Rewild | 2025 Artists in Residence Exhibition

Artist Statements 

For Michele Grimston, the residency period at Tidbinbilla was an opportunity to rewild her own relationship to place and deepen her connection to her local landscape.  Through cyclical and meditative processes of movement and stillness – walking, cycling, stitching, drawing, sitting – she captures layers of sensory and emotional impressions that continue to build and develop over time.  Her textile works and drawings overlay multiple moments and experiences of place, building richness and depth through sustained attentiveness and reflecting a commitment to reorienting her own sense of relationship to country to one based on listening and attunement. 

Through hand-embroidered sculptures, watercolour paintings, ink drawings, and eucalyptus transfers, Hannah McKellar explores alternative ways of mapping place. Drawing from photographs and GPS coordinates collected whilst exploring Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve on Ngunnawal Country, her work reinterprets conventional cartography through tactile, process-driven techniques. Tidbinbilla’s use of rewilding—a conservation strategy that restores ecosystems by allowing natural processes to thrive—inspires McKellar’s own artistic approach. Just as the land is returned to a wilder, more organic state, she seeks to "rewild" the act of mapping: to move beyond rigid, colonial systems of representation and toward a more sensory, respectful engagement with Country.  

Artist Biographies 

Michele Grimston is an artist and community cultural development practitioner based on Ngunnawal Country, Canberra. She is currently pursuing a practice-led PhD at the University of Canberra. 

Her work explores slow, meditative textile processes as ways of practicing care and connection for earth, community and spirit.  She is interested in building individual and collective rituals of creation which develop the role of these laborious textile processes in our personal, spiritual and social wellbeing. 

She holds an Honours degree in textiles from ANU (2009) and a Masters in Community Cultural Development from the Victorian College of the Arts (2014). 

She has exhibited in Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Canada and her work is held in the collection of Geoscience Australia.  Michele has presented participatory, community-engaged works through Rebus and You Are Here and has facilitated large-scale collaborative projects as an artist-in-residence in multiple schools and Early Learning Centres. 

With over 10 years’ experience managing community arts and education programs at public galleries, Michele supports artists and the public to build vibrant, connected communities. 

Hannah McKellar is a textile artist living and working on Gadigal Wangal land (Sydney, Australia). Her practice explores the intersections of embroidery, sculpture, and cartography, using hand-stitched techniques to reimagine mapping systems and our connection to place. Her soft sculptural forms often mirror topographic maps, landforms, and bodies of water.   

McKellar holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Printmaking) from the National Art School (2015). She has been a finalist in numerous prizes, including the Deakin Small Sculpture Award (2024), North Sydney Art Prize (2024), Wyndham Art Prize (2023), and Brunswick Street Gallery’s Small Works Art Prize (2023), where she received the Object Prize. Her work has featured in exhibitions across Australia, including Petite Miniature Textiles (Wangaratta Art Gallery, 2022), The Passion According to G.H. (STACKS Projects, 2019), and Nothing is as Valuable as You (Peacock Gallery, 2018).