Image: *Filling in the Blank(et) - Stitching Stories* by Elina Priha, Eline Gaudé, Stella Martino, Anna Kozonina, Martta Nieminen, Onerva Heikka

July 18 - September 5, 2025

Finissage tickets

curator essay

Finissage: Friday, September 5, 4:30-6:30pm

List of Works

Gallery I, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta

Free entry, all welcome

You can find In Reflection: In Response in The Mill’s Gallery I, located at 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta (Adelaide).
Gallery I is open Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm.
Accessibility
The Mill’s entrance has a small step into the building. We have a ramp available, please ring the doorbell and our friendly team will assist you.
During gallery hours, our entrance will be unlocked. If the door is closed, please ring the doorbell to alert our team.
The Mill has concrete flooring throughout with no internal steps and a disability toilet on site.
Read more in-depth information on our accessibility web page.
The Mill has concrete flooring throughout with no internal steps and a disability toilet on site.
Read more in-depth information on our accessibility web page.

For SALA Festival 2025, we are excited to present In Reflection: In Response, a new group exhibition curated by Stella Martino, featuring the work of five South Australian artists; Shani Engelbrecht (textiles), Tash Evele (textiles), Carman Skeehan (glass), Lotte Schwerdtfeger (ceramics) and Yana Lehey (sculpture). In Reflection: In Response has been developed through a collaborative, community-driven component led by Stella, who sites Ursula Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction in the conceptual underpinning of the exhibition.

For each of the artists, this exhibition has been an opportunity to come together, share ideas, collaborate, form communal bonds and develop their work. We’re excited to see the artists’ process, both in their individual practices and in creating collaborative work, showcased together in the gallery.

