Artist Statement

My work explores care, repair, and belonging through the transformation of electronic waste into mosaic art. Using discarded circuit boards, wires, keyboards, and broken devices, I reassemble what has been thrown away into images that speak to place, community, and responsibility. E-waste is both a material and a metaphor in my practice: it carries the story of rapid consumption, technological dependence, and environmental neglect, but also the potential for renewal.

Working with e-waste is slow and physical. Each piece must be dismantled, sorted, cut, and placed by hand. This labour-intensive process mirrors the kind of care our systems often lack — for the environment, for communities, and for the people most affected by waste and dispossession. I am interested in what happens when damaged or obsolete materials are given time, attention, and value again.

Community is central to my work. Many of my projects are made collaboratively or in community settings, particularly with children and families. I am less interested in perfect surfaces than in shared making, curiosity, and participation. These works hold fingerprints, uneven edges, and moments of learning — traces of human presence that resist the slick anonymity of mass production.

As a white Australian working on unceded land, my practice is also shaped by an awareness of inherited systems of extraction and displacement. E-waste, like land, is often treated as something to be used up and forgotten once its value has been taken. By reworking discarded technologies into images of local flora, memory, and care, I aim to slow this cycle and invite reflection on how we live with — and take responsibility for — what we leave behind.

Winning the People’s Choice Award affirms the importance of this connection. It tells me that these materials and stories resonate beyond the studio, and that there is a shared desire for art that is accessible, ethical, and rooted in lived experience. My work asks a simple question: what might change if we treated waste — and each other — as something worth tending to?