Keep in Touch
Louise Samuelsson, Sam Kariotis, Alana Davis, Jorja Timms, Anselma Forlano, Amelia Dowling, Sydney Sydney

Keep in Touch is a creative project exploring loneliness through craft art, visible mending workshops, and a dinner party.

Loneliness at its core stems from a lack of meaningful communication and connection with others. If you’ve ever felt lonely in a room full of people, you know connection isn’t created from quantity of social interaction –  it comes from the depth of those interactions, when you truly feel seen.

Melbourne artists have been commissioned to create artworks that engage with the concept of loneliness – portraying the sensation and struggle, or celebrating the deep connections that heal it. Audiences are invited to reflect on their own relationships to connection and solitude, and explore how loneliness is felt, understood, and healed.

The activities connected to the project were developed to break down modern barriers to connection. Whether that’s meeting in person, or learning a helpful skill, Keep in Touch is a reminder that connection, like craft, is something we make by hand.

Profits from the Social Dinner will be donated to Friends for Good. Friends for Good is a volunteer-driven not-for-profit and Australian loneliness pioneer, joining the fight against loneliness. Loneliness does not discriminate. It is widespread and equally affects people of all ages and from all walks of life in our communities, in the city and in the bush.

Participating Artists:

Louise Samuelsson is a Swedish textile artist living and working in Naarm/Melbourne since 2018. Poetics, the visceral, and the corporeal are at the forefront of her work. Using needle and thread to puncture and move beyond the surface, her practice manifests healing and hurting working in discordant tandem. The fabrics implemented throughout her work are often donated by friends and strangers, imbuing them with countless personal stories that speak to the interconnectedness of people.

Website: https://louiseteresia.com
Instagram: @louise.teresia

Sam Kariotis is a multidisciplinary artist combinding mediums of collage with projection, installation, sculpture and sound work. His work reimagines both classical and mundane imagery exploring themes of magic, sexuality, and the unconcious. Through his core practice he aims to bring intuitive processes into collage and installation. Creating intimate encounters with the trans masculine body, he summons viewers to witness a nuanced and highly personal depiction of this lived experience.

Website: https://samkariotisart.my.canva.site/
Instagram: @samkariotisart

Alana Davis is a Melbourne-based artist whose work explores themes drawn from her lived experience and personal perspective. Working predