About

Richard Penn is a South African–born artist now based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Working across painting, drawing, sculpture and ceramics, his practice explores the interplay between scientific phenomena and visual abstraction, using scale and detail as metaphors for human perception. Penn has held solo exhibitions at Public Record, Auckland, Gallery AOP (Johannesburg), Nirox, Blank Projects (Cape Town), the Origins Centre Museum, and both Everard Read/Circa galleries. He represented South Africa at the Rybon International Artists’ Workshop in Tehran in 2012 and was awarded the Ampersand Fellowship to New York in 2014.

Since relocating to New Zealand in 2020, Penn received the Premier Award at the Portage Ceramic Awards in 2022 for his collection titled Artefacts and completed residencies at Auckland Studio Potters (2021) and Driving Creek Potteries (2022). He has taught sculpture and ceramics at Elam School of Fine Arts (University of Auckland) and Otago Polytechnic. Penn’s work is held in private, corporate and academic collections throughout New Zealand, South Africa and internationally.