By Necessity features artists who engage with textiles in diverse ways. It examines how the gestures of making are guided by principles of necessity including: a direct relationship to the body and the body in space; with humour, memory and politics through image making; and through compulsion, repurposing, world building and ideas of sustainability. By Necessity examines how visual art/craft and design-based practices utilise the idea of necessity to drive and sustain practice.

By Necessity features John Brooks, Andrea Eckersley, Jacquelyn Fang Greenbank, Leah Muddle, Dell Stewart, Meredith Turnbull and Mashara Wachjudy and focuses on six innovative Australian-made (and one artist from Aotearoa) textile-based projects. This project responds directly to the Design Week 2026 themes of making for Design Futures including visual art/craft textiles as restorative social projects and circularity examining sustainable and circular ways of working and utilising materials. 

This exhibition takes place across Daine Singer (Brunswick) and Alta Forma (Naarm, St Kilda Road).

By Necessity is presented as part of Melbourne Design Week (MDW), 2026. Exhibition dates: 2 - 30 May, 2026.

OPENING \ 2-4pm Saturday 2 May at Daine Singer

WORKSHOP \ The Smartphone Meets its Ancestor: Weaving with Artist John Brooks \ Sat 23 May, 3pm at Daine Singer

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About the artists:

John Brooks is a Naarm-based artist of Irish and English descent. With a foundation in weaving, he trained in materials and textile structures before expanding his practice to encompass sculpture, video, and installation. Recently, he has begun exploring ceramics, delving into the intertwined and interdependent histories of pottery and weaving. Working primarily with soft materials, he incorporates symbolism, slow craft, and digital processes to reflect on the influence of objects and materials on human experiences and the anthropomorphic qualities often projected onto non-human entities.

About John’s work: Handwoven and printed textiles combine with ceramics in an attempt to trace gaps in both queer and textile history - both of which are founded on resourcefulness and collective invention and contain missing links viadestruction and disintegration. Through a process of building up cloth, thread by thread and allowing woven colour interactions to emerge from behind printed negative space, archaeological objects and queer coded symbols act as markers in a non-linear timeline. These are moments of contemplation, to speculate on the origins of clay pots, the necessity of flowers as a means of communication and the origins of contemporary technology in prehistoric textile practice.

Andrea Eckersley an artist and creative practice researcher working at the intersection of painting, fashion and design at RMIT University. Primarily interested in the way the body interacts with surfaces, Andrea’s exhibition practice explores how affects and materiality are central to the realization and experience of an artwork. Andrea’s recent scholarly publications include ‘Colour as Force’ in the book Artistic Agency and the co-authored article ‘Reflections of a Deleuzian People to Come: A Conversation with Hoda Afshar in the Deleuze and Guattari Studies Journal where she is also the art editor. Her latest series of collages were exhibited in the City of Yarra’s Carlton Library Light Boxes earlier this year and she has previously exhibited at Alta Forma, Sarah Scout Presents, Mejia, Anna Pappas Gallery, Platform Public Contemporary Art Spaces, Nellie Castan Gallery, Craft Victoria, c3 and West Space.

About Andrea’s work: In these two works I am exploring a complex iterative process of investigating surfaces and the activation of colour, form and light. The dress, printed with a reactive dye process is of one of my paintings, folded and shaped to drape over my studio chair. The lighting of this assemblage references Leondardo da Vinci’s Annunciation (1472c) and my recent writings on ‘Colour and Force’. Da Vinci’s Annunciation marks an important development in the history of painting whereby colour is transformed as a distinctive function of light and the modelling of form. As John Sherman (1962) writes about Colour and Chiaroscuro for da Vinci, “every form is modelled independently of colour, and every coloured object is invested with a common range of tone.” The painting on the wall in Surface volume ratios is made from powders derived from recycled coloured textile waste. I fabricated the paint from coloured dyes extracted from the natural fibres of discarded textiles and fabrics by colleagues at Deakin and RMIT Universities. In this work the garment becomes watercolours surrounded by shapes of light such that all elements become an active part of the composition on the wall. The shaped lights, colours, forms and materials in Surface volume ratios and Ombre Inferential, relate people, garments and paintings all to each other in an exploration of the modulations of subjectivity and identity.

