Hiroe Swen (1934-) was born in Kyoto, Japan and worked there as a potter after completing a five year apprenticeship with master potter H. Hayashi in 1962. In 1968 she married the artist Cornell Swen and moved to Sydney. Two years later the couple moved to "Bimbimbi", near Queanbeyan, NSW, setting up the Pastoral Gallery there in 1973. She became an Australian in 1974 and lectured at the Canberra Institute of the Arts from 1981-1999. She is known as one of Australia's foremost ceramic artists, and is an exponent of the modernist movement in Japanese ceramics, owing little to the Anglo-Oriental tradition. Specialising in one-off coil-built vessel forms that explore the human condition, she gives her pieces Australian names and stamps her work with both Australian and Japanese monograms, as well as signing some works with her full name.
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