Hym(e)nals features six teenage female horse riders and their elderly equine companions from Cottles Bridge. The work mimics and challenges themes in religious paintings, speaking to local ecologies and communities as well as current global events of female solidarity and equality, and interspecies communication. Drawing on myths around coming-of-age, the girls hum, scream and whisper into unknown climactic futures and changes in both body and environment. Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Art 2023 Local Winner video installation, soundfemale, horse riders, horses, sound, performance, hum, interspecies, body, environment, myths, coming-of-age, neurodiversity, ecology, religion

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.