It started in 2016 with It’s Knot Just Me, It’s Us—an interactive performance installation at Articulate Project Space, Sydney, where I invited audiences to knot, connect, join, tie and untie alongside me. Fabric, string, bodies and space becoming temporarily bound together. The question underneath was simple: can making together be a form of belonging?

The following year that question filled a room. Knot was a solo exhibition at Factory 49, Marrickville, in which I folded thousands of Japanese white paper knots by hand and suspended them from ceiling to floor across seven rows, with just enough space between each row for visitors to walk through. There was no sound. The only light came from a projector casting a large circular glow on the wall behind, like a moon, like a reflection on still water. The knots hung like music notes, like falling rain, like a waterfall caught mid-air. People walked in and became part of it. The work was shortlisted in the Sydney Morning Herald by art writer Sharne Wolff.

That same year the knot kept travelling. Tie The Knot was installed in a woodland in Kent, England, the paper knots suspended between trees and catching the light filtering through the canopy above. It’s Knot Me It’s Us, Tai Xi was made during a residency in Yunlin County, Taiwan, using red cotton strings, stone and bamboo found in that landscape, knotting and weaving the stories of a place that connected with me deeply. Each site gave the knot a new language while asking the same question about connection and belonging.

In 2018 the knot transformed again. A residency in Jingdezhen, China’s ancient ceramic heartland, brought me into contact with a new material and a new community. A Thousand Knots in Jingdezhen 千千結於景德鎮 was a solo exhibition at Factory 49, curated by Dara Wei, spanning video, sound and installation. The knots became porcelain, fragile and enduring at once. It was the texture, the sound, the people and the making process of that extraordinary place that forged a profound bond I wanted to share.

The journey continued. A Thousand Knot was shown as part of Home Grown: The Tenacious Realm, Willoughby City Council, 2019, exploring resilience and community through the familiar gesture of tying and holding together. Knots of Eden was commissioned as a site-specific installation for Eden Unearthed, Art in Garden, 2021, the knots finding their way into yet another landscape.

Looking back, I can see the knot running quietly through everything I have made since — through the red strings of Where Is The Red Line?, through the pearl curtain of Moonlight Embrace where each pearl is tied and knotted onto string. The knot was never just one work. It was a way of thinking about how we hold together, and how we reach toward each other across the distances that separate us.

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