Tactile Dialogues: Redefining Connection through Craft

Participants

Emma Shepherd
Flinders-based weaver Emma Shepherd practices one of the world's oldest crafts with a sensibility of an artist deeply embedded in her environment. Using yarns collected from all around the world, Shepherd reflects on the deeper history of fibre, its role in human history and weaving's legacy as humanity's earliest algorithms in action. Thinking through the fabric, its strength and structure, as well as the ethos of Bauhaus textiles, Shepherd folds in colours resembling green foliage, the dark tones of tree trunks, the neutrals of the sand and the rock of her hometown, Flinders. Her work incorporates materials like pine needles, horsehair and bark taken from Shepherd’s immediate surroundings, letting them shape the work in a gentle yet deliberate way.

Martyn Thompson
Martyn Thompson is an artist known for his tactile, painterly aesthetic, shaped by a hands-on approach. His work balances nostalgia and modernity, guided by curiosity and experimentation — an ethos he calls The Accidental Expressionist. Rather than isolating ideas, he embeds them within the world around him, reflecting his deep connection to spaces and objects. Thompson’s creative journey began in fashion, designing and making clothes before transitioning to photography. Starting as a fashion photographer in Sydney and Paris, he later expanded his focus to interiors and still life in London and New York. His distinctive, human-centric style infuses everyday scenes with a sense of mystery. He has worked with leading global brands, including Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Hermès, and Estée Lauder. His photography has been featured in Elle Decoration, Architectural Digest, W, The New York Times Magazine, and Vogue.

Sarah Nedovic
Sarah Nedovic, a Melbourne-based artist, forges unions between materials, light, form and innovation to elicit outcomes that are ever-evolving, constantly shifting to make space for new influences. Having established herself as a ceramic artist, producing works held in collections within Australia and abroad, Sarah’s work has begun to evolve into other materials while remaining anchored by a strong cross-disciplinary spirit that has come to define her. Through a mediation between intuition, research and the employment of both traditional techniques and investigative discovery.

Nick McDonald
The Founder and Director of Made by Morgen, Nick McDonald, reflects on how he turned a passion project, which operated out of a small shed on his parent’s property in country Victoria, into a thriving bespoke furniture business based in Melbourne. Nick’s path to furniture making was anything but an ordinary one. After quitting his job in construction, Nick spent six months in Denmark, hoping travelling would help him discover a newfound purpose in his career. Finding himself in a small town on the west coast of the country ended up playing a pivotal role in his journey. Nick fell in love with the minimal nature of Scandinavian furniture and was inspired to bring some of those design influences back home to Australia, which eventually led to the formation of his company, Made by Morgen.

Lana Launay
Lana Launay is an Australian lighting artist, currently working within the creative landscapes of Sydney and Los Angeles. Rooted in a multidisciplinary foundation of jewelry, textiles, and visual arts, her practice explores the interplay of materiality, form, and illumination. Through a fusion of artisanal craft and experimental processes, she reimagines lighting as sculptural expressions of space and emotion, engaging with contemporary exhibitions, collaborative partnerships, and works within both commercial and residential contexts.

Paul Vizzari
Paul Vizzari is a chairmaker, designer and Danish Cord weaver. From his workshop in Eltham, Melbourne, Paul crafts seating by hand. Beyond his original chair range, he takes on custom projects tailored to clients' needs and spaces. Wood, with its natural visual diversity is Paul's preferred medium, giving each chair a distinct character. He prioritises local timber sourcing for sustainability and draws inspiration from the exclusive hues found in Australia's captivating landscape. Paul is also a Danish Cord weaver, as well as using it for his own range he restores and re-weaves classic designs with Danish Cord. Paul is drawn to Danish Cord for its amazing qualities of strength, resilience and comfort.

Den Holm
Steven John Clark is the maker behind Den Holm; a stone mason and artist living and working in Melbourne, Australia. Originating from Scotland, Clark was traditionally trained as a stone mason before a path through fashion and textile embroidery led him back to his skills with stone design. In a world of bold forms and heavy textures, his creations and objects are free from restrictions, merging the traditional craftsmanship of his formal training in stone carvery and the experimental nature of textile and embroidery.

Thang Do
Thang Do is a queer Vietnamese-born artist whose performances and installations embody the human obsession with spectacles as means for escaping reality and fueling one’s hope. His practice takes shape through spiritual vessels, installations, and performances that manifest deep-seated desires, stripping the anticipated political setting away from spectators and leaving them with an intensely humanistic yearning for ascension. Working with domestic materials such as paper, glitter, and foil, the artist uses techniques like embellishing, scoring, and folding to assemble fantasised vessels resembling his constant travels between the physical reality and the wishful realm of the privileged and wealthy. Thang Do has showcased his work both nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions at ART021 Shanghai, West Space, and Midsumma Festival in 2024 and 2025.

Ryan Fernandes
Ryan Fernandes works at esteemed Melbourne interior design studio Hecker Guthrie, with a dedicated focus on furniture, art, and objects. He continues to build a repertoire of considered designs, combining a keen eye for what people crave in their homes with a commitment to creating timeless spaces.