SEE
Upcoming and recent events that can be viewed: exhibitions, performances and publications
colour of puddles
31 January - 12 April 2026, Wangaratta Art Gallery, Wangaratta VIC
Colour of Puddles features new and existing work by artists Boni Cairncross, James Lieutenant, and Kate Vassallo, who have been working together since 2011. While their individual practices and media differ, spanning painting, drawing and textiles, the artists share a commitment to conceptually rigorous abstraction and materially sensitive, process-based work. Colour remains central to each artist’s approach.
Drawing inspiration from Roland Barthes’ theory that “colour is a type of bliss”, Colour of Puddles invites viewers to reflect on how colour is seen, felt, and discussed, akin to the shifting hues of a puddle. Through layering and mark-making, the exhibition celebrates colour’s emotive and transformative power, offering a contemplative experience of its role in contemporary abstraction.
second look - legacy
27 November 2025 – 28 February 2026, Australian Design Centre, Sydney NSW
Second Look - Legacy celebrates the material intelligence and creativity of contemporary textile practice, inviting audiences to reflect on how handmade textiles are collected, valued, and loved. This inspiring exhibition showcases innovative ways artists engage with materials—giving new life to fabrics through repair, reuse, and reinvention.
Curated by Barbara Rogers, Melinda Young, Cecilia Heffer, Michele Elliot. Featuring: Stephanie Beaupark, Boni Cairncross, Vita Cochran, Ro Cook, Nicole Ellis, Michelle Eliot, Joanna Fowles, Blake Griffiths, Vivien Haley, Beth Hatton, Cecilia Heffer, Chris Hutch, Anita Johnson, Brenda Livermore, Christina Newberry, Lisa Pang, Emma Peters, Barbara Rogers, Sylvie Veness, Liz Williamson, Melinda Young.
held in the hours
26 September - 25 October 2025, Sydenham International, Sydney NSW
Held in the hours is a forty-hour durational performance using a 1970s Singer 20U industrial sewing machine once belonging to Salwa, a skilled dressmaker. Drawing on professional stitching drills, embodied knowledge, and overlooked histories of women’s textile labour, the work traces the precision and endurance of stitching as both craft and record. Lines accumulate across silk organza, revealing not only the hum of the machine but the strain, fatigue, and persistence of the body behind it. I place myself as an apprentice in this lineage of women’s work.
Held in the hours is performed on Saturdays and Sundays, between 12-5pm, during the exhibition.
Closing event: Saturday 18 Oct 2025, 3-5pm.
TOUCH
Upcoming and recent events for participation: workshops and teaching
transformations of a line: fibre art workshop
A 5 week fibre art workshop that introduces participants to two-dimensional and three-dimensional textile art processes. Focusing on concepts of transformation and line, participants learn how to create string and ropes, processes for drawing with threads and making objects or hangings that create surfaces from lines. The practical workshops are contextualised through artist case studies and histories of textile art practices.
Colour and Material Alchemy: embroidery workshop
A 1 day workshop that explores materiality and colour through contemporary hand-stitching and embroidery practices.
FELT + ACTION WORKSHOP
A 1 day workshop that explores ideas of ‘the trace’ through textile and performance art strategies.
ABSORB
Upcoming and recent events for absorption in process: artist residencies and performance developments
AHarp: Arquetopia foundation
2021-2024. Beginning during the covid-19 pandemic, this artist residency has been a long-running program working remotely with Arquetopia Foundation (Mexico). The creative research project underpinning this residency focuses on cochineal - a natural dye that produces vibrant reds, pinks, and oranges. By focusing on cochineal, the creative research project is investigating the threads that connect cochineal and prickly pear, ideas of ‘Empire’ and disparate geographical locations including Australia, Mexico and Peru. The artist residency concluded with a month long onsite residency in Cusco, Peru in 2024.
UOW ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE AT AAIA
December 2019, University of Wollongong artist-in-residence at the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (AAIA), Athens, Greece. Awarded by the School of the Arts, English and Media, University of Wollongong.
Arquetopia Foundation
June 2019, natural ink silkscreen artist residency, Arquetopia Foundation, Oaxaca, Mexico.
if they are sleepy, then let them sleep
February 2016, performance development residency, IO Myers Studio, University of New South Wales, Sydney. Awarded and supported by The Creative Practice Lab, University of New South Wales.
HEAR
Upcoming and recent events that can be listened to: lectures, presentations and artist talks
artist talks // colour of puddles
Saturday 31 January 2026, 11am at Wangaratta Art Gallery, Wangaratta VIC
Hear from Colour of Puddles artists Boni Cairncross, James Lieutenant and Kate Vassallo as they discuss their individual practices and their shared interest in conceptually rigorous abstraction. First meeting in 2011, soon after graduating art school, the three have exhibited together periodically over the years. Though their individual art practices vary greatly from one to the next, they find inspiration and closeness through their materially sensitive process-based works, whether it be through painting, installation, drawing, printmaking, textiles or photomedia.
Colour of Puddles draws on Roland Barthes’ theory that “colour is a type of bliss”, inviting viewers to reflect on how colour is seen, felt, and discussed, akin to the shifting hues of a puddle. Through layering and mark-making, the exhibition celebrates colour’s emotive and transformative power, offering a contemplative experience of its role in contemporary abstraction.
Soft Actions
3 December 2022, panel at AAANZ Conference
Convenor: Boni Cairncross // Speakers: Diana Wood Conroy, Francisco Guevara, Connie Anthes & Ju Bavyka, Linda Erceg, Samantha Lang, Deborah Eddy
Historically, craft has often been positioned as ‘other’ to art. In Modernist thought, craft practices, such as textiles, were framed as too conservative, uncritical and embedded in daily life to be the ‘stuff’ of visual arts. In recent years, there has been a revaluing of craft practices. The processes and materials associated with craft have been employed by artists and designers as critical sites for discussion, advocacy, activism and protest. These actions are wide-ranging: from collective making spaces, to projects that seek to open conversations and debates, to artworks that employ craft to interrogate intersecting or overlooked histories, to craft-as-protest. In these creative strategies, the familiarity, the ‘softness’, and embodied knowledges of the craft processes are powerful devices that are drawn on and utilised by creative practitioners.
TASTE
A taste of recent studio processes, material explorations and thoughts: as captured on Instagram
