Emergence, 2026

Repurposed and biodegradable textile, natural dyes, reclaimed and found metals, fossils, water plants and sound

Emergence is grounded within the site of Molong, a Wiradjuri word meaning “a place of many rocks”. This installation was fostered through early encounters, as a child, with fossiliferous limestone rocks on the lands surrounding the artist's home in Molong, Wiradjuri Country. It is these fossils, which hold stories of organic shifting, adaptation, and mass endings across deep time, that have informed this speculative body of work. The installation entangles past, present, and future ecologies. It hopes to ignite playfulness and imagination towards a future organic world. By connecting past lifeforms with present and speculated ecologies, the work asks how engaging with extinction and decay might help us see endings as generative processes. For an ending offers an opening for new lifeforms and relations to evolve. Emergence embraces a circular approach to materials; composed of repurposed textiles, biodegradable fibres, limestone, natural dyes, plants, collected alpaca and sheep wool, and reclaimed metals from Molong. Once the installation is exposed to weathering elements and moves beyond the gallery space, its fibres will be returned to the earth through biodegradation. In decay, the work will feed soil micro-organisms, mycelium, and provide a habitat for small insects, becoming an active site and participant in the ongoing emergence of life. It is hoped that tracing endings across geological epochs, alongside the subtle decay unfolding within a human lifetime, invites us to consider ourselves as part of larger ecological processes and deep timescales. In relation to this organic entirety, our place within the world becomes both minuscule and interconnected. Through noticing decay and cycles of extinction, a sense of comfort may emerge: that the earth endures through continuous adaptation and will ongo past human existence.

Image courtesy of the Artist and KamiSpace.