Eugenie Kawabata

Eugenie Kawabata's sculptural works draw inspiration from the protists, fungi, lichen, mosses, and plant life of the Takayna region in western Tasmania — one of the world’s last surviving Gondwana rainforests — presenting imagined entities that embody the spirit of this ancient ecosystem and the dense networks of life beneath its canopy. Kawabata fuses the hand-made with the experimental, transforming industrial textile waste into sculptural forms that feel both organic and otherworldly; through stitching, dyeing, painting, and resin application, she creates objects that appear as relics from another civilisation or specimens unearthed from the forest floor, oscillating between design object and sculptural artefact.

Her practice is driven by material curiosity and a sustained investigation into sustainability and transformation. By reconfiguring discarded textiles into objects of renewed significance, Kawabata challenges conventional ideas about value, labour, and permanence, using waste not simply as reuse but as a way to imagine new purpose through intention, time, and craft. Each work reflects cycles of use, decay, and renewal — tracing material through systems of production and consumption and inviting viewers to consider the broader ecological and cultural implications of making. Her work reminds us that transformation is both a physical and conceptual act: one that acknowledges fragility while celebrating the persistence of life that adapts and endures.