Participating Artist — Canvas to Catwalk Project (PIEEC x Redridge the Label Collaboration)

Project overview:
Participated as a contributing artist in the Canvas to Catwalk project, a collaborative initiative transforming visual artworks from Canvas onto the Catwalk through contemporary fashion garments. Canvas artworks were translated into digitally printed textiles and developed into a finished garment through collaboration with Pumicestone Indigenous Education and Employment, and Redridge the Label. The final garments were showcased at the Bribie Island Nature Festival.

Artwork Title: Sandwaves by Rachel Bywaters

Artist Statement

Sandwaves is inspired by Yarun (Bribie Island), where I live. My connection to this Country is shaped through walking. I spend time along both the surf side and the calmer waters of the Pumicestone Passage, where each landscape offers a different experience of place.

On the surf side, I walk alongside pipi shells, which were traditionally a bush food for the Joondaburri peoples and whose presence continues as part of the living shoreline today. Along the passage, I am drawn to the shifting sand wave patterns etched into the tidal flats, formed by the movement of water and tide.

These elements, surf and passage, shell and sand, movement and stillness, come together in this work as a reflection of my connection to Yarun. They speak to the natural rhythms that shape both the landscape and our own lives. Water can be calm or powerful, still or constantly moving, and we too move through these changing states. Sandwaves is a reminder that stillness and intensity are both part of the natural cycle, and that each holds its own beauty. Through walking and observing these rhythms in Country, I am reminded that we are not separate from nature, but part of its continual movement and renewal.