Loose Fit x Moving tea

Loose Fit x Moving Tea is a collaboration between ceramic collective Ciwacha and the Loose Fit exhibition at the Melbourne School of Design.

Join curator Nancy Ji and ceramic artists Cura Wei and Kate Wischusen for a relaxed morning of tea and conversation. Nancy will introduce the Loose Fit Tea House project, while Cura and Kate talk about their approach to making Chinese tea objects, their research into materials, and the place of both traditional and contemporary functional ceramics. They will discuss what these tea wares are, what purpose they serve, and how Chinese tea culture finds a home inside the Japanese-inspired Loose Fit Tea House.

Free and all welcome.

Bookings essential (please book talk and tastings separately if you wish to do both).

Tea talk with curator and artists
10:00 – 11:00am
Tea will be served during the talk. Registration is limited to 20 people.

Tea Tastings
More intimate tea tastings inside the tea house. There will be tea gatherings (Cha Hui 茶会) held inside the tea house, where two types of Chinese tea is introduced to experience. Each session runs for one hour.
*Please note that tastings are held seated on the floor, so you will need to be comfortable sitting cross-legged for one hour inside a small tea house. Registration is essential.

Ciwacha is a ceramic collective that brings together seven artists creating functional tea ware for contemporary Chinese tea ceremony. Centred on the concept of Xing Cha (行茶, "Moving Tea"), the project explores how vessels become extensions of the body and tools for presence, memory and quiet exchange.

The term Xing Cha evokes the fluid interrelation between action and stillness, form and spirit. It brings water, clay, leaf and breath together in a quiet, embodied dialogue of attention and rhythm, where the ephemeral elements of time, being and memory flow through and in between forms. Teapots, cups, bowls, trays and scoops are explored not only as objects of ritual, but as containers of experience: porous bodies shaped by hand and time that both hold and release, absorb and echo.

Moving Tea (行茶) is not only a presentation of ceramic tea ware, but also a reflection on presence and on the quiet, transformative act of making and sharing. It is an invitation to pause, to listen and to let small objects become vessels for something much larger. Together, the works form a contemplative landscape where silence, memory and the act of serving become ways of tracing the echoes that linger in moments of stillness.

Nancy Ji
Nancy Ji is a Lecturer in Architectural Design at the University of Melbourne and one of the curators of the Loose Fit exhibition. Drawing on anthropology and ethnographic methods, she studies small-scale, design-build practices in Japan and across Asia. The Loose Fit Tea House is a collaboration between Nancy and Professor Hiroto Kobayashi, who founded the practice Veneer House in Japan. The tea house was conceived to showcase Veneer House's participatory building method, in which flat boards slot together in three dimensions to form a rigid structure without nails. A registered architect in Victoria, Nancy holds a doctorate from Keio University and was educated at the University of Auckland, the University of Melbourne, UC Berkeley and TU Delft. She is a lover of tea and tea ware.

Cura Wei
Cura Wei has been working with clay since 2019. Before focusing on ceramics, she studied Fine Art in China and worked at UCCA (Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art) in Beijing. Cura's background in drawing and lacquer continues to inform her approach to clay. Her sculptural work draws on the abstraction of Chinese pictographic forms, while the current focus of her functional work explores the quietness of white porcelain and its relationship to the body and memory. Across both aspects of her practice, she is interested in how surface, rhythm and areas of openness can create a sense of space and presence.

In 2024, she also initiated Ciwacha, a collective of artists working on tea wares and tea objects. The collective brings together different approaches to contemporary tea practice and focuses on tea as a meeting point between cultures, materials and places. Cura has exhibited her work in Melbourne and China.

Kate Wischusen
Kate Wischusen completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at RMIT University, majoring in Object-Based Practice. Her early work extended the possibilities of enamel on steel, producing wearable works and installations that examined the erasure of memory and traces of the urban environment. An enduring interest in surface development led her to glaze and ceramic processes, where she continues to investigate mark-making and the role of the object as memento.

In recent years, her practice has expanded to include thrown tableware, alongside an ongoing exploration of ceramic materials and surfaces. She also teaches the studio program at the School of Clay and Art. Wischusen's work has been exhibited locally and internationally and is held in public collections in Australia and the United States.