Chaya Joffe

Opening Event

Sunday 17 May, 2–4 pm

Exhibition Dates

Thursday 14 May – Sunday 14 June 2026

Ceramic Vessels and Ritual Objects presents a collection of hand-formed ceramic vessels and ritual objects centred around the rhythms of Shabbat and Jewish festivals. Installed as a table-based setting, the exhibition brings together functional objects traditionally used in moments of gathering - Kiddush cups, hand-washing vessels, challah bowls, Seder plates, and serving forms. Each piece is designed to be used, held, and returned to repeatedly, forming part of lived ritual rather than static display. Working across porcelain, raku, and earthy clay bodies, Chaya Joffe explores how material can carry meaning through use. Marbled surfaces, sandy matte glazes, and gold lustre accents move organically across each form, allowing the clay to guide the outcome. Presented within Melbourne Design Week, the exhibition shifts focus from object as design to object as experience - where form is shaped not only by aesthetics, but by ritual, repetition, and connection.

Opening Hours

Thursday, 14 May 4 – 8pm 

Friday, 15 May 12 – 6pm 

Saturday, 16 May 12 – 6pm

Sunday, 17 May 12 – 4pm 

Sunday, 17 May 2 – 4pm Opening Event Celebration

Friday, 22 May 12 – 6pm 

Saturday, 23 May 12 – 4pm 

Sunday, 24 May 12 – 4pm 

Friday, 2 May 1pm – 6pm
Saturday, 30 May 11am – 1pm
Thursday, 4 June 12pm – 3pm
Friday, 5 June 12pm – 6pm
Saturday, 6 June 11am – 4pm
Sunday, 7 June 11am – 4pm
Thursday, 11 June 12pm – 2pm
Saturday, 13 June11am – 4pm
Sunday, 14 June 11am – 4pm

Goldstone Gallery presents four solo exhibitions running during Melbourne Design Week and beyond.

Discover more about each exhibition and artists:

Ilan El   Deborah Wargon   Chaya Joffe   Ryan Abramowitz

The exhibitions explore the relationship between material, perception, ritual and memory. Working across glass, paper, light and ceramics, the artworks move between the intangible and the tactile.

Ilan El’s luminous glass works transform architecture through colour, transparency and the emotional resonance of light, while Berlin/Melbourne-based artist Deborah Wargon explores line, shadow, time and ancestral memory through intricate black paper installations that shift between positive and negative space.

In dialogue with these immersive spatial works, Chaya Joffe and Ryan Abramowitz present ceramic vessels and Jewish ritual objects grounded in lived experience, ceremony and material connection.

Their works draw on traditions of gathering, passage, healing and sacred domestic practice, reimagining ritual forms through contemporary ceramic language.

Together, the exhibition creates a powerful presence of contemporary Jewish artists whose practices are connected through themes of light and shadow, transformation, ritual and the poetics of handmade form. Across all four exhibitions, material becomes a carrier of memory, spirituality, and human connection.

Curated by Nina Sanadze.