Jenna Lee dissects and reconstructs colonial 'Indigenous dictionaries' and embeds the works with new cultural meaning. Long obsessed with the duality of the destructive and healing properties that fire can yield, this element has been applied to the paper in the forms of burning and mark-making. In Without Us, Lee uses charcoal to conceal the text on the page, viewing this process as a ritualistic act of reclaiming and honouring Indigenous heritage while challenging the oppressive legacies of colonialism. Lee explains in Art Guide (2022), ‘These books in particular [used to create the proposed works] are Aboriginal language dictionaries—but there’s no such thing as “Aboriginal language”. There are hundreds of languages. The dictionary just presents words, with no reference to where they came from. It was specifically published by collating compendiums from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, with the purpose to give [non-Indigenous] people pleasant sounding Aboriginal words to name children, houses and boats. And yet the first things that were taken from us was our language, children, land and water. And the reason our words were so widely written down was because [white Australians] were trying to eradicate us. They thought we were going extinct. The deeper you get into it, the darker it gets. But the purpose of my work is to take those horrible things and cast them as something beautiful.’Framed artwork

Kasia Töns is a textile artist working and living on Peramangk Country (Adelaide Hills). Hand embroidery and mask making are central to Töns’ practice, which sits at the intersection of art, fashion, and craft. Her process is slow and intuitive, colourful, and expressive. Töns studied textile design studies at RMIT. The labour and time invested in creating Töns’ work acts as an antidote to the fast pace of the modern world and the addictive seeking of instant gratification through digital means. Recurring thematic interests include social impacts of digital technology use, the Anthropocene, and interpersonal/interspecies relationship dynamics. The artist says of this artwork: “Using an ex-house tent as a base, this work was my first attempt at making embroidery a more physical experience so it could match my feelings. Using larger stitches and threads I made this work outside in the Flinders Ranges and Lenswood. It is about what we do with our thoughts and bodies beyond the basic functions to keep us alive.” Töns exhibited her 2024 solo exhibition Panoply at Ararat Gallery TAMA, which explored how sculptural textiles can support mental well-being in emergency evacuation situations. A key work from that exhibition, Panoply II, was subsequently included in Art Gallery of South Australia’s major textile-focussed exhibition Radical Textiles, November 2024 – March 2025. Kasia Töns is represented by MARS Gallery.