Jacquelyn Fang Greenbank is self-portrait installation artist, the context of my work has always been of social histories and the portrayal of cultures, as a kiwi with mixed ancestry (Chinese, Euro). Her work question’s and explores cultural identifiers. Food and the knowledge of plants is often used as a thematic vehicle for artworks as it can assimilate and alienate cultures. We use food in many different ways within culture. What we eat sheds light on our lives, holds values, keeps strong ties to our communities, while preserving culture and expressing cultural identity. My practice brings to light the value of culture and questions how and what we pass on to the next generation. Since graduating from Canterbury University School of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours in Painting and a Masters of Fine Art with Distinction in Painting she has exhibited in galleries and biennials in New Zealand and internationally. Her work is held in major public and private collections. She was awarded The Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Art Award in 2025, a Scape Artist in 2020 and The Zonta Female Art Award in 2021.

About Jacquelyn’s work: The familiar form of an oversized Brussels sprout, reimagined through playful, unexpected materials—pool noodles, hand-painted fabric, and a Swiss ball. It sits within the ideas of By Necessity, where making is guided by what is at hand, by the body, and by an impulse to repurpose and rework materials. The so, inflated structure has a direct relationship to the body in space awkward, humorous, and slightly excessive inviting both curiosity and interaction. At first glance, the work leans into humour, but beneath that lightness sits a reflection on culture, memory, and the rituals of food that bind us. Food is never just sustenance; it is a way of connecting. The Brussels sprout becomes a symbol of shared experience moments around a table where tastes, stories, and traditions are exchanged across generations. The use of repurposed, synthetic materials speaks to necessity through resourcefulness and adaptation. Pool noodles and a Swiss ball are objects Ded to leisure, and the body are reconfigured into something domestic and cultural, while the hand-painted fabric brings in care, labour, and individuality. Each mark holds time and presence, echoing the gestures of preparing and sharing food. This work is about whānau the ties that extend beyond blood to include chosen family and community. Through humour, material play, and acts of making, the piece reflects on how connection, identity, and culture are sustained and reshaped over time.

Leah Muddle is a poet, visual artist and retail worker. She is a graduate of Visual Communication at RMIT University and has a Grad. Dip. in Creative Writing from Melbourne University. From 2005 to 2018 she was co-owner of Milly Sleeping boutique, for which she curated a program of non-commercial exhibitions. An off-shoot - Milly Arcana - remains online as a home for Leah's textile and paper objects/ephemera.

About Leah’s work:
‘I have created a series of personal vessels: three shell-like patchwork 'bags' and three re-upholstered clasp purses.

The phrase 'by necessity' has related to these pieces in different ways as I've worked on them.

It's been reflected in my choice of resources - my use of remnant textiles, saved scraps - which has always been driven (both, equally) by preference and pragmatism.

It has informed my use of scale and sequence, evoking a second phrase - 'more, bigger, bigger' - as I thought about contemporary needs, contemporary demands, contemporary prices, complexities, aspirations, capacities . . .

I have also been thinking of a different kind of essential - the drives, binds and contradictions that are intrinsic to art-making and being an artist.

These include the will to make coupled with the difficulty of making, doubt of the works' worth, a strange, unstable, preoccupying relation to 'reward'.

As I worked on the smallest of clasp purses, I thought - yes, textiles are my riches - which is an irony but also a great truth.’ Leah Muddle, 2026

Dell Stewart’s work combines various processes (ceramics, textiles, animation, hospitality) with a deeply embedded personal story. These practices and references assemble in immersive environments, exhibitions, publications and hands-on workshops, seeking opportunistic gatherings of people and materials. Stewart has organised and participated in numerous exhibitions, and has shown extensively in Australia and overseas. Most recently curating an exhibition and series of public programs, Tree Log Paper Book at Bus Projects in 2022 and an exhibition of ceramics at Alta Forma in 2022. She completed a Masters of Fine Arts at Monash University in 2022 with research focused on fostering new material connections and collaboration. Dell has delivered workshops in textiles, animation, instrument building and ceramics at various locations, including Mpavilion, Craft, TarraWarra Museum of Art, SIGNAL, Artplay and the Shepparton Art Museum. Dell currently teaches a ceramics elective in the department of Fine Arts at Monash University and has a collaborative practice that continues to seek new opportunities to learn and make.

About Dell’s work: I am interested in the concept of speculative investment: the idea that there is inherent value and future potential in the remnants we usually discard. By gathering these scraps into larger forms, I create a tactile dialogue about what it means to hold, to hide, and to inhabit a space. From a play on painting to the three-dimensional utility of a bag, this collection is a study of fragments, both in material and in the rhythm of a lived life. Through labour intensive processes, I repurpose textile scraps into works that serve as vessels for both objects and intentions. The act of assembly is less about decoration and more about maintenance, a contribution to an ongoing practice. The radical act of committing time, care, and ritual to materials deemed exhausted, consolidates disparate bits and pieces into a sturdy, cohesive whole.

