S K I N2025

Our two-and-a-half months at the Tiāpapata Art Centre in Āpia, Sāmoa, has been Matt's and my first artist residency together and the realisation of a dream we've carried for a long time. To finally live and work this way has been nothing short of a revelation. For both of us, it has been one of the most prolific periods of our creative lives.

A time of deep learning. A rhythm of rest, exploration, and concentrated work.

Going into this residency, I held one central question: Could I bring to life the forms I've carried in my head for years? As a maker, time is your most precious resource. This time has been sacred.

My process demands an extraordinary level of focus and attention to detail. In my mind, I am draping a form in fabric, a textile, a skin unto itself. Woven from symmetry, alive with geometric repetition, a gathering of forces building toward a singular, energetic explosion of vitality and beauty. This form has become its own entity. The more I understand my own creativity, the closer I feel its pulse.

I am inspired by the natural world, but more specifically by the pulsing pattern language that blankets everything within it. Grounded so often in symmetry, yet endlessly varied, the sheer volume of its iterations is staggering to me. I believe we absorb this language culturally and subconsciously, and that it quietly fills us with knowledge of the places we inhabit. My practice is, at its core, a repetitive need to absorb this knowledge and to watch and learn its rhythm.

As a colonial settler, disconnected from my own cultural origins, I feel it is my responsibility to listen to this vibrational language, to immerse myself in it, and to sit in deep respect alongside the ancient cultural stories that have always lived here.

When I work, I feel I am tapping into an information body, a pattern world. There is an impulse to pull everything I can from that channel, and I cannot stop until it is all there. If the piece isn't finished, it feels hollow. When I sense that all the information has come through, then I know it is done.

Have you ever looked closely — like really closely — at an insect? A cicada. A butterfly. A dragonfly. A bee. A leaf, a flower, a fish, a snake! Each one littered with, and built from, the most exquisite textures, patterns, colour. So beguiling. So utterly fascinating.

My work is my journey back to place. Back to knowing where I come from, and seeing exactly where I am now. A human carrying ancestral blood from lands this body has never touched. Shaped by the fierce and radiant beauty of Australia. Nourished by the soft, deep beauty of Aotearoa. And now, vibrating within the cultural stories of the Pacific.

We will always treasure this time. Always.