Creative Practice
My creative practice sits at the intersection of story, material, and experience. It moves across disciplines and mediums, guided by Indigenous ways of knowing and shaped through collaboration, experimentation, and connection to Country.
Through this work, I explore how stories can be held not only in objects, but in spaces, relationships, and shared encounters.
Artforms
My practice draws on a range of artforms that carry both cultural significance and personal expression. These mediums allow stories to be told in layered and tactile ways, grounded in making.
Painting
Painting is a space for reflection and storytelling—where colour, form, and movement hold emotion, memory, and connection to place. My paintings often draw from lived experience and relationship to Country, translating story into visual form.
Textiles & Weaving
Textile practices, including ecoprint and weaving, are deeply connected to land and process. These works carry the imprint of Country itself—embedding stories of place, season, and environment within the fabric. Textiles also connect to shared cultural practices of making, weaving, and gathering.
Puppetry
Puppetry offers a way to bring stories to life through movement, character, and narrative. It creates space for both play and deeper storytelling, often used collaboratively to share community stories and cultural knowledge in accessible and engaging ways.
Installation
Installation allows stories to extend beyond individual objects into space. Through layered materials, forms, and environments, installation work creates immersive contexts where audiences can move through and experience stories physically and emotionally.
New Media
Alongside traditional practices, I work with contemporary media to expand how stories are shared and experienced.
Soundscapes
Sound brings story into the body. Through layered audio—voice, natural environments, and composed elements—soundscapes create atmosphere and connection, grounding audiences within place and experience.
Moving Image
Film and moving image allow for the unfolding of story over time. They capture moments of process, place, and exchange, creating visual narratives that sit alongside and within other forms of making.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality offers new possibilities for storytelling—layering digital elements over physical space. It allows hidden or intangible stories to emerge, inviting audiences to engage in interactive and unexpected ways.
Immersive Exhibition Design
A key part of my practice is bringing these elements together into immersive exhibition environments.
How audiences experience stories
Rather than presenting artworks as separate objects, I create spaces where visitors move through story. Audiences are invited to experience, listen, and reflect—engaging with narratives that unfold across multiple layers and perspectives.
Multi-sensory environments
These exhibitions draw on sound, image, texture, movement, and spatial design to create environments that can be felt as much as they are seen. By engaging multiple senses, the work invites deeper connection—encouraging people to slow down, to listen, and to encounter stories in a more relational way.
My creative practice is constantly evolving, shaped by the people I work with, the places I learn from, and the stories that are shared. It is through this weaving of mediums and experiences that new ways of telling, holding, and understanding story begin to emerge.
The Legacy of Trevor Nickolls Exhibition
Curated by Kat Bell
The Very Hungry Pelican
Written and Created by Kat Bell
A little animation created for the inaugural Riverland Short Film Festival 2022.
Forest Spirit
A little practice animation made in Prague
Bilindji
A little animation work in progress