Artists:

Helvi Apted

Helvi Apted’s work spans textile sculpture, expanded drawing, and minimal video performance. Textiles can hold memories and stories. Helvi uses industrial textiles to make artworks that blend the past and present. Her work delves into themes of grief, change, and embodied sensing. Through her work she connects the viewer and the artwork to explore broader social issues and human experience. She makes art that invites the viewer into a space for reflection. By using scale and materials, Helvi wants viewers to be aware of their own bodies when they view her work. Helvi includes absurdist gestures in drawings, movement and forms across her practice. This introduces elements of lightness and amusement. Helvi’s practice plays with the formal language of sculpture. She uses the flexibility of textiles to adapt the way that galleries traditionally exhibit and install artworks. Helvi Apted (Finnish/Australian) was born Djilang/Geelong. She has been a finalist in the Darebin Art Prize, a recipient of the R.L. Foote Design Studio Award and the Masters Mentoring VCA Art Award. Helvi has exhibited at Blindside, George Paton Gallery, Trocadero Art Space, Unassigned Gallery, and the 2023 VCA Art Grad Show. Helvi is exhibiting at Linden New Art Project Space in October 2024. She is completing a Master of Contemporary Art at the VCA.

Elise Cakebread

Elise Cakebread works across textiles, sculpture, installation and public art. Elise is driven by experimentation within traditional textile processes and techniques. Her work explores materiality, tactility, sustainability, disposability, and ornamentation. Through her artistic process, Elise strives to achieve a form of true abstraction – an abstraction of materials that transcends their original context and significance. By repurposing discarded waste materials into intricate compositions, she aims to strip away preconceived notions of value and utility, allowing the inherent qualities of each material to shine through in unexpected and compelling ways. This approach not only challenges conventional definitions of abstraction but also invites viewers to contemplate the essence of materiality itself, prompting a deeper appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things. Elise has collaborated with The Artling, Gorman, Dulux, alt.material, Local/Actual, The Monolonglo Group, SPACE furniture and Capella Sydney. Elise has exhibited at Linden New Art, CRAFT Melbourne, The Australian Tapestry Workshop, Design Tasmania, and The Australian Design Centre. She has been a finalist for the Northern Beaches Environmental Art Award and for the KAAF Art Award. Her work has been featured in Vogue Living, Yellowtrace, Grand Designs, and The Design Files.

Elise holds a Bachelor of Arts – Textiles (with distinction) from RMIT (2012) and a Bachelor of Creative Arts from The Univeristy of Melbourne (2007). In 2022 Elise was awarded the Regional Arts Victoria Creative Fellowship.

Janelle Evans

Janelle Evans (Dharug) is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, curator and writer, currently living and working in Naarm (Melbourne). Janelle’s work is informed by her cultural and ancestral connections to Country, in which she seeks to question and disrupt the narrative of British and European first contact encounters, and to create a counter-discourse to resultant mythologies that have formed in the national consciousness. Janelle has exhibited in solo and group shows in galleries and biennales in Australia, Japan and France and her works are held in public and private collections. Janelle has had artist residencies at Bundanon, Tokyo Geidai, and at Teerk-Roo-Ra, in Queensland’s Moreton Bay. She has worked collaboratively with First Nations and other artists on several public and institutional art commissions for The State Library of Queensland, The Australian War Memorial, 4A Contemporary Asian Arts and Campbelltown Art Centre for the Sydney Festival. Janelle holds a PhD in Fine Art from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney and is currently Head, Master of Contemporary Art at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Rebecca George

Rebecca George is a Melbourne / Naarm based artist exploring patterns and shapes and connections between science, nature and art. She has an engineering and manufacturing background and brings a love of process to her art practice. Repetition, shadows, mathematical shapes and perspective feature in her work. The use of found, recycled or recyclable materials is important. She thinks through making. Rebecca started her art practice making hyperbolic crochet sculptures and is expanding it by introducing printmaking, collage, ceramics, woodwork, bronze casting and welding, finding new applications for common materials. Rebecca won the Heide at Home Maquette Challenge in 2021. She was commissioned by Knox to be part of their Immerse Program in 2021 with an installation at Stamford Park Homestead. She has exhibited in Melbourne Design Fringe in 2021 and 2023, and with Naarm Textiles Collective at fortyfivedownstairs and Assembly Point in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Her work was included in the Australian Textile Art Award 2022. As a Grampian Arts tutor in 2023, she exhibited at Ararat Gallery TAMA. Rebecca is completing a Master of Contemporary Art at the VCA in 2024.

Phong Chi Lai

Phong Chi Lai (Studio PCL) is a Naarm/Melbourne-based designer/maker specialising in contemporary quilts and soft sculptures through improv patchwork. Previously a shoe designer/maker, Phong took the opportunity to work in textile-based social enterprises in Asia, reinforcing his artisan ethos. Taking inspiration from these experiences, he developed his textile practice upon returning to Australia in 2018. Using upcycled/deadstock fabrics and natural dyes, Phong takes a considered and intuitive approach, responding to materials and his surroundings. He applies traditional techniques; hand-quilting, assemblage and patchwork with an overtly free hand approach to build compositional complexity. Phong  has exhibited at The Wangaratta Art Gallery, QuiltCon (USA), School House Studios Gallery, Linden New Art Gallery and The Australian Tapestry Workshop. His work ‘Creating Character’ won Best Object Design at Design Fringe 2023, Phong is a 2024 Artist in Residence at The Australian Tapestry Workshop and a finalist in The Irene Davis International Tapestry Prize. Phong has collaborated with The Social Studio, The Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild, The Australian Tapestry Workshop/Melbourne Fashion Festival and Melbourne Design Week to facilitate improv hand quilting/stitching and natural dyeing workshops.

