics. Her plural and fluid practice includes discrete objects, large-scale installation, site-specific public sculpture, and her line of functional ceramics, BZippy & Co.

 Ziperstein will present a lecture providing a rich overview of her practice. Materially experimental but conceptual at its core, her practice engages ideas of consumerism, propaganda, and the built environment. Her objects and sculptural tableaux reflect her interest in the political dimensions of capitalist economies and challenge the construction of desire and aspiration in contemporary American culture through a historical lens.

Bari Ziperstein was born in 1978 in Chicago, IL and lives in Los Angeles, CA. She received a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2004 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a certificate in Women’s Studies from Ohio University, Athens OH in 2000. Bari has been awarded residencies such as Anderson Ranch, Snowmass Village, CO (2012) and the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT (2001).

Ziperstein’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design, Santa Barbara, CA (2017); Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, Rancho Cucamonga, CA (2010); and the San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, CA (2005). It has also been included in thematic exhibitions such as Making It Work: Production by Design, American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, CA (2018); Corporeal Impulse, Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2015);  and Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Artists, 1980-2006, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2007).

Ziperstein's travel is courtesy of Te Uru.