My aim for the project as Artist in Residence at Tactile Arts during 2023 is completing a body of work that explores, through fabric, beads and thread, my ancestry as a coastal Tasmanian Aboriginal woman, though my journey to the Top End and the connection with my adopted home of Darwin. 

The connection with the Tasmanian coastal beaches and sea creatures comes out in my love of and need to live near the sea, walking in sand, picking up shells, constant amazement of the shapes, textures and colour of the coastal rocks. 

Suzanne Knight is a Canberra artist. Initially trained as a printmaker her art practice includes tapestry weaving, Japanese woodblock prints, drawing, painting and lithography. Suzanne has been practicing and exhibiting since 1992.

Every day as a small child I shared the morning tea table with the women in the street, watching a moving display of objects and patterns shift across the tablecloth, contained in the format of the kitchen table, contained in the format of a suburban house on a three-quarter block. For many years my art practice has explored this containment and those memories; primarily in imagery influenced by domestic vessels and food. These suburban experiences have also informed explorations of comparative cross cultural food practices- what is food for one culture is not food for another, and cross cultural food traditions. I have also been interested in food miles, the cost to the environment in our reliance on long distance truck transport and the future of fresh food production where genetic enhancements have bred more disease resistant yet generic crops or insecticides threaten our insect populations. 

In my most recent work I have used the technique of tapestry weaving to draw and paint with yarn- creating small tapestries depicting domestic vessels such as kitchen objects, tea cups, Tupperware, glassware, plastic bottles, plastic bags. These are then displayed either as a still life arrangement on the wall or self supported standing on a shelf attached to the wall. 

Darwin based artist Winsome Jobling works primarily with handmade paper and experimental printmaking as well as sculpture and drawing.  She uses many local plants to make her paper such as Spear Grass, Banyan Fig and the declared weed Gamba Grass. Her work is a haptic collaboration with the natural world and a response to our impact on it. Recent works explore the impacts of bushfires and climate change on the Top End Savannah. 

She has exhibited regularly in Darwin and in 2016 the Museum & Art Gallery of the NT held the survey show Winsome Jobling; the Nature of Paper. 

Jobling was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study papermaking in the USA in 2008 and maintains links with international practitioners through conferences, residencies and exhibitions. The most recent Residency was in 2019 at the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio.