When awarding the $10,000 Supreme MMCA 22 Award, Judge Robert Jahnke described Melissa McMahon’s Pink Bats as compelling and playful - an interesting sobriquet for a funeral urn.

Made of pale pink ceramic topped with an enormous Pompadour wig made of wool to simulate Pink Batts – the housing insulation - and standing over six feet tall on its plinth, the extraordinary piece certainly casts a presence over the gallery. Decorated with flowers and using the snub-nosed heads of bats as decorative ‘handles’, it is a delightfully witty and tender reference to darker emotions of death and loss. The win is a huge boost for McMahon and her slow-burning and thoughtful ceramics practice.

McMahon spent ten years in the fashion industry before taking on a Masters of Contemporary Craft at Unitec and this experience that can be detected in the delicate placement of golden accessories on her work, rings and studs that further fascinate the viewer.

“I just got to a point in my life where I knew fashion wasn’t the career I wanted, which is why I did the study. As soon as I discovered ceramics I knew that was where my passion lay.”

Producing a series of small urns for her final study led McMahon to create one for a friend who was grieving the loss of a beloved pet. “I’ve always been interested in mourning culture – in the jewellry, the furniture. I was already making pearls because of their association with mourning jewellry, so it just seemed the logical step. Making that first urn just resonated with me, and I started making bigger ones. I love working in ceramics but I also find normative ceramic conventions a bit limiting so I dabble in other media as well. Confusing materiality is something I enjoy.”

The biggest challenges of McMahon’s practice are finding the time and big enough facilities to create her oversized funerary urns, and she’s hoping to put her MMCA prize money towards her savings for a bigger kiln.

“Like a lot of artists I fund my creative passion with a day job. I could be more commercialized in my outlook I suppose, but I’m really interested in the creative forces at work, not in a finished exhibition.”

Spruiking her creations on social media is something that also does not appeal to this deliberate and considered maker.

“It has taken me a long time to create seven works…..so I wonder just how interesting my social media would be if I had any! What would be on there? And I’m a very private person. I’m not interested in the social side of things so I don’t do a lot of shows, but at the end of my Masters I had a whole series of jardinieres that never got to be seen because Covid shut down the final exhibition. There was a real lack of closure so it will be nice to get them out into the world. But on the whole - I’m happy to concentrate on making work, rather than showing it!”