Making / Unmaking / Remaking
Making / Unmaking / Remaking explores the possibility of a circular economy in the textile arts sector. With approximately 6000 kilos of textiles and clothes discarded in Australian landfill every 10 minutes (Monash Sustainable Development Institute), this project explores a model of making textile artworks that extends the lifecycle of materials and the artwork.
This model of production includes sharing, receiving, and gifting materials, reusing clothes as art materials, refurbishing materials and remaking temporary artworks/studio works into permanent works.
This model of production includes sharing, receiving, and gifting materials, reusing clothes as art materials, refurbishing materials and remaking temporary artworks/studio works into permanent works.
My current quilt projects are made with second-life clothing and reused textiles. Each work incorporates fabrics that carry visible traces of previous use, including worn and frayed seams, familiar patterns, sewing features and garment elements. These features allow the material’s history to actively shape the form and structure of the quilt, with the material becoming an active collaborator.
I mostly work by hand -stitching, quilting, and constructing, guided by care and listening. Hand quilting is very repetitive and enables a slow, thoughtful working environment. These stitching processes offer a way to think about memory, the labour of making, and sustainability while remaining physically connected to the materials.
Using reclaimed clothing is both a practical and conceptual choice. It reflects an interest in keeping materials out of landfill, whilst also engaging with the emotional, cultural and historical weight carried by everyday garments and fabrics. Through textile-based processes traditionally associated with domestic labour, my work explores ideas of value, repair, gender, and the agency embedded in the acts of making, unmaking and remaking.
✨️care✨️repair✨️maintenance✨️collaboration over speed, waste, and constant newness.
Slow hand stitching creates space for listening to both the body and the materials, with the materials ultimately guiding the process.
I mostly work by hand -stitching, quilting, and constructing, guided by care and listening. Hand quilting is very repetitive and enables a slow, thoughtful working environment. These stitching processes offer a way to think about memory, the labour of making, and sustainability while remaining physically connected to the materials.
Using reclaimed clothing is both a practical and conceptual choice. It reflects an interest in keeping materials out of landfill, whilst also engaging with the emotional, cultural and historical weight carried by everyday garments and fabrics. Through textile-based processes traditionally associated with domestic labour, my work explores ideas of value, repair, gender, and the agency embedded in the acts of making, unmaking and remaking.
✨️care✨️repair✨️maintenance✨️collaboration over speed, waste, and constant newness.
Slow hand stitching creates space for listening to both the body and the materials, with the materials ultimately guiding the process.
Recent Artworks
I want to have a frill
2026 Materials: Fabric (dress x 2, shirt, scarf) cotton, acrylic wadding (cushion stuffing) 40 cm x 35 cm x 3 cm hand stitching, padding, quilting |
I want to be pink and padded
2026 Materials: Fabric (dress, scarf, second life fabric) cotton, acrylic wadding (cushion stuffing) 41 cm x 31cm x 4 cm hand stitching, padding, quilting |
Exhibited at 2026 Biennial Textile Palette Exhibition Stuff: Purpose, profit and peril Esmond Gallery The Warehouse Clunes
I want you to care
2026
Materials: Fabric (skirt, dress x2, t-shirt x 2, curtain and second life fabric x 1) Cotton, Acrylic Wadding
89 cm x 60 cm x 0.2 cm
Exhibited at Bound by Thread Naarm Textile Collective Glen Eira City Gallery March - April 2026
2026
Materials: Fabric (skirt, dress x2, t-shirt x 2, curtain and second life fabric x 1) Cotton, Acrylic Wadding
89 cm x 60 cm x 0.2 cm
Exhibited at Bound by Thread Naarm Textile Collective Glen Eira City Gallery March - April 2026
I want to be like this
2026
Materials: dress x 2, shirt, cotton top, and one piece of fabric from my stash.
39 cm x 35 cm x 4 cm
2026
Materials: dress x 2, shirt, cotton top, and one piece of fabric from my stash.
39 cm x 35 cm x 4 cm
Boundaries remade into I always wanted to look like this in 2026 (studio work)
Materials: t-shirts, dress, jumper
35cm x 32cm x 2 cm
Materials: t-shirts, dress, jumper
35cm x 32cm x 2 cm
Body of Work
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Body of Work exhibited in Factory 49: A Tribute exhibition at Articulate Project Space Sydney 2024
Boundaries
Boundaries is a series of works made from recycled clothes and other wearable objects. Materials including T-shirs, leggings, tops and accessories are coiled, padded, crochet, twined, sewn, and glued. |
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Waste Not Want Not
Discarded
Discarded is a femmage using found objects, leftover canvas scraps, used doilies, curtain cords, and fabric pieces. An eclectic group of materials, collected over many years; some gifted from friends, others found in family collections and one piece picked up from the ground as I gathered discarded objects in my hometown cemetery. These abandoned materials evoke a sense of nostalgia and loss; however, made into a new work, these cast offs have a new life of value and significance.
Dimensions: 35 x 25 cm (Height x Width)
Exhibited at Geelong Art Space 2023
Photo by Katherine Marmaras
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Recovered Recovered is a coiled, crochet, covered work that uses found objects, discarded fabric, and leftover yarn. Covered yarn and coiled fabric strips are spiraled around a central floral piece evoking a small, quirky, ‘natural’ world, bleached of any colour. ‘Recovered’ is one of a number of works that uses feminist methodologies of thinking and feeling to produce large and small-scale organic shapes and patterns out of found and recycled materials. Dimensions: 30 x 30 cm (Height x Width) Exhibited at Geelong Art Space 2023 Photo by Katherine Marmaras |
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untethered _ unmaking material: yarn, florist wire, found objects (doily, pom-pom) studio experiment - seeing if unmaking can provide knowledge in a similar way to making untethered -to free from to free from expectations of what it is to make a finished artwork that sits on the wall to be viewed to free from the restrictions of making unmaking made works what about this suggests something of the human experience? what to learn from the unmaking ? space created by the work as unmade do we think about the whole or just the unmaking? doing something/making something/unmaking something when I don't understand what I am doing, making, unmaking requires some trust in the materials and in the processes requires a willingness to continue without critique requires letting go of the expectations of a finished work 
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making_unmaking
'All at once' Crochet, coiled yarn, florist wire, beads
50cm x 50cm
Year: 2022
Exhibited in Red Things at Post Gallery
'It's all coming apart' Crochet, coiled yarn, florist wire, beads variable dimensions 2022 Exhibited in Red Things at Post Gallery
