Trails sculpture prize finalist 2024

The old winery (the old barn’s song)

Materials: Terracotta clay doll’s head, recycled, copper scraps, a bullet casing, found tie pin, scrap metal from the old barn, grape vine, raw silk and copper thread.

Dimensions:120 x 300 x 90 mm

The old barn, she sings about a woman making do when her old man died. Falling apart… discarding her past…dangerous, chained shut. Around her secrets revealed: bullet casing; tie pin, a doll’s head. I can’t see all the way in, but imagine that she still has a beautiful, strong heart.

Exhibited at Argyle Gallery – Julia Street Creative Space, 2024
Trails sculpture prize 2024

The old winery (the old house speaks)

Materials:Woven raw silk, handcrafted wool felt, silk and stainless steel thread, linen thread, terracotta doll head, grapevine twigs, bone, driftwood, beads.

Dimensions:130 x 180 x 130 mm

“She’s got good bones. You could make her beautiful. What will your children’s children say when they see what we’ve left for them? She’s got good bones?” This is an imagined conversation with the circa, 1800’s house I live in. Bits she has revealed to me constructed together- she speaks.

Exhibited at Argyle Gallery – Julia Street Creative Space, 202

Precarious (a hierarchy of belonging)

Materials: Handcrafted eco dyed paper, cotton gauze, paper thread, beeswax, river pebble.

Dimensions:150 x 65 x 65 mm

Colonial-settler narratives emphasise being “born and bred” in a place, as evidence of belonging. As a migrant I am a perpetual newcomer, precariously teetering between be(ing) and longing. Paper houses imprinted with native /non-native plants, performatively stitched, coated in protective beeswax and balanced on a river pebble, represent these tensions.

Exhibited at Argyle Gallery – Julia Street Creative Space, 2024

Lenni Morkel-Kingsbury

design...make...grow...become

The old winery (the old barn’s song)

The old winery (the old house speaks)

Precarious (a hierarchy of belonging)