Who Is Amy Graham

Amy Graham is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer from Naarm/Melbourne working within the realm of objects, everyday materials and craft theory. Her work addresses the materiality of the second-hand, the thingness of objects, and the subsequent associated labour surrounding our decisions to acquire, discard or repair these. In a world of material excess, Amy seeks to work with what she already has access to or collects along the way. In this way, her work looks to the relationships we have with the things that surround us and occupy our spaces—the places they come from, the meanings they hold, and how we are constantly reinterpreting them. Amy Graham weaves, crochets, wraps, and threads her repurposed materials into tactile assemblages, sculptures, garments and installations in order to elicit a subjective response in the viewer and reassert a sense of value in the things we own. 

Amy’s practice is largely experimental and the intuitive nature in which she works recontextualises her materials, while still holding space for their past. Amy grew up observing her hard-working parents on the family farm in central Victoria. Her Dad always innovatively repairing old machinery and her Mum creating new things daily with nothing more than her sewing machine, knitting needles or a needle and thread. These memories inform her values and work practice today. Amy was awarded a Dean’s High Achiever Scholarship while studying her Bachelor of Design Arts (Visual Art) at LCI Melbourne and also holds a Diploma of Arts (Ceramics) from Box Hill Institute.