Plant Sensibilia
Rebecca Mayo + Canberra Spinners and Weavers
7 November
Day + Time | Saturday | 11am – 1pm
Location | Canberra Spinners & Weavers Inc, Chifley Health & Wellbeing Hub, 70 Maclaurin Cres, Chifley ACT 2606
Entry | Free | No bookings required
Access | template, template, template
Join Rebecca Mayo and Canberra Spinners and Weavers for a special collaborative event as part of Living City: People, Plants and Place program, supported by artsACT and Australian National University School of Art and Design. Experience the Plant Sensibilia Machine, a large-scale, hand-operated textile dyeing device that brings the creative process from the studio to the public realm. Visitors will have the opportunity to watch as a bespoke printed textile design is revealed through the Plant Sensibilia Machine using the colours collected from the dye and fibre garden. The collaborative textile artwork will feature photos of the previous Living City program workshops held at Canberra Spinners and Weavers that include weaving, indigo dyeing and flax processing. This event will run in conjunction with the Canberra Spinners and Weavers open studios.
Living City: people, plants and place is a three-year visual arts and design program working with Canberra’s suburban communities and many urban natural environments. The program encourages accessible and inclusive, art-based engagement with urban spaces while addressing climate change, urban biodiversity, wellbeing and conservation. This program is funded by ArtsACT and the ANU School of Art and Design.
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Rebecca Mayo is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Art and Design, Australian National University (ANU) whose practice uses plant-based dyes and printmaking to examine interspecies and ecological relationships. Working collaboratively with plants and specific sites, she foregrounds environmental conditions, embracing what plants yield rather than pursuing a predetermined palette. Guided by curiosity rather than control, Mayo opens ways of attending to the temporalities of plants’ lives, exploring how these interactions play out, politically, historically and locally. Mayo has begun growing dye and fibre plants at Hack St Garden, the ANU School of Art and Design and at the Canberra Spinners and Weavers. Mayo’s Plant Sensibilia Machine has fostered collaborations between textiles, plants and community knowledge holders, including Aunty Deidre Martin, Jacob Morris, the Holt Micro-Forest (Canberra) and the Friends of Wanniassa Hills (Canberra).
SEE ARTIST WEBSITE HERE
Proudly presented by Australian National University, Canberra Spinners and Weavers and ACT Government through ArtsACT
Images | Living City: Plant Sensibilia Machine 2026 | Photos by Ashley St George