The Manifesto of Kindness Update

8 Apr

On Kindness, Creatures, and What We Choose to Keep Alive

There is a quiet thread running through my work at the moment—one that has been forming slowly, almost without announcement. It began as an instinct more than an idea. A noticing. A feeling that something essential is thinning in the world around us. We all know what I’m talking about, you can see it on every social thread and it’s about the only thing we hear about on the news. Madness and hatred seems to be taking over.

But this project is about something else. Something far more important and powerful.

Kindness.

Not as a grand gesture, but as a daily practice. A way of seeing, responding, and holding one another. Increasingly, it feels fragile. As though it is slipping from our shared language. As though care, attention, and gentleness are becoming harder to locate, harder to sustain.

This body of work begins from that premise: that kindness, or what we might call goodness, is becoming an endangered quality. And we must fight for it’s preservation.

*Detail of hand painted linen fabric with embroidery sections.*

The Creatures

Alongside this idea of kindness, a small group of creatures have continued to emerge.

They are not fixed beings, but evolving forms—stitched, painted, assembled. Each one carries a quiet presence. They are soft, attentive, often watchful. They do not dominate space; they hold it.

I’ve been thinking of them as keepers of kindness.

They embody qualities that feel increasingly rare: patience, care, curiosity, gentleness. They exist without hierarchy. They do not compete. They simply are present with one another, responsive, and connected.

In many ways, they act as a counterpoint to the world we are building. Not as fantasy or escape, but as a proposition:

What if the qualities of kindness are grounded again?
What if care was not secondary, but foundational?

The creatures offer no answers. But they offer possibility.

I don’t create these creatures with a preplanned sketch or design. They evolve in the studio, in the moment. Often I am interested in a certain mode of textile art; weaving, embroidery, and I simply let the form create the shape of the creature. This way, I am not attached to the aesthetics of the creature.

I’ve had a lot of fun with the 3 I’ve created so far and I hope that one day I will have a heaps of them: imagine a gallery floor filed with hundreds of them. Together we might need to come up with a collective noun for them; something that denotes kindness and togetherness.

*Detail of bead work application on the back of one of the creatures.*

*Close up of one of the first creatures created.*

The Twelve Panels

Running alongside the creatures is a new series of twelve textile panels.

Each panel focuses on a single quality that supports kindness:

Kindness
Empathy
Compassion
Humility
Patience
Generosity
Justice
Courage
Respect
Responsibility
Curiosity
Solidarity

Together, they form a kind of stitched manifesto—a set of quiet instructions for how we might live alongside one another.

Each piece includes hand-stitched text, pared back to its simplest form. Language is reduced to small directives. It is a code system and is informed / inspired by sewing patterns and instructions.

The intention is not to overwhelm, but to offer something clear, almost instinctive. Something that we can returned to as a source of guidance to live by.

The panels are slow works. Built through layering, stitching, pinning, adjusting. Time is visible in them. Labour is visible. Care is embedded in their making. I sit for hours in the studio stitching away at these panels.

There is something important in using textiles to speak about kindness. Across the world, people they often say that fabric holds memory: linen, silk and wool. I’m preferring to work mostly on linen with wool thread at the moment.

The stitching is repetitive; I find it almost meditative. It requires presence. It cannot be rushed. It takes as long as it takes. There is no fast 3 second hook here.

Each panel like the creatures are evolving in the studio with no real overarching plan except the word and the text panel itself. I have a rough idea of colour and shapes I want to use as a motif, but aside from that, they are evolving over time and I respond to what is unfolding in front of me.

Where the Work is Now

At this stage, I’m preparing for the Tamborine Mountain Arts Trail which is being held on the Labor Day long weekend, May 2-4th 2026. I am one of 70 artists taking part in the arts trail this year and I will be opening my studio for visitors throughout the long weekend.

I want the studio to be a space for conversation and a shared experience. I am currently working on an interactive installation piece to be a part of the experience. Visitors will be asked to leave a hand written message on strips of fabric in the “Kindness Exchange”. This is a quiet contemplation patio where hanging pieces of fabric have been created by visitors with their thoughts, reflections and notes of kindness.

In the studio in the back of the property visitors can take a look at the current evolving work as well as the catalogue of past works.

Where It Is Heading

This project doesn’t move in a straight line.
It unfolds. It gathers. It listens.

What began as a series of stitched panels and imagined creatures is slowly revealing itself as something larger—a living archive of kindness in a world that has long documented its opposite.

For centuries, we have recorded acts of conquest, conflict and domination. The great historical works—like the Bayeux Tapestry—map violence with extraordinary care and detail. What if we applied that same devotion to something else?

What if we documented kindness?

The Manifesto of Kindness is beginning to imagine itself as a contemporary, evolving tapestry / textile artwork —stitched with multiple materials. A counter-narrative. A quiet, persistent record of care.

Where this is heading is not a fixed destination, but a growing field of possibilities.

A final exhibition … YES. Perhaps even a touring one.

A gathering of artists, five, maybe more, each exploring kindness through their own material language. Not uniform, but connected. A constellation rather than a single voice.

A body of work that includes the twelve panels each anchored in a human quality and an expanding collection of creatures. Not symbolic in a fixed way, but relational. Each one carrying a presence, a temperament, a way of being in the world.

And importantly, this is not a closed system. Children and young people are part of this future. Not as audience, but as contributors. I envision hundreds, possibly thousands of community participants through workshops, storytelling, making, and play. New creatures will emerge. New definitions of kindness will surface. The work may be shaped by hands that do not yet know the “rules” of art, and therefore reimagine them entirely.

The collection of creatures itself is still searching for its name. A collective noun that holds multiplicity, interdependence, and care.
Not a hierarchy. Not a taxonomy. But a shared existence.

This project may live in galleries.
But it may also live in unexpected places: schools, public spaces, quiet corners, government buildings, corporate highrises.

It may never be finished.

And that is part of its intention.

Because kindness is not a resolved state.
It is something we return to.