Meredith Turnbull is a Naarm based artist, curator and writer. She completed a PhD in Fine Art at the Faculty of Art and Design, Monash University in 2016, a Bachelor of Fine Art, Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University in 2005, a Bachelor of Arts and Honours in Art History from La Trobe University in 1999 and the Certificate of Photography from Photographic Imaging Centre – PIC, Hawthorn in 1996. Meredith has exhibited and curated exhibitions nationally and internationally and developed major projects in Australia for Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne University, the Centre for Contemporary Photography, the National Gallery of Victoria and Heide Museum of Modern Art. Recent exhibitions include: Glimmer, (with Vanessa Arthur and Moniek Shrijer), curated by Monique Barnett, Tauranga Art Gallery, Tauranga, Aotearoa, 2025-2026; Hold, Melbourne Design Week, Daine Singer, Brunswick, 2024; All Together (with Ross Coulter and Roma Turnbull-Coulter), Shepparton Art Museum, 2024; RITA 4: Décor Drive: Jeremy Eaton, John Meade, Reg Preston, Meredith Turnbull, Sutton Project Space, 2023. Meredith Turnbull is represented by Daine Singer.

Meredith’s practice focuses on human connections to the world of objects and things, making and material, and the experiential and temporal registers of forms. Her practice engages various disciplines and approaches including making, writing, curating, collaboration and inter-generational production. Her artwork for this project repurposes collected fabrics from household items and clothing. It draws on traditions of quilt making, and sewing and craft making practices from her own family traditions for pleasure and economic necessity.

Mashara Wachjudy’s practice is interested in different modes and languages of image making. Her work is centered in photography and explores the meetings and intersections of memory; archives and cross-cultural experience and how these layered relationships can be translated in different forms. Recent projects and exhibitions include solo project PHASES at Alta Forma (2024); do you remember eating oranges at half-time? with Asha Maria Madge at Visual Diary (2025); MELA group exhibition curated by Meridith Turnbull at Alta Forma (2024); Visual Diary Anniversary group exhibition (2024); Streaming Surrounds residency and performance curated by Temporary Position (2023); Text Til e curated by Anna Fiedler, Madeline Simm and Tia Ansell at CAVES in Melbourne (2022) and in 2021 was commissioned by West Space for PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. Mashara has exhibited extensively across Australia in spaces including Firstdraft, Bus Projects, Casula Powerhouse, Bankstown Art Centre, Outerspace, Byron School of Art, Seventh Gallery, Cement Fondu, The Honeymoon Suite and Verge Gallery as well as internationally. Mashara also works collaboratively as a member of Woven Kolektif with Leyla Stevens, Kartika Suharto-Martin, Ida Lawrence, Kyati Suharto-Martin, and Bridie Gillman. Woven Kolektif are an artist collective who originally formed in 2017 through shared diasporic connections to Indonesia. Recent exhibitions as part of Woven Kolektif include Dealing in Distance curated by RED Nguyen Hai Yen, Savitri Sastrawan & Wayan Sumahardika; presented by Goethe Institut Indonesia at Masa Masa, Gianyar, Indonesia (2026); Common Beauty II, Curated by Savitri Sastrawan, Nonfrasa, Ubud, Indonesia (2024); Mengingat 25 Tahun Reformasi curated by Dwiki Nugroho Mukti & Savitri Sastrawan at Cemeti Institute in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2023); and CASCADE, commissioned by Outer Space in Brisbane (2021). Mashara is currently working on curating and coordinating an upcoming project for Woven Kolektif at George Paton Gallery in early 2027.

About Mashara’s work: These are three compositions that relate to things (images, text, light) that reach out to me as time passes - in the world or in a dream. The textiles themselves carry meaning, and lineages and working with them, I am drawn to thinking about modes of adornment and expression in a deeply directional manner.

Artwork details: 1. John Brooks, Swamp Cabbage (process), 2024-25, silk, opaque print, polyester, puff paste, clay, cotton, wool, acrylic, wool, plastic, lurex, hi vis thread, 2. Leah Muddle, Overnighter, mixed composition textile remnants, linen, cotton, silk, poly batting, nylon and plastic zipper, 2026. Images courtesy the artists.