JamFactory ICON 2025 Aunty Ellen Trevorrow: Weaving Through Time

JamFactory’s ICON series celebrates the achievements of South Australia’s most influential visual artists working in craft-based media. Aunty Ellen Trevorrow is a proud Ngarrindjeri woman and a prolific, internationally acclaimed weaver with over 40 years of weaving experience. Weaving through Time is a celebration of Aunty Ellen’s unwavering dedication to culture, community and innovation in contemporary Ngarrindjeri weaving.

Curated by Kaurna, Narrunga, Ngarrindjeri woman Carly Tarkari Dodd, Weaving Through Time showcases predominantly new works by Aunty Ellen, produced with her long-time collaborator, Dr Jelina Haines. The exhibition visually and textually documents Aunty Ellen’s evolution as an artist, from her early traditional baskets and fish traps to her recent large-scale sculptures and wearable works, including dresses, jewellery and textiles. These more recent works highlight her two-decades-long collaboration with Dr Haines and demonstrate the depth and breadth of her artistic practice.

In Weaving Through Time, Aunty Ellen carries tens of thousands of years of knowledge, passed down from her Elders. Her work continues an essential legacy: the transmission of culture to future generations, ensuring the continuation of culture.

The exhibition will be launched at JamFactory Adelaide as part of SALA Festival before touring to JamFactory Seppeltfield for Tarnanthi, followed by 6 venues nationally across SA, VIC, NSW and QLD. It is accompanied by a 120-page monograph, supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and written by Carly Tarkari Dodd with contributions by Dominic Guerrera, Jelina Haines, and Aunty Ellen Trevorrow.

Aunty Ellen Trevorrow Weaving, 2025, Photo: Connor Patterson

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is a visually rich showcase of contemporary craft objects that appeal to Gothic sensibilities and feature symbols, motifs and aesthetic cues that draw on our innermost fears and dark desires. As a literary, artistic and aesthetic style, the Gothic has long been employed as a means to explore and express the darker aspects of life that are usually unsettling, unspoken hidden from view. The works presented in Heart of Darkness form a collective narrative that honours the Gothic tradition while reimagining it through contemporary artistic voices—proving that darkness can be a path to illumination, knowledge, discovery and creativity.

This exhibition features fourteen artists working across ceramics, jewellery, glass, fibres and multimedia whose works incorporate symbols, motifs, colour palettes and sensibilities that are associated with the Gothic. These artworks – beautiful, mysterious and tinged with the macabre – invite audiences to step into the shadows and experience the allure of that which dwells in darkness.

Darkness isn’t absence – it’s where the soul thrives.

Exhibitors: Welfe Bowyer, Claybia, Emma Davies, Belinda Guerin, Harriet Geater Johnson, Nicolette Johnson, Alicia Hannah Naomi, Karlien van Rooyen, Ebony Russell, Regine Schwarzer, Emma Shepherd, Drew Spangenberg, Alex Valero and Julie Winn

Belinda Guerin, Serpentine Altar, 2025, reduction fired stoneware, candles from Hahndorf Candle Maker, 330 x 240 x 90, Photo: Connor Patterson