Portfolio

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The Legacy of Trevor Nickolls is an immersive, Indigenous led exhibition honouring the life, art, and enduring influence of visionary Ngarrindjeri artist Trevor Nickolls. Curated by Gudjal and Girramay artist Kat Bell, the exhibition reimagines Nickolls’ radical “Dreamtime to Machinetime” cosmology through a contemporary, relational, and culturally grounded lens.
Guided by Cultural Engagement Protocols, visitors move through the space as though travelling on Country, encountering poetry carried in soundscapes, animated storytelling embedded in augmented reality (AR), and symbolic encounters with the dove—a shared totemic presence in both Nickolls’ and Bell’s practices. These immersive elements transform the gallery into a living environment where ancestral memory, digital media, and Blak futurisms converge.
Bell’s curatorial approach, shaped by her Birrala Nyina methodology, positions the exhibition as a dialogical space rather than a retrospective. Original and reimagined works by Nickolls sit alongside newly created artworks and AR overlays, inviting viewers into reflective engagement. Through analytical descriptions, reflective prompts, and evocative visual cues, visitors are encouraged to explore the tensions and harmonies between ancestral presence and urban modernity that underpin Nickolls’ practice.
This exhibition reframes Nickolls’ legacy not as a fixed chapter in art history, but as an ongoing conversation—one carried forward by new media, contemporary cultural practice, and intergenerational storytelling. By blending painting, digital animation, sound, and relational curatorship, The Legacy of Trevor Nickolls offers a rare immersion into one of Australia’s most significant First Nations artistic lineages, celebrating the visionary imagination that continues to inspire new futures.

Threads is an evocative and deeply personal exhibition that weaves together the tangled strands of memory, trauma, healing, and identity. Created by Kat Bell, the exhibition brings painting, textiles, basketry, beadwork, macramé, crochet, and mixed media sculpture into an interconnected storytelling space. Through vibrant colour, playful forms, and tactile materials, Threads explores how dreams and memories knot, fray, and unravel across a lifetime shaped by both hardship and resilience. [
At its core, Threads reflects on the experiences of surviving trauma—particularly through the lens of a First Nations woman living with PTSD—and the lifelong work of piecing oneself back together. Despite the gravity of these themes, the artworks embrace lightness, imagination, humour, and rich colour. This contrast is intentional: it reflects the artist’s own journey of reclaiming agency and joy, of transforming painful histories into pathways of growth, clarity, and renewal.
Each artwork acts as a “thread” in an ever shifting tapestry of story and self. Some threads represent dreams—recurrent, surreal, symbolic landscapes where the artist learned to navigate fear, reclaim control, and rebuild her inner world. Others reference cultural continuity, such as traditional basketry (Jawun), connections to Country, and the role of language and inherited memory. Together, these pieces trace the complex entanglements of identity, intergenerational storytelling, and the healing power of creativity.
The exhibition brings together paintings, digital artworks, woven baskets, sculptural forms, textile dolls, and symbolic objects. Themes include:
• Healing and transformation: Brightly coloured visual narratives that move from darkness into light.
• Dreamscapes and memory: Symbolic creatures, shifting landscapes, and recurring motifs that explore the mind’s role in processing trauma.
• Cultural threads: Works honouring the artist’s Girramay and Gudjal heritage through weaving, language, and references to ancestral craft.
• Embodied experience: Pieces that speak to chronic pain, anxiety, masking, motherhood, grief, and resilience.
Throughout Threads, the artist invites viewers into intimate, often tender spaces—spaces where memory collides with imagination, where trauma is both acknowledged and transformed, and where each fragment contributes to a larger, evolving sense of strength and self determination. The exhibition is ultimately about reclamation: the slow, deliberate act of gathering up the threads of one’s life and weaving them into something whole, connected, and sovereign.

Taking Time is an immersive mini exhibition by Kat Bell—Gudjal and Girramay artist, curator, and PhD candidate—presented at MOD. (Museum of Discovery), Adelaide, from 8–12 July 2025. Created as part of Bell’s practice led PhD research, the exhibition invites visitors to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect with stories, culture, and time.
Blending First Nations storytelling with augmented reality, moving image, and interactive digital landscapes, Taking Time explores how stories from the past, present, and future coexist and move through us. Audiences step into a shifting digital environment responsive to their own movement, embodying the living relationship between people, Country, and ancestral memory. Visitors engage with silent visual narratives that encourage personal interpretation, reflection, and emotional connection, while AR activated artefacts deepen encounters with cultural symbolism and Indigenous knowledge.
The exhibition draws inspiration from MOD.’s Forever exhibition—which considers our perception of time—and the 2025 NAIDOC theme “The Next Generation: Strength, Vision, Legacy.” Through these lenses, Taking Time becomes both a contemplative space and a future focused experiment in Indigenous led digital storytelling. It serves as a prototype within Bell’s broader research into culturally grounded, relational, and sovereign approaches to immersive media.
A central component of the exhibition is the Birrala Nyina Sessions (“sit and listen deeply”), welcoming visitors into open conversation, shared reflection, and community centred storytelling. These sessions embody Bell’s relational methodology, offering a culturally safe space for dialogue about the stories, inspirations, and protocols within the work.
Through its combination of sensory immersion, cultural grounding, and reflective engagement, Taking Time creates an atmosphere of slow attention and deep listening—an invitation to pause and consider how stories shape us, and how we carry them across time.