Rewild | 2025 Artists-in-Residence Exhibition
Image | Michelle Grimston Unfolding/Enfolding 2025 | Photography by Geoff Roberts
Exhibition | Rewild | Artists-in-Residence Exhibition
Artists | Michele Grimston + Hannah McKellar
Dates | 9 April – 23 May 2026
Artist Talk | 5:30pm – 6pm Thursday 9 April | RSVP here
Opening | 6pm – 8pm Thursday 9 April, with Official Speeches from 6:30pm | RSVP here
View the Catalogue | Room Sheet | Buy the Work
Exhibition Statement
Rewild | Artists-in-Residence Exhibition presents new work by artists Michele Grimston and Hannah McKellar, developed through the 2025 Craft + Design Canberra Artist-in-Residence program at Cinerea Cottage, located within Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. The residency combines time immersed in the landscape with a dedicated research component undertaken in partnership with the National Zoo and Aquarium.
Framed by the theme of Rewilding, the program invited Michele and Hannah to consider ecological restoration and shifting relationships between humans and the natural world. Through the residency’s research component with the National Zoo and Aquarium, the artists went behind the scenes to observe conservation practices and engage with rewilding as a progressive approach to conservation, one that enables natural processes to repair ecosystems and restore wilder, more biodiverse habitats.
As part of the exhibition launch, Hannah McKellar and Michele Grimston will join Exhibitions Coordinator Stacy Jewell in conversation, reflecting on their residency experiences. This talk offers a rare insight into the processes, challenges, and reflections that inform each artist’s practice, highlighting how attentiveness and responsiveness have shaped the creation of their work.
Artist Statements
For Michele Grimston, the residency period at Tidbinbilla was an opportunity to ‘rewild’ her relationship to place and deepen her connection to the local landscape. Through cyclical and meditative practices that move between movement and stillness (walking, cycling, stitching, drawing and sitting) she captured layers of sensory and emotional impressions that accumulated over time. She then layers multiple moments and experiences of place with the use of textiles, creating richness and depth through sustained attentiveness. This process reflects Michele’s commitment to reorienting her relationship to Country through listening, patience and attunement.
Hannah McKellar approaches rewilding through the lens of mapping. Using hand-embroidered sculptures, watercolour paintings, ink drawings and eucalyptus transfers she explores alternative ways of representing place. Drawing from photographs and GPS coordinates collected while exploring Tidbinbilla, Hannah reinterprets conventional cartography through tactile and process-driven techniques. Inspired by Tidbinbilla’s use of rewilding she seeks to ‘rewild’ the act of mapping itself by moving beyond rigid colonial systems of representation toward a more sensory and respectful engagement with Country.
Together, the works produced during this residency reflect different approaches to attentiveness, observation and care. Through their distinct practices Michele and Hannah consider how artistic processes can mirror ecological ones that are slow, layered and responsive inviting audiences to reconsider how we see, map and relate to the environments we inhabit.
The Craft + Design Canberra Artist-in-Residence program is supported by ACT Parks and Conservation Service. The 2025 research partner was the National Zoo and Aquarium. More information about the program was available here.
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.
Michele’s 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.
Michele 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.
Hannah McKellar is a textile artist living and working on Gadigal and 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).
Image | Artworks by Hannah McKellar installed as part of REWILD | 2025 Artists-in-Residence Exhibition | Photography by 5 Foot Photography
Watch the Artist Talks with Michele and Hannah via Instagram
Watch our Meet The Maker interview with Michele via Instagram