Bone Drift: workshops and exhibitions

Bone Drift is a collaborative art-science project developed with artist and researcher Helen Pynor that explores fluid (dis)ability identities, porous boundaries between bodies and materials, and unexpected relations between people, objects and practices. Across three major iterations — at Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios, Bankstown Arts Centre and Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf — I worked as creative producer alongside Helen to tbring diverse communities into hands-on engagement with bone, bone china and associated making processes.

In each place-specific workshops, participants used materials such as wax, metal, thread and clay to make personal objects that reflect on embodied experience and shifting ideas of (dis)ability. Workshops were structured to be open and responsive rather than outcome-driven. Conversation emerged alongside making, with participants shaping both the pace and direction of the work. The resulting exhibitions reflected this emphasis on process, foregrounding relationships and material traces rather than polished objects alone.

Bone Drift: Wax, Bone and Thread, Gallery Lane Cove and Creative Studios

Workshop series and exhibition, 12 March - 5 April 2025

Helen and I were commissioned for a 3 month residency at Gallery Lane Cove and Creative Studios (GLC+CS). Whilst resident, we evolved the workshop structure to be appropriate to not only to the space we had available but to the local community. We delivered three half day workshops, and the resulting artefacts were exhibited in Bone Drift: Wax, Bone and Thread. These pictures show select workshop making processes and images from the final exhibition. This work was supported by funding from GLC +CS.

Images credits: top left GLC+CS, all other taken by me

Bone Drift: Chimeric Conversations, Bankstown Art Centre

Workshop series and major exhibition, 29 March - 3 May 2025

Bankstown Arts Centre (BAC) commissioned me and Helen to deliver a workshop series and an exhibition. The workshop participants, predominantly from Greater Western Sydney - an area with a highly multicultural and socioeconomically diverse population - were selected through an expression of interest process. The exhibition featured their personal artefacts as well Helen’s work Habitation, which inspired our collaboration.

The exhibition also featured text based artefacts that explored core themes from the collaborative efforts which resulted in Bone Drift. This included early email correspondence when Helen and I were establishing our collaboration, a collation of our own rehabilitation receipts, among other items. As a result, Bone Drift: Chimeric Conversations generated dialogue about porous boundaries and expanded ways to understand evolving (dis)abled personal identities. The workshops were funded by Bankstown Arts Centre, and the exhibition was supported through Create NSW.

Images credits: Bottom 3 images, Liam Black, all others by me

Bone Drift, Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf

Artist in Residency (February-June 2025), workshop series and exhibition (7 May - 1 June 2025)

Helen and I were selected into the Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf Artist in Residency Program to continue to evolve Bone Drift for the next place-based iteration. During this time we ran a workshop for older people through an organisation who aimed to connect them with community activities. We also ran a workshop for people living with different disabilities. In both these workshop, the groups did a small section of the overall workshop series. The work they produced was shown alongside work from Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios and Bankstown Arts Centre as part of our exhibition at the gallery.

Images credit: Jessica Maurer / Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf

My role in Bone Drift was both strategic and creative. In practical terms I produced the project — co-designing workshop structures, coordinating logistics and budgets, managing production across multiple sites, and facilitating sessions that were accessible, inclusive and generative for people with a range of backgrounds and experiences. I worked closely with Helen and partner organisations to ensure each iteration maintained a coherent conceptual thread.

At the same time, my contribution was creative and conceptual. I supported the ongoing development of the project’s thematic framing, helped shape the material and workshop logics, and contributed to how Bone Drift invited participants to hold their own lived experience and curiosity within a broader exploration of materiality and identity. This dual orientation — operational and co-creative — enabled the project to function as both rigorous research practice and meaningful public engagement, situating rich conceptual work inside accessible, embodied processes. More information the conceptual behind the work can be found in my research.