In Reflection: In Response is a group exhibition with collaboration at its core. This exhibition explores how we collect memories, experiences, time and stories and how we share them with our community. The idea of the exhibition is an extension of previous research and projects I (the curator) have been part of; a shared hand-sewn quilt, a collective recipe book and creative non-fiction short stories exploring the same themes. There are lots of little things that connect every project I undertake, but the single connecting thread is Ursula Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Le Guin’s essay challenges the idea of stories that centre one individual and instead offers the viewpoint that stories are a collection of moments and experiences gathered over time. Le Guin uses the term ‘carrier bag’ as a figurative and literal image of how we collect things and put them in a vessel to save for a time when those things are shared amongst others. In this exhibition, you’ll find various forms of ‘carrier bags’ or vessels that have been created by each artist using their chosen medium. In each of the artists’ pieces are motifs and acknowledgements of one another. At the centre of this collaborative exhibition is a shared patchwork sampler created over three residency workshops hosted at The Mill. In these workshops, the artists were invited to use various fabrics and materials to hand-stitch, sew or embroider stories, memories and pieces of themselves that are important to them, their community and their practice. Each workshop was a chance for the artists and myself to spend time together, tell stories, ask questions, share skills, share food, share thoughts to create our collective ‘carrier bag’.
Stella Martino is an emerging curator and writer originally from Dharug/Sydney, now based in Tarndanya/Adelaide. Stella completed her Master of Arts (in Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art) from Aalto University in Finland in 2023. Since then, Stella has undertaken a curatorial internship at The Mill under the mentorship of visual arts curator Adele Sliuzas. While studying in Finland, Stella co-curated and was a participating artist in the group exhibition Ghost Elephant Stitches in the Snow and co-created and developed the community arts and recipe book Recipes for Resilience and Care in the Climate Emergency. Stella is interested in queer ecologies and how the more-than-human interacts with their environments and in art. Her master's thesis aimed to understand how various forms of memory inform storytelling and their impact on our well-being. Through her research and previous projects, Stella also explores the benefits of community care practices within and beyond art spaces.
Dear diary, is a homage to the diary I received from my cousins during my first trip to Fiji in 2013. I was homesick and used it to comfort myself, writing that I would be okay and that I’d be home soon. Since then, I’ve returned to the diary at the end of each year to write a letter to my future self. While some years were missed, the ritual has continued for almost a decade. I reflect on the year, set goals, and often end with, “Good luck, future me!” The diary has become a vessel carrying my past selves and hopes for the future.
For this work, I recreated the diary cover using fabrics, sewing techniques and drawing to introduce softness and texture. I wove raffia along the edge to reference the handmade detailing of my original diary. I invited each artist in our group to write a letter to their future self and included my own past letters. I interpreted these letters into small fabric pieces, drawing from handwriting styles to create visual textures. A single thread connects all elements, symbolising a shared stream of consciousness linking our thoughts, hopes, and futures.
Shani Engelbrecht (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist of Indo-Fijian and Scottish-Irish heritage, creating and living on Kaurna Land, South Australia. She holds an Honours degree in Visual Arts (2022) and a Bachelor of Creative Arts (2021) from Flinders University. Her work predominantly explores her identity and sense of belonging in the space she grew up in. Race and identity are at the core of Engelbrecht’s practice as she interrogates the incidences of racism experienced by people of colour daily. By using performance, photography, video, drawing and painting, her work blends traditional and contemporary techniques to convey the duality of her upbringing and to reflect on the feelings of otherness. Engelbrecht has shown works in multiple exhibitions including Art That Walks OFF the Walls (Goodwood Theatre & Studios 2024), Hatched: National Graduate Show Exhibition (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts 2023), not white/not brown (FELTspace 2023).
The Pools explore connection between artists, family, community, and the wider world. I have always felt a profound safety and sense of calm when standing in the sea. Wherever I am in the world, wherever my loved ones may be, we have the ocean between us.
Each rockpool in the installation acts as a miniature world, a reflection of the individual artists featured in the exhibition. Crafted with care and intention, these rockpools are filled with ocean treasures I collected alongside my family. When holidaying together recently, we collected shells, sponges, sea glass and more, embedding the work with personal memory, gratitude and the quiet power of shared experience.
I asked each artist in our collective to do their own reflection on special memories at the beach. The photos provided are stitched together and mixed media is used to add elements of interest.
By recreating these small tidal worlds, I wanted to honour both the individuality of each artist and the collective beauty of community.This installation is a reminder that, even in our own tiny ecosystems, we are part of something vast, unexplored and deeply interconnected.
Broken mirror fragments embedded within the pools invite literal and figurative reflection from the viewer. Finally, a single, continuous rope, weaves through the work, tethering us together as one. The rope itself was made by attaching discarded, found fragments together to create one connecting string.
Calamity Tash, local queer Craft Wizard, believes art is for everyone and is most passionate about inclusivity and accessibility to the creative arts. Over the last decade Tash has been skill sharing with communities across the globe. The spreading of craft joy will continue as Tash becomes an enthusiastic resident at The Mill. Tash’s signature sparkle and use of whimsical dolls have been her wearable art trademark. Calamity Tash joins us on a journey of self expression and discovery. Her private studio will see the creation of many a weird and wonderful thing.
