ARTIST TALK | Sophie Constable | 2025 Emerging Contemporaries

An artist talk with recent CIT graduate Sophie Constable, featured in our 2025 Emerging Contemporaries exhibition. During this session participants had the opportunity to participate in a collaborative project while Sophie discussed her artwork, "Mending the Past," which explores the stories of the Japanese diaspora across the Pacific Rim during World War II. Informed by Sophie’s academic background in history and science, the pieces bring the viewer face-to- face with the stories and lived experiences of individuals who faced civilian internment, military service, and their connection to handmade textiles.

In this session we learned about the individual stories retold through Sophie’s work, about the traditional community practice of senninbari (千人針) belts, and got hands on contributing towards the creation of a modern-day senninbari to support the memory of two featured Japanese Australian Men who served in the AIF in World War II.