Soft Matter
Isabelle Mackay-Sim
5 November – 12 December 2026
Location | Craft + Design Canberra, Level 1, North Building, 180 London Circuit, City ACT 2601
Opening Hours | Open Wednesday – Saturday | 12pm – 4pm
Entry | Free | No bookings required
Access | Wheelchair accessible, accessible parking, accessible toilets, off-street parking
SEE TALK
Soft Matter presents ceramic artworks that challenge social and material hierarchies, crossing boundaries between craft, sculpture and still life. Borrowed from physics, the term soft matter describes materials that exist between liquid and solid, with clay embodying this state of transformation.
For Mackay-Sim, the term also carries a metaphorical resonance. It speaks to the softness of the human body and the way "soft" has long been used to diminish traditional craft practices through associations with gender, appearance and class. Rather than accepting these hierarchies, Soft Matter embraces softness as a site of strength, complexity and possibility, a quiet but powerful act of dissent against the conventions that have long shaped how craft is valued and understood.
Situated between vessels, dioramas and still life, these abstract ceramic sculptures invite viewers into material worlds where softness is celebrated and conventional distinctions between art forms begin to dissolve.
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Isabelle Mackay-Sim is an artist based in Canberra on Ngunnawal Country. Working primarily in ceramics, her practice explores the abstraction of the figure to examine perception, gender and the ways identities are constructed. Driven by a fascination with form and texture, she creates sculptural objects that oscillate between attraction and repulsion, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship with the body and materiality.
Mackay-Sim completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) in 2018, supported by the Peter and Lena Karmel Scholarship. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including a solo exhibition at Red Gallery, Melbourne (2023), and a major collaborative exhibition at M16 Artspace, Canberra (2025). In 2020, she was awarded the Talente Prize at the Internationale Handwerksmesse in Munich.
SEE ARTIST INSTAGRAM HERE
Images
Isabelle Mackay-Sim, Walk Home, 2025 | Photograph Brenton McGeachie
Isabelle Mackay-Sim, Exercise Caution | Image courtesy of the artist