@a_i_k_o

Natasha Aiko Cousens is a multi disciplinary artist primarily working in clay. Having studied restoration at Portsmouth University, Natasha later diverged from traditional crafts, such as gilding and encaustic tiles, to create mixed media sculptures and installations. 

‘One. Three. Four. Ten.’ is an installation born of notions about memory, impermanance, and loss. Comprising of various materials, these stylized forms of flora, fauna, and object, are both familiar yet surreal, blurring the lines between reality and that of the otherworldly. In this work you will find rabbits and branches, thorns and flowers, along with a stool, rug, a window, objects common in our daily lives. Revealing themselves in a fragmented dreamlike existence.

@lpe.designs

Lois Parish Evans recalls childhood creativity in the everyday, learning to sew under her mother’s tuition, followed by a textile art degree at University of Newcastle, Australia. Looking for the extraordinary in the ordinary, Lois translates her observations into stylised drawings as the basis for her textile work. She incorporates multiple techniques: machine and hand stitching, pencil, paint, printmaking and applique.  Lois’s goal is to capture moments in time, explore, extend, deconstruct and reconstruct. Lois's works ‘Leaf Matter’ and ‘Leaf Matter 2’  are taken from a walk in eucalypt bush in Northland. Varying degrees of decayed leaf matter are gifts to the forest, its decomposing beauty ensuring the forest's continuation. 

@islandofwoo

Lea-Anne Sheather creates textiles, drawings and collage; highly detailed fabrications depicting her imaginary construct "Island of Woo". She explores unguarded, transcendent moments she has with the natural world, interplayed with personal and imaginary narratives. Closely observed details become mini landscapes - the smallest of spaces teem with exuberant layers of life. ‘Incandescent Galaxy Wheeling Dreams’ was inspired by a personal vision of absolute interconnectivity, exploring a profound state of being beyond the physical body. ‘Tender Traces’ is a meditation piece exploring unseen energies of nature, the body, and the inner world. Salvaged cloth and plant dyes combine in careful and loving acts of stitching and mending;  serving as a physical language to convey a range of deep emotions. ‘Surrendering to Selfhood & Interconnectivity’  reflects cultural and environmental influences, an enquiry into consumerism as a driver of culture that builds barriers to deep interconnectivity with all life forms.