Phil Brooks' ceramic works are deceptive. Initially appearing as simple functional vessels, her works provide geometrical topologies which subvert the general understanding of the bowl, the vase, and the cup. Interiors and exteriors exalt in their incongruity, upending the usual image of a container as a vessel with a distinct inside and outside.

Here, the lines between these standard features seem to shift and blur, the normal functional labels becoming meaningless, but without the works losing the ability to serve as utilitarian vessels. The pieces become puzzles in surface and delineation, reminiscent of the Klein bottle or Escher's perspective-confounding lithographs and woodcuts.

Brooks' works appear to form families of related pieces. Individual items seem to suggest that they are parts of an organic whole, intended to mesh and connect, or to reflect a shared ancestry. These are living vessels which have evolved organically into new creatures displaying the genetics of their beaker and dish antecedents but extended in exciting new directions. They are ceramics exploring their surroundings and yearning to become one with them.

In Fledge, this ancestral link is made explicit. The works form five distinct "families", parents and still young offspring, waiting to be released into the world. Each group shares its own common distinguishing features — the sharp folds and uneven forms of Covey, the pipe-like extrusions of Gaggle, the petal-and-lattice structures of Bevy. These are nurturing groups, the larger pieces standing watch over their fledgelings.

Parallels can be drawn with some of the oeuvre of Brooks' sometimes mentor John Parker. Yet whereas the latter artist's work's solid colours and geometries suggest a cool grandeur, Brooks' deliberate use of both rough and smooth surface textures, strong earthy colours, and deliberate asymmetries adds a comfortable, almost homespun warmth to her work.

Presented in partnership with Te Kano Estate.