Valerie Kirk , Jo Victoria + Jackson Rumble
Textiles, CeRAMICS + METAL
7 + 8 NOVEMBER 2026
Day + Time | Saturday + Sunday | 10am – 4pm
Location | 12 Todd Street, O’Connor ACT 2602
Facilities | Wheelchair accessible, bathroom available, EFTPOS + cash accepted
Visitors are invited to the Open Studio of Valerie Kirk, Jo Victoria and Jackson Rumble.
Valerie will present recent work created during her latest residency, alongside commissioned garden drawings and textiles collected during her travels in Japan, Laos and South Africa.
Jo Victoria will showcase a selection of porcelain tableware, lighting and sculptural works available for purchase.
Jackson Rumble will exhibit his latest hand-forged metalwork, including kitchen knives, cutlery and jewellery.
Meet the artists throughout the event and learn more about their creative processes, techniques and the stories behind their work.
Also on display will be a special exhibition of small tapestry works by Valerie Kirk's Canberra friends, colleagues and students. Presented alongside Valerie's work, this collaborative exhibition celebrates the enduring connections, shared knowledge and creative community fostered through a mutual passion for tapestry.
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Valerie Kirk is an accomplished artist, tapestry weaver, writer, teacher and public figure whose work has made a lasting impact on the field of textiles.
Throughout her career, Valerie has travelled widely to teach, undertake residencies, exhibit and lead major tapestry projects. She has conducted research into Australia Indigenous textiles and has directed significant collaborations.
Valerie was commissioned to design and weave six major tapestries celebrating the Nobel, Japan and Kyoto Prizes in Science. Her achievements have been recognised with an Australia Council New Work grant, the ACT Creative Arts Fellowship, the Muse Arts Woman of the Year Award, and leadership of the Canberra Centenary Community Tapestry project. Her artworks are held in public and private collections nationally and internationally. In 2022, Valerie was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of her significant service to tertiary arts education and her contributions as an artist and curator.
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Jo Victoria has always been a forager, a collector of naturally textured and broken things. Always curious about where they had come from and what their story was. What was their connection to this place, or even to her in this time. It was a natural fit to study anthropology and archaeology at the Australian National University after she left school, even though she had already been seduced by clay and immersed in the world of drawing.
She began her working life as an anthropologist, documenting cultural landscapes in Desert environments in Australia, working with people whose connection to country was beyond anything she had ever known. Eventually, her love of working with clay took her back to the Australian National University School of Art and Design, where she completed a Diploma of Ceramics and then a Master of Visual Arts in Ceramics. It wasn’t until Jo had almost completed her studies when she realised that her previous career was influencing the works she wanted to make. These objects included fossil like organic burn out works in porcelain, porcelain skeletal structures and forms that appear like old broken shells and other foraged things. She likes to reveal the essence of things that were once living in her works and suggest connections through temporal and cultural influences in the landscape.
After completing her studies Jo embarked on a number of overseas art residencies, exploring ideas of place and connection through art making. These were pivotal moments in her development as an artist. Exposure to the larger world of ceramics, where anything seemed possible, using clay in ways she had never known expanded her thinking about what art making could be. Returning to Australia and back to the Northern Territory to complete a residency there honed her focus on Australian landscapes and environments. The country that we share and the spaces we inhabit have histories and stories and connections of their own that she likes to consider in her making processes.
In 2019, Jo completed building her art studio on the Australian New South Wales South Coast where she now works full time as a professional artist.
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Jackson is a fulltime maker from Canberra. His main practice is making custom handmade knives, specializing in forging Damascus steel (laminated steel) kitchen knives and art daggers. Before knifemaking he trained in woodworking at a joinery workshop, Thor’s Hammer that specialized in recycled timber and custom-made furniture. In 2016 he began working as a cutler for Canberra based knifemaking company, Tharwa Valley Forge, later transitioning to designing and teaching knife making classes. In 2023 Jackson tested for the Mastersmith ranking in the USA and received the award for the best submission of the 2023. He is now one of only three certified Mastersmiths currently practicing in Australia. Jackson sits on the Mastersmith judging panel for the American Bladesmithing Society as well as being the vice president of the Australian knife makers guild. Jackson participates in a number of exhibitions both locally and internationally. Most notably the Art of Cutlery exhibition in New York, USA.
Images
Valerie Kirk | Open Studio, 2023 | Photos by Tim Ngo
Jackson Rumble | Bagua, 2024 | Photo by Abe Shaw
Jo Victoria | Porcelain Pendant, 2024 | Photo by Brenton McGeachie