7 – 29 March 2026 – Kara Wood

Kara Wood

Nice to meet you

7-29 March 2026

OPENING/MEET THE ARTIST Saturday 7 March, 11am – 5pm ALL WELCOME

MEET THE ARTIST Saturday 21 March 11am – 2pm with ARTIST TALK at 1pm

Nice to meet you is a collection of ceramic and textile sculptural vessels that explores the idea of self as something fluid rather than fixed.

Each work presents as a version of the artist, not as a portrait, but as a presence. The forms suggest bodies, containers, and characters, existing somewhere between familiarity and invention.

Working with clay and textile, materials historically associated with the body, labour, and care, the vessels become stand-ins for lived experience, carrying memory within their surfaces.

The self-shifts depending on who you are to me, and who I allow myself to be with you. These works exist in relation to the viewer; they are activated by being seen.

Which version of me you meet depends on who you are to me.

It is nice to meet you.

What is your subject matter for this exhibition?

The subject matter of Nice to meet you is identity as something relational rather than fixed. The exhibition explores how self is formed through encounter, how who we are shifts depending on context, relationships, and perception. Each work represents a different version of the self. Rather than a single identity, the exhibition expresses the self as something fluid, multiple, and continually becoming.

What techniques are you using in this exhibition?

The techniques used in this exhibition include thrown and altered ceramic forms, tufted sculptural vessels, and ceramic and textile assemblage. Each technique is chosen in response to the form and the ideas explored in the work. Together, these processes reflect my current practice of combining mixed media, allowing material, surface, and structure to shift in relation to the concepts of each piece.

Who are your influences for this exhibition?
This exhibition is influenced by feminist material practices that position clay and textile as embodied, relational, and historically loaded materials. It builds on my ongoing exploration of femininity, identity, and the lived experience of being female across different social, emotional, and historical contexts.

install photos below by John Cliff

Presented together, the works of Jan Downes and Kara Wood create a dynamic exchange in their March 2026 exhibition at Straitjacket. While Jan ‘considers the inner, multisensory responses that follow contact with the world’, Kara examines how ‘who we are shifts depending on context, relationships, and perception’. Their practices intersect through porcelain and textile assemblage, yet diverge in approach: Wood builds upon the fabric structure, while Downes allows the work to emerge from within it.
Jan Downes’ Afterimage represents ‘negative impressions that surface after prolonged exposure to a bright stimulus as a lens for understanding the self’. Exhibited in the front gallery, the presentation is both intimate and impactful. Each piece reveals its own intricate qualities, while together they converse, creating a cohesive sense of connection and belonging. The Sydney-based artist ‘sews moulds from fabric, into which she pours liquid porcelain’, producing forms that feel suspended in time. Her bold use of colour stands in striking contrast to the soft, gentle tones of white.
Kara Wood’s Nice to Meet You extends the exploration of her female ancestral line, ‘examining femininity, identity, and lived experience across social and historical contexts.’ The Girls begin as plaster-covered cardboard forms, translated into seamstress-style patterns and tufted thread by thread into vibrant, tactile works. Part vessel, part body, they suggest movement and presence caught in a quiet dance with the viewer. The Newcastle-based artist’s work, Joy, offers a simple yet resonant reminder: ‘If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, give into it. The Girls act as larger expressions of Wood’s porcelain ceramics, reflecting a more controlled process while remaining deeply narrative. Her exhibition explores the joy and intimacy shared between women, inviting moments of connection and emotional openness.
Together, Afterimage and Nice to Meet You form a dialogue between interior and exterior experience, control and emergence, structure and intuition. Through their distinct yet complementary approaches, Downes and Wood invite viewers to consider how identity is both shaped and revealed held within material, memory, and the quiet exchanges between body and form.
– Mariah Brettell, March 2026

Kara Wood is a Straitjacket represented artist. Her works combine clay, textiles and installation to explore women’s histories, labour and the persistence of memory through form. This is her 3rd solo exhibition at the gallery. View her Artist Biography HERE.