Denise McAuley is a ceramic artist whose practice is rooted in geology, place, and lived experience. Working with a combination of wheel-throwing and hand building techniques, she creates functional and sculptural vessels that echo geological processes – compression, erosion, fracture, and accumulation – found within the landscapes of Northern Ireland.

Denise recently won the 2025 RUA Irish News prize for Best New Work from a non member for her ‘Materia Medica’ Series of bottles.

Her work is deeply informed by coastal geology, where rock formations, fault lines, and weathered surfaces reveal deep time and continual change. Layered surfaces, rope-like elements, and distorted forms reference stratification, tension, and natural forces acting on both land and body. Maritime influences and the language of the Shipping Forecast further anchor the work within place and rhythm.

Alongside her artistic practice, Denise works part-time as a trauma co-ordinator (nurse led) within acute care in the Belfast Health Trust . This role brings a heightened awareness of how trauma is carried, contained, and expressed, influencing how she approaches form, surface, and the idea of the vessel as a site of holding and repair. Clay becomes both material and metaphor – shaped under pressure, marked by impact, and transformed through heat.

Denise lives and works between land and shoreline, where geology, caregiving, and making continue to inform an evolving, reflective practice.

Denise is a member & current secretary of County Antrim Open Studios CAOS & Cre Collective Ni

Denise has most recently been accepted as an associate member of Ulster Society of Women Artists USWA. USWA

Denise’s work can be found in a variety of retail locations along the Antrim Coast, Belfast and Flowerfields Art Centre & Dunluce Castle.