Carolyn Menzies

Carolyn Menzies earned a BFA at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and an MA in Fine Arts from Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design, London. The artist has participated in exhibitions at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhe tū; Manawatu Art Gallery, Palmerston North; Suter Art Gallery, Nelson; Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch, Century Gallery (ACAVA), London; Gallery 1 (Unitec), Auckland; Tinning Street Presents, Melbourne; Craft Victoria, Melbourne; The Australian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne; Linden New Arts, Melbourne; Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville; among others. Curatorial projects include: ‘The Albert Park Art Walk’, a local government funded pop-up exhibition and accompanying events; ‘The Off Season’, at the Assembly Point Vitrines, Melbourne; ‘Leftover Love: New Directions’, for Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville. She has been artist-in-residence at the Australian Tapestry Workshop and Linden New Art. Carolyn lives and works in Melbourne/Naarm.

Tamara Russell

Tamara is a Textile Artist specialising in free machine embroidery, hand stitching and mending. In her textile practice, she explores her surroundings and interprets what she sees through embroidery. Her work has been exhibited in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Canada and Australia. Tamara’s practice engages with the natural environment recreating images and shapes in her embroidered works in 2 and 3D form. In her work she is able to portray social issues including environment, climate change and the treatment of asylum seekers. Textiles are the perfect medium for expressing thoughts using hand and machine stitching. Tamara works with found materials and finds joy in the unexpected uses that can be found for them. She loves this unpredictability and enjoys the inventiveness necessary to transform them. She uses materials that are reclaimed, things with a history that have been discarded and might otherwise end up in landfill. Tamara was invited to Curtain Springs for a residency in 2019, a finalist in the John Villiers Art Prize 2021 and the Australian Textile Art Award 2022 along with exhibiting in group and solo exhibitions. Her recent projects include facilitating the Moreland Quilt in 2017 – a community arts project, exhibiting in Melbourne galleries and teaching workshops in hand embroidery, free machine embroidery, mending skills and garment reinvention. She also accepts  commissions to mend other people’s favourites. Tamara is founder of the Naarm Textile Collective, curating their bi-annual exhibitions, a member of the Embroiderers Guild Victoria, Society for Embroidery Work (S.E.W.), Craft Victoria and Melbourne & Victorian Arts Inc (MAVA). Her work has been featured in Textile Fibre Forum, Fibre Arts, The Age and Machine Embroidery & Textile Art magazine. Visit karhina.com or follow her on Instagram @karhina_textileart and @tamararussellart

Britt Salt

Britt Salt works across tapestry, drawing, sculpture, installation and public art. Her works are complex in their construction and minimal in aesthetic, exploring site-specific and imagined architectures. Using intuitive geometry and hand-crafted methodical processes, Salt traces the intricacies of order in public and private space, internal and external worlds and increasingly uncertain environments. Salt has exhibited at CRAFT, Melbourne; Linden New Arts; Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn; Hazelhurst Regional Art Gallery; and PICA, Perth. She has received prestigious awards such as the Art & Australia Emerging Artist Award, Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship, and Kate Derum Award. Salt has undertaken residencies at the Australian Tapestry Workshop; Youkobo, Japan; Arteles, Finland; Heima, Iceland; and Red Gate Gallery, Beijing. She has created major public artworks for Melbourne International Airport, Tsinghua University Beijing, and Fender Katsalidis Architects. Salt holds a Masters of Contemporary Art (First Class) from Victorian College of the Arts (2023) and Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours- First Class) from Curtin University of Technology. Collections include Wangaratta Art Gallery; University of Melbourne; Justin Art House Museum; and Artbank. She was recently awarded the Fiona Myer White Story Residency 2024.

Shannon Slee

Shannon Slee is a contemporary artist living and working on Wurrundjeri Woi-Wurrung land in Melbourne’s north. Shannon has a fascination with the deconstruction and reparation of cloth to create textile works that considers intimacy to connect with conditions of the human experience. Informed by feminist theories, she presents clothing as a direct representation of the body’s experience. Unpicking and piecing together discarded clothing with fabric remnants, she creates textile sites that not only trace histories but materially links, joins and attaches us to them. Shannon recently completed a Masters in Contemporary Art with first class honours at Victoria College of the Arts at Melbourne University. She has exhibited at The Australian Tapestry Workshop, VCA grad-show, VCA Artspace, Linden New Art Project Space and George Paton Gallery. She is exhibiting at Linden New Art Project Space in October 2024. Her work is held in a public collection at the University of Melbourne.

Opening Night

Tuesday 8th October 2024, 5pm – 7pm

Join us for a glass of wine to celebrate the opening of this exhibition.

Artists on site and stitching

Saturday 12th & 19th October, 12pm – 4pm

No booking required