My studio at ANU School of Art 2011-2013

Playing with objects and shadows 2012

Second stage batik tjap on cotton 2011

Detail of drawing in progress, Grey Gum 2012

Playing with old and new works together (slides, pencil on paper, suspended paper) 2011

Surface and Shadow: Grill (2012)

Work in progress, drawing for Cocky (2011)

Cocky (2011)

Cocky (2011)

Surface and Shadow: Chain (2011)

Children’s art program with Restu Ratnaningtyas and Nindityo Adipurnomo at Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta 2010

Children’s art program with Restu Ratnaningtyas and Nindityo Adipurnomo at Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta 2010

Children’s art program at Sekolah mBrosot, Kulonprogo, 2010

Screened (2007) ring pulls on aluminium window frames

School tour at Imagined Realities, 2008

Rural Nest (detail), collaboration with Alexandra Chambers and Laura Stekovich (Domestic Abyss) Bundanon Trust residency, 2008

Rural Nest (detail), collaboration with Alexandra Chambers and Laura Stekovich (Domestic Abyss) Bundanon Trust residency, 2008

Kite 1, wax on paper, 2008

Rural Nest (detail), collaboration with Alexandra Chambers and Laura Stekovich, picutred, (Domestic Abyss) Bundanon Trust residency, 2008

Preparations for Kite 2, 2008

Kite 2, silkscreen on polyester, cane, poly-line, wind (20087)

Kite 2, silkscreen on polyester, cane, poly-line, wind (2008)

Screening, ring-pulls on fly-screens (2007)

Urban Nest (2009) repurposed plastic milk bottles

My practice as an artist falls broadly into two categories.

1) Studio work: I am trained as a print-maker and in this regard my practice has largely revolved around screen printing, although I am also particularly fond of lithography and relief printing. However over the course of my training I began to expand my practice into installation, at first working with print and its inherent capacity for repetition. This interest in the technology of print as a reproductive medium also fed my passion for pattern, which has remained an abiding obsession. In the last few years objects have also begun to intervene into this matrix, often serving as a structural elements, but also frequently becoming the basis for new patterns. I am intrigued by the semiotic properties of domestic objects, and how this can be subverted when they are removed from their ordinary settings and placed into a different context. Thus in my work you will find kitchen utensils used to construct batik patterns, fly screens turned into tapestries, car parts that resemble ritual architecture. I am also intrigued by the narrative potential that objects hold, and being a country girl at heart I have collected many objects, both natural and man-made from properties that my family have inhabited over the years, in the Barmah forest area in northern Victoria, the Western District in Victoria and in the Strathbogie ranges in Central Victoria.  The slippage of interpretation that is created in the third space between objects and image that collide in an artwork is like a liminal zone, in which we can build new interpretations of our context.

2) Participatory projects

These projects emerged initially from my work as an educator and public program designer in a museum/gallery context. Here I found great joy in experiencing and interpreting art with others, especially with children. It was a learning experience to listen the interpretations people bring to an artwork when they depart from the object or process itself, rather than constructions of art history or theory. After an residency in Indonesia in 2010, when I was invited to work with a number of communities that had been displaced after a volcanic eruption, I became aware of the unique position art could play in building relationships between children in Indonesia and Australia, with the grand hope of contributing to a more open-minded future generation. Several of my projects over the last few years have focused on this kind of project. A more recent project, Nee (Born As), has a broader and more contingent methodology, open to all ages and all comers.

In the gallery below you will find a selection of images from various bodies of work. You can also find more images, texts and documentation by browsing this site….