Catherine Phillips and Robert Habel

Artist: Catherine Phillips and Robert Habel

Exhibition Title: Full Circle

Artist Statement: The work of the artists is grounded in a shared history and sustained dialogue, yet their practices diverge in form and intent. Robert engages directly with observed environments, returning repeatedly to specific sites. Working en plein air, the artist responds to the immediacy of place and the shifting conditions of light, weather, and atmosphere. These paintings are shaped by duration and contingency, registering the landscape as a lived and time-bound encounter rather than a static motif.

In contrast, Catherine’s emerging ceramics practice is resolutely abstract and process driven. Working with clay as a responsive and unstable material, the artist foregrounds the making as a central conceptual framework. Forms emerge through iterative actions, shaping, assembling, collapsing. Surface variation, structural irregularity, and the saturation and tonal shifts of colour, register decisions made across multiple stages of creation, through engagement with material agency.  

While their visual languages differ, both practices are articulated through sustained engagement with process, time, and material conditions. Each artist embraces repetition and responsiveness, whether to the shifting contingencies of the outdoor environment or to the inherent variability of clay and colour, as a means of inquiry. Their shared history informs a parallel approach to making in which meaning is not predetermined but emerges through attentive, iterative work. Presented together, the works establish a relationship between representation and abstraction, revealing a shared commitment to process-led methodologies. 

Join us at the Watch House Gallery for the opening of Full Circle by Catherine Phillips and Robert Habel.
Opening Saturday 14 March 2026 | 11:00am
Watch House Gallery, Macquarie Street, George Town 

Exhibition: 16 March - 25 April 2026

Opening Hours

Monday: 10:00am - 3:00pm
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: 10:00am - 3:00pm
Thursday: 11:00am - 3:00pm
Friday: 11:00am - 3:00pm
Saturday: 11:00am - 1:00pm
Sunday + Public Holidays: Closed