TENSIONS AND CONNECTIONS: MEDIATIONS WITH NATURE

Tess Carlton & Isabella Roberts

Curated by Courtney Jacopino & Ivy Moore

2 - 18 May 2025, Platform
Exhibition opening: 6pm Thursday 1 May
Artist Talks: 11am-12pm Saturday 10 May
Art Making Workshop: 11am-1pm Saturday 17 May

The contemporary world has complicated our collective belief in place. Place has become transitory and fleeting, altered by processes of globalisation, digital innovation and climate change. These forces irrevocably reshape the world in which we live, transforming the environment and our human relationship with it. Tensions and Connections explores this process on a local scale. Responding to the Canberra/Kamberri region, artists investigate practices of materiality, craft and collection, demonstrating bodily interactions with the tactile natural world. In doing so, the exhibition attempts to re-establish our connection with place, harnessing making as a solution to this contemporary problem.

Download the exhibition zine.

Artist Talks
11am-12pm, Saturday 10 May
Join artists Tess Carlton and Isabella Roberts to explore the exhibition and their creative practice.
Book here.

Artist Workshop
11am-1pm, Saturday 17 May
Textile artist Tess Carlton will lead a creative workshop in cyanotypes and hand embroidery. Cyanotype dates back to the 19th century, a method of camera-less photography that uses light and natural chemicals to create the impression of an object. Similarly, hand embroidery has a rich tradition, spanning many centuries, techniques, and practices. 

Reflecting on the relationship between the natural and built worlds, this workshop will document the natural world through the process of cyanotype as well as the impact of human hands through embroidered markmaking. Participate in the process of collecting, curating, and exposing cyanotype prints, then overlay your print with surface stitches.
Book here.

Image: Isabella Roberts Earth/Of the City #7, 2025, photomontage, 10.16 cm x 15.24 cm. Photo courtesy the artist.