I put it here so I wouldn’t forget
I’ve always kept small things—gifts, fragments, found objects—on a little rack at home. It’s where I put pieces of the world that feel like mine: tiny markers of memory, small gestures of joy. For this exhibition, I’ve made a version of that rack in glass. Each object is a response—to the time shared, the conversations, the stitching, the slowness of sitting beside others and making something by hand. A clover. A safety pin. A necklace. Teeth. A bag. Candles, pencils, thread.
These are replicas of real things, made in glass, they feel a little removed from the world, but still intimate—fragile, exact, sometimes strange. They hold the trace of someone’s story, or a moment passed between us.
Ursula Le Guin reminds us that stories aren’t always linear or heroic—they can be soft vessels, carriers of collective experience. That idea stayed with me as we stitched and talked and shared time.
This shelf is both archive and offering. A way of holding memory that isn’t fixed, but refracted—through glass, through time, through others. In the making, I’ve come to know, understand, and appreciate the group I’ve worked alongside—through their stories, their hands, their quiet generosity. It’s a collection of small things that don’t belong to just me, gathered with care and left open to interpretation.
Carman Skeehan is a glass artist and maker, living in Adelaide, South Australia. Having completed the Jam Factory associate program in 2023, Carman has hit a milestone in her work, elevating her artistic practice. Guided by the meticulous creative process, Carman centres her work on the art of storytelling through glass, exploring the intersection of narrative and materials. Skeehan draws inspiration from early oil paintings and still lifes, creating a unique likeness in glass materials. Her work is an exploration of these elements, seamlessly blending them to create unique and compelling pieces of art.
A human thing: useful, edible, or beautiful
A leaf, a gourd, a shell, a net, a bag, a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container, a Sea Sponge Vessel
My practice has often included collaborations with artists, working in tandem and responding to each other's work, presence and life; creating and complicating narratives and expanding our boundaries together. The residencies sessions to create a textile work were both daunting and exuberant, in facilitating connecting between a group of relative strangers. I followed this formula, inviting the participating artists to visit my studio and work one on one alongside me on a large scale ceramic vessel.
After hand-building a very large vase shape with thick walls; I guided each artist in technique, and together we cut away pieces from the vessel, creating a delicate lattice structure.
This ‘porous vessel’ references a net, basketry or fish trap, objects often traditionally crafted in group settings. It is a vessel to capture our experiences and time spent getting to know each other.
Whilst our hands were busy and eyes averted, conversation through joint work facilitated deeper connection.
To further this metaphor we created beads from offcuts of clay, stringing together our work and experience into a continuous thread of coral fragments.
My ceramic works repeatedly reference motifs of sea creatures such as corals and sponges. These colonial animals have become symbols of the fragility of nature, as the first flag of the environmental system collapses. However these foundation species, the architects of ecosystems have long endured climate fluctuations across deep geological time. Just as algae and animal cells cooperate to build a reef and it is only by collaborating that humanity can create the narrative of our future.
Lotte Schwerdtfeger is an artist and is currently a studio tenant at the JamFactory Ceramics Studio, Tarndanya/Adelaide. She is materially led across many mediums, being consistently drawn to ceramic processes. Lotte hand builds ceramics, coiling and pinching both functional, sculptural and installation works; combining tendrils of research which span anthropology, biology, symbolism and revelry in the small psychedelic moments of existence. Lotte is delighted by the alchemical and elemental processes of ceramics. She is always intrigued by the role of objects, quotidian and ritual, in defining and connecting human and nonhuman experiences. Lotte is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts; regularly working on commission, collaborative projects and gallery exhibitions. Where possible all materials are salvaged, reused and recycled, working towards a zero waste practice.
As Above, So Below
Chews Wisely
Throughout my varied practice, the project has dictated the medium. Thus I have picked up a middling aptitude for various techniques, collecting skills like baubles. The ones I handled and polished the longest are those I have wanted or enjoyed since childhood.
This trend continues into my contribution to In Reflection: In Response. In the techniques employed and the stories shared, there is an odd tension between nostalgia and hope. The nostalgic anecdotes swapped within the group prompted me to choose floral motifs in my embroidery: common European plants which carpeted the meadows of my childhood, but struggle in the cracks here.
I explored Irish lace in an attempt to connect with a heritage of which I retain only a bastardised surname. The scale of my work lent itself to constructing wisdom teeth in response to the surprisingly common conversations about teeth in our midst. As we were encouraged to read Ursula LeGuin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, I came to think of the mouth as a carrier bag of stories. Five teeth, five stories; wisdom optional.
Yana Lehey is an environmentally motivated visual artist based on Kaurna land. Her practice spans various mediums, covering drawing, painting, and sculpture, depending on what a project calls for. Most recently, she has applied a textile approach to petroleum-based waste materials like plastic and rubber on a large scale, creating oversized crocheted sculptural works. She developed the necessary techniques as an accessible means for every person to tackle the waste problem without the need for expensive technology and infrastructure. Yana’s interest in environmental art first started to gain traction in 2020, with her first solo exhibition Face Up, featuring monumentally scaled watercolour portraits of nine young climate activists from diverse cultural backgrounds with diverse approaches. The research behind this project formed the basis for Yana’s current practice.