about
As an Anglo-Australian and Aboriginal woman raised in an environment of cultural erasure, my artistic practice is rooted in the reclamation of identity through making. I work across many mediums - including installation, weaving, sewing, woodcraft, and other tactile practices - but ceramics is my primary mode of expression. Through my practice, I seek to bring awareness to Australian and British audiences of the ongoing effects of colonisation, whilst reconnecting with my culture and the land as a form of healing.
I draw visual influence from ancient zoomorphic vessels, such as Peruvian stirrup-spouted vessels, Greek alabastrons, and Egyptian canopic jars, alongside the widespread Aboriginal practice of animal and land personification. Thematically, I explore the grief of lost cultural knowledge, from ancestral techniques to the modern practices that shaped our contemporary cities. This disconnection from making is a loss experienced across cultures, as a consequence of industrialisation and automation, and deeply informs my choices of material and process.
Back home, I hand-built ceramic vessels from clays and natural materials foraged from the lands that raised me, and cured them in pit-firings that function as ceremony. These firings are communal: people gather, cook meals on the coals between stages, and tend the fire together. Imperfections from the firing process are repaired with sap harvested from the Garrong/Black Wattle, the grandparent tree to the Wurundjeri people, bringing each vessel into the world with love, intentionality, and acceptance.
In my current work, I have shifted toward materials and symbols tied to the British landscape. This body of work includes porcelain figures painted in the style of blue transferware, alongside forms made from London brickearth. Working between such materially different registers allows me to explore the tensions of assimilation and identity as an Aboriginal person living in Britain.