The Botanical Imagination by Sally Browne | Ceramics by Nikki Dowdell

9 October – 8 November 2026

Art Images Gallery is pleased to present The Botanical Imagination, a new exhibition by Sydney-based artist Sally Browne, shown alongside a collection of contemporary ceramics by South Australian artist Nikki Dowdell.

Presented together, the two displays share an interest in colour, nature and experimentation. Browne’s paintings move between botanical observation and abstraction, creating imagined spaces where interiors, gardens and the natural world overlap, while Dowdell’s wheel-thrown vessels explore sculptural form, expressive glaze and the unpredictable nature of the firing process.

Sally Browne: The Botanical Imagination

Sally Browne’s The Botanical Imagination presents a new body of paintings that moves between observation and imagination.

Birds, flowers, interiors and fragments of landscape provide the starting point for works that evolve through an intuitive process of layering and revision. As the paintings develop, familiar forms begin to shift towards abstraction, creating spaces that feel at once recognisable and imagined.

The domestic and the wild frequently meet within Browne’s compositions. Flowers emerge from loosely defined interiors, birds appear among fields of colour and botanical forms move between careful observation and expressive mark-making.

Originally from the UK and now based in Sydney, Browne established a successful botanical art practice before completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School in 2025. Her more recent work has embraced an increasingly open and process-led approach, allowing abstraction and experimentation to sit alongside her longstanding interest in the natural world.

Across The Botanical Imagination, memory, nature and observation merge to create paintings that feel layered, playful and slightly dreamlike.

Titles including Afterimage for a Garden, Botanical Fiction, A Room for Flowers, The Suburban Jungle and A Landscape for Dreamers reinforce this sense of moving between real and imagined spaces.

Nikki Dowdell: Contemporary Ceramics

Alongside Sally Browne’s paintings is a vibrant collection of glazed ceramic vessels by South Australian artist Nikki Dowdell.

Dowdell’s relationship with clay began during her final year of high school and has since developed into a distinctive ceramic practice working across porcelain and stoneware. Her wheel-thrown vessels combine functional and sculptural forms with an expressive approach to colour, pattern and glaze.

The natural world and our connection to it provide an ongoing source of inspiration, but an equally important element of Dowdell’s practice is experimentation.

She has a particular fascination with glaze chemistry and the unpredictability of the firing process. Rather than seeking complete control, Dowdell allows unexpected reactions, subtle variations and shifts in colour to become part of the finished work.

This approach gives each vessel its own character. Richly coloured glazes, flowing lines and repeated patterns move across bowls, vases and teabowls, ensuring that even works developed as part of the same series remain inherently individual.

Painting and Ceramics, Side by Side

Although Sally Browne and Nikki Dowdell work across very different mediums, there are natural connections between the two displays.

Both artists begin with the natural world but allow their materials and processes to lead them somewhere less predictable. Browne’s flowers, birds and landscapes shift through layering and revision, while Dowdell’s glazes are transformed through chemistry, heat and firing.

Colour also creates a strong visual connection across the gallery space, moving between Browne’s painted botanical forms and the richly glazed surfaces of Dowdell’s ceramics.

Presented side by side, the works create a lively conversation between painting and ceramics, observation and experimentation, control and chance.

Experience the Exhibitions Online

For those unable to visit us in person, explore the current exhibitions and available artworks online through the links below.

VIEW SALLY BROWNE ARTWORKS >>>

VIEW CERAMICS BY NIKKI DOWDELL >>>

Visit Art Images Gallery

Sally Browne – The Botanical Imagination
With ceramics by Nikki Dowdell

9 October – 8 November 2026

Art Images Gallery
32 The Parade, Norwood
Adelaide, South Australia

Visit the gallery to experience both displays in person, or explore the available works online.