Was It Really a Cage?
Textile artwork | Hand-dyed felted wool
A love letter to the red dirt.

Crafted from thick, hand-dyed wool in luminous, ochre-orange tones, this piece is an ode to the sacred vibrancy of the land—specifically, the rain-washed puddles that glow like embers across Arnhem Land. They shimmer with life, like the land itself exhaling.

During my time on Country, I often felt confined—isolated, resistant, as though caught in an invisible cage. But the red earth has a way of teaching through stillness. Of drawing you down, into yourself.

Through the slow, tactile process of felting—of shaping, binding, surrendering—I began to unravel. A quiet softening emerged as I let go of who I thought I was supposed to be, and made space for who I was becoming.

As my hands moved and the form took shape, my inner voice whispered: Was it really a cage… or was it a chrysalis? And as I stepped back to take it all in, I saw it clearly: it wasn’t a prison at all. It was a nest.

A place of holding. A place of becoming.

130cm high x 25cm wide x 25cm deep

Pure felted wool from Australia