Bettina Willner is an artist working between Naarm (Melbourne) and Gunaikurnai (South Gippsland). Practicing over two decades, Willner draws inspiration from the natural world, helping shape her ceramic sculptures and drawings. Walks in nature along the Gippsland coast bring forth layers of curls, twists, and coils into her hand-built sculptures. Time and the helical nature of ideas and experience also underpin her work, entwined lines like the snakes in Medusa hair wrap and twist around each other. Memory and her subjective relationship to ancient cities, architecture, both organic and of human design are also present in the development of her ideas and forms. Glistening bronze, deep ocean blues, stipples of black and red, pastel pink and sand like glazes coat clay drawings, reflecting the deep thought and connection Willner has to the aura of time and nature. Ornamentation is present in Willner’s work drawing on Baroque aesthetics and art history. Like the helical columns of Bernini’s baldachin, Willner celebrates an ornamentation that desires complexity, metaphysical connection, and multiplicity.

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Willner studied at Monash University completing a Bachelor of Fine Art (1988-1991), and Wangaratta TAFE completing a Certificate in Design (1987). She has exhibited widely in Melbourne and Sydney at; Gippsland Art Gallery, Gippsland, Sydney Contemporary, Sydney, Metro Gallery, Melbourne, Caves, Melbourne, Saint Cloche, Sydney, Daine Singer, Melbourne, C3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne and Bundoora Homestead, Melbourne. Willner has also exhibited in design and art events in Melbourne and Sydney including Spring 1883, Melbourne, NGV Design Fair, Melbourne, Melbourne Art Fair, Melbourne and Art Fair Sydney Contemporary presents, Sydney. Willner’s work is in private collections, Australia, USA, United Kingdom, Indonesia.