Bridges and Bloodlines 

Winner, The Bridge Arts Prize, 2025

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Statement: 
 

Everything comes from somewhere.
Everyone comes from somewhere.

Our stories connect the dots, forming bridges across time. Linking generations, marking the present, and carrying knowledge forward.

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For me, the Bridgewater Bridge goes beyond infrastructure. It’s a thread woven through my family’s history. My parents grew up on opposite sides, my mother in Huonville, my father in Brighton. Both born in 1955, they met in 1977, crossing the river, converging their lives, and creating new generations.

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This necklace is designed to be shared - worn between two people. It is a metaphor for the connections bridges create. Made from brass, copper, steel, aluminium, iron, zinc, basalt, bone, cast concrete, found objects, and enamel, it reflects both the old and new bridges, blending natural and man-made, raw and refined.

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Just as the original bridge was hand-drawn with human precision and the new one is shaped by cutting-edge technology, this piece bridges past and future, holding memories while making way for what’s to come.

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Materials: Copper, iron, brass, zinc, steel, enamel, aluminium, basalt, found objects, bone, cast concrete with artist's hair fibres

Dimensions: H=50cm x W=140cm x D=4cm

Documentation photography: Eden Meure

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I'm deeply honoured to receive the Bridge Arts Prize and grateful to major sponsors McConnell Dowell along with Derwent Valley Arts, 9B Studios, the judges, volunteers, and local businesses who made it all possible.

My work is a large necklace designed to be worn by two people, titled Bridges and Bloodlines.

It is a deeply personal response. My parents, Sandra and Greg, are the subjects. I reflected on what bridges mean to communities, to families, and to me. I embedded my own hair into the concrete pillar I created, in a quiet but deliberate act of connection.

Concrete is a material of bridges.. It isn’t a typical jewellery material, but I love pushing those boundaries. For years I’ve used unexpected materials from Thylacine DNA to fast food, to hold stories in wearable form.

Thanks again for the recognition and for the opportunity to be part of the bridge’s story.

Thanks also to Eden Meure for your beautiful photographic documentation of this work.

The Bridge art prize exhibition is open to the public from today at 9 Burnett St, New Norfolk
https://www.derwentvalley.art/winners-2025
 

The Bridge exhibition can be viewed at Derwent Valley Arts, 9 Burnett Street, New Norfolk, Tasmania

Media Links:

New Norfolk News Article 5th April, 2025

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​Derwent Valley Arts Announcement 

 

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