22/05/2026
Today I am cleaning and getting ready these two neckpieces for postage to for members exhibition Echoes and Fragments. Applications closing today!
Furrows
2022
Brass (Sydney), coconut shell (Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa), mahogany (recycled from chair back Amparo, Brazil)
Travel has become an essential part of my creative practice and personal transformation. Each place I visit leaves a lasting imprint on me — collecting new memories, learning from unfamiliar environments and cultures, and gradually altering the way I understand both material and life itself. Through these experiences, I become more aware of how people adapt, survive, and create meaning through the resources around them.
During the wet season in Bali, I walked along beaches overwhelmed with washed-up rubbish. The landscape was confronting — piles of sharp plastic, broken objects, and debris stretched across the shoreline unlike anything I had witnessed before. Among this, local people patiently sorted the waste into materials: furniture fragments, organic matter, plastics, and reusable objects. What could be reused was given another life; the rest slowly disappeared, often burned. As the season passed, the beach transformed again, revealing black volcanic sand marked only by water ripples, scattered pebbles, and traces of organic remains.
What drew my attention repeatedly were small piles of coconut shells gathered and sometimes intentionally burned. Curious about their significance, I learned that coconut shell is a highly valued material used as fuel because it burns intensely and reaches high temperatures, making it useful for blacksmithing and other forms of making. I became fascinated by this transformation — a discarded natural material becoming a source of energy, labour, and creation.
This encounter deeply resonated with my practice. I am interested in materials that carry memory, evidence of use, and cycles of transformation. Through collecting, observing, and learning from the places I travel to, I seek to understand how objects and materials embody human resilience, adaptation, and renewal.
