Lauren Downton is an emerging artist working in contemporary ceramics and installation, based on Kaurna land, South Australia. She combines animal, botanical, and human-made forms into ghostly hybrid assemblages that examine humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

Created using mould making and slip casting techniques, her intricate porcelain hybrid sculptures encompass casts of branches, leaves, antlers, animal organs, plastics, waste and human debris. Exploring ideas of the ‘cast off’ and excess, Downton’s hybrid fusions examine the complex entanglements between production and consumption in contemporary society, and the natural environment. Downton explores hybridity as a means of re-imagining what it means to be human and redefining how we interrelate with nature—how we perceive its boundaries, and understand its enmeshments with society.

Downton was selected to exhibit in the 2022 Hatched: National Graduate Exhibition, at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. Her work has been featured in publications such as the Journal of Australian Ceramics and Art Edit Magazine, and she has gained multiple awards from the University of South Australia including the Australian Ceramics Association Award (2023), Harry P Gill Memorial Medal Award for outstanding work in ceramics (2021) and Vacation Research Scholarship (2022). Most recently, she was presented with the Fetzer Award for Excellence and City Rural Insurance Development Award at the Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition (2024).