Chris Headley was born in York, England, and studied at York School of Art before majoring in ceramics at the Central School of Art in London, learning to throw with (the late) Michael Casson and hand-build with Gordon Baldwin. Chris graduated in 1973 and set out for Australia. He travelled overland across Europe and Asia, through Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran. He was invited to attend a traditional wedding in Pakistan by someone he made friends with on the bus trip from Isfahan to Teheran, got lost several times in India and ran out of money in Thailand. Eventually, a year after leaving England, he arrived in Australia, where he has lived and worked ever since. He undertook his Master’s degree at the Australian National University, graduating in 1991, and in 1999, with Dr Owen Rye as his supervisor, gained his PhD from Monash University, Victoria. Chris has exhibited widely throughout Australia and overseas, undertaken several Public Art commissions and Community Art projects, and lectured in many of the tertiary institutions in Australia. He sustains his ceramic art practice from a studio in Melbourne while maintaining his healthy addiction to travel through international residencies (Thailand, USA, Spain and Taiwan) and chasing his ceramic dreams.
"My work expresses ideas that challenge our habitual perceptions of the world around us. The work sets out to attract and hold our attention as it expresses feelings for the natural world and the multi-faceted relationships we have with it. It is motivated by and responds to the provocation of things seen in passing. I begin by carefully selecting original objects for their associations, or more simply - because of their visual appeal. These objects are transformed through a casting process and subjected to further alterations before being assembled. The casting process itself, by acknowledging a potential for endless replication, directs attention to the common.
Through remaking and representation as an object for visual delectation the original object becomes a work of art. This process of transformation thus necessitates a redesignation of the original object. In this way, the original object is not original at all but simply the subject of the final work." ...Chris