Paper Boat Press is Kylie Johnson's ceramics studio, shop and exhibition space in Brisbane, running since 1995. It started as Johnson's own line of handmade ceramics and quote-tag greeting cards — now grown into jewellery, ornaments and functional vessels stocked in more than 40 stores and galleries around Australia — and has since expanded into a gallery hosting exhibitions of local and international ceramic artists, alongside workshops teaching the craft. Johnson has curated more than 20 exhibitions in the space, including two sold-out shows from Japanese potters Momoko and Tetsuya Otani, local Brisbane ceramicist Nicolette Johnson's first solo exhibition, and a debut Australian show for ceramicist Aya Yamanobe that pulled visitors from interstate. Her ceramics practice runs alongside a parallel career in publishing: Murdoch Books picked up her poetry in 2008, UQP followed in 2014 with a collection drawn from a decade of her quote tags, and a Churchill Fellowship sent her to Japan in 2018 to study kintsugi, the art of ceramic repair. That trip fed into a book she co-wrote with her sister, Tiffany Johnson, for Thames & Hudson on Japanese craftsmanship, released in 2021. Exhibitions and workshops change often, so it's worth checking their website before visiting to see what's currently on. Exhibition opening nights pack out quickly.
