The School of Art & Design is pleased to welcome Rod Bamford as he steps into the role of Head of Ceramics until December 2019.

Rod brings extensive experience to the role and has a significant art and design practice. His research interests are in the field of ceramics, digital technologies, and related media. For a number of years his artwork has investigated the aesthetics of tension between development, redundancy and waste, in exhibitions such as Urban Debris at the National Gallery of Australia and Insensible Landscape at the Kohler Company in the USA. Bamford has been awarded commissions and residencies, participated in exhibitions and presented numerous lectures internationally. His work is widely represented in major Australian public collections, including National and State Galleries and in museum collections in Europe, Asia, and the USA.

Rod’s research explores relationships between virtual and material ecologies, exploring how our engagement with the designed objects and the meaning they embody is mediated by technology. The scope of this research extends from artistic expression to product design and conservation, exploring conceptual and experimental processes in the field visualisation and fabrication. This dialogue of ‘making’ spans natural and technologically encountered experience, with a particular focus on the paradox of sustainability, particularly concerning the relationship between creative agency, production and consumption. Themes are investigated using digital technologies such as 3D scanning, rapid prototyping and digital printing, incorporating digitally mediated experiences to create ‘transmedia’ objects.