Hiroe Swen: Australian Heroine!A context for her influential career Grace Cochrane   Over more than 50 years, Hiroe (nee Takebe) Swen has been a major inspiration to those working in Australian studio ceramics, bringing a particular perspective that was unusual...

Hiroe Swen in Japan: pre-Australian years Chiaki Ajioka   Early life to the 1950s Hiroe Swen was born in 1934 in Kyoto, as the elder of two daughters of the Takebe family.[1] For over a thousand years Kyoto was the centre of arts and culture, and the Takebe...

My encounter with Hiroe Swen Alan Watt   I first came across Hiroe Swen’s work in 1968, when she was participating in an exhibition of leading ceramic artists in Australia at the National Gallery of Victoria1, Melbourne, which was coincidentally her first...

Hiroe Swen: Artist bio in brief Meredith Hinchliffe   Hiroe Swen was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1934. Since she was little, Hiroe was a curious and independent child. She remembers a day when she decided to skip kindergarten and went to play by the river with a...

Pastoral Gallery 1973-2003 : History Meredith Hinchliffe       Cornel and Hiroe Swen built and ran the Pastoral Gallery on the outskirts of Queanbeyan, NSW. It was one of the earliest galleries run by artists. The gallery was highly respected and...