Poetics of Place II brings together the work of 16 makers from Australia across contemporary craft, object-based and textile practices. Their work explores, expands and troubles the concept of 'place' in post-colonial Australia and Aotearoa.

Curated by Melinda Young at ATTA Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand. (https://attagallery.com/event-works.php?eventId=28794&event=Poetics+of+Place+ll+by+Australian+Artists%2C+Curated+by+Melinda+Young)

Participating artists: Roseanne Bartley, Zoe Brand, Sue Buchanan, Anna Davern, Melissa Cameron, Cara Johnson, Claire McArdle, Kelly McDonald, Lindy McSwan, Nellie Peoples, Lauren Simeoni, Gabbee Stolp, Bic Tieu, Zoe Veness, Sera Waters and Melinda Young.

Artist statement about the Patterns of Min(e)ing series:

Across the Patterns of Min(e)ing series, fingers, hands and arms reach into and create cavern-like spaces. Growing up on cave country - Bunganditj country – shaped in me a ‘cave thinking’ where underground places full of interconnected tunnels, ruptures and fissures, hollows and hideaways teeming with precious knowledge and ecologies offered radical alternatives to regular goings-on. I apply such cave thinking to bodily caverns and inside cavities too, acknowledging we are deeply entangled with the places that nurture us. My repeated embroidered hands channel and challenge my ancestry, problematically riddled with under-the-surface mining and grabbing of soil, minerals, and limited resources in unceded Aboriginal Country and the world over. Their continued taking left voids in the land but also in bodies connected to these vital places. In recognition of these knotty relations, I dwell in the laborious repeated stitched patterns of blackwork, hoping to redirect past patterns of misuse and greed toward that of care.