| Project title | No one is an island |
| Location | Karangasem and Klungkung, Bali, Indonesia |
| Date | February – April 2025 |
Artist Statement
I am an Australian artist living and working across diverse countries, communities, and cultures. My practice explores the complexities and intersections between the formative experiences and cultural frameworks that have shaped my interpretive lens and the traditional and contemporary practices I encounter. Everyday interactions and exchanges among people, activities, places, material culture, and the constructed spaces they inhabit are central to my enquiry, offering possibilities for engagement, transformation, and recontextualization.
Collage functions as methodology—a way of processing experience by collecting and arranging fragments to form new meanings and connections through navigation, absorption, and engagement. I am drawn to portraiture, honoring the individuals I meet while recognizing the communities and contexts that shape them.
Contextual Statement
No one is an island is a multi-layered project grounded in portraiture, materiality, and social exchange. It investigates the evolving relationships between subject, artist, object, and cultural space through a series of interconnected works developed in Bali, Indonesia. The project consists of four components: intimate, gifted portraits; large-scale portraits and sculptural forms embedded with culturally significant materials and exhibited locally; site-specific portrait installations at locations of subject-artist encounters; and a book documenting the subjects’ stories alongside their portraits.
Emerging from my lived experience as an Australian artist permanently residing in Bali, the project is shaped by ongoing immersion in local customs, belief systems, and communal practices. It draws on personal history while responding to the rich spiritual symbolism and visual language embedded in Balinese daily life—from ceremonial textiles to architecture and offerings. Rather than presenting resolved representations, the work reflects an open-ended process shaped by relational dynamics and material experimentation.
The title No one is an island (reworded from John Donne, 1624) frames the project as an exploration of interconnectedness—between islands, cultures, individuals, and histories. It acknowledges the complexity of participating in a place not one’s own, while striving for an ethically grounded, collaborative approach.
Thank you to the women of Karangasem and Klungkung, Bali, Indonesia
LINK to book of portraits and women’s narratives
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