Kelly Leonard

Kelly Leonard - “The Art of Broken Hill: Traditional to Contemporary” group exhibition at Parliament House

Kelly Leonard is a Broken Hill NSW based artist living on Wilyakali Land. As a teenager, she was taught hand-loom weaving by a second-generation Bauhaus weaver, Marcella Hempel, in Wagga Wagga, Wiradjuri Land NSW. Her current practice is centred around bridging hand-woven (floor loom-based) textiles with found or recycled materials. The textiles use recycled copper wire from the mining industry as a conductive yarn, to act as a receiver for the inherent energies transmitted from the environment. She uses fieldwork as a primary methodology to interact with the environment and to record sounds, installations and performative actions for audiences. Her research aims to reveal historical and geologically oriented stories about the ground beneath our feet to generate care about our collective impact on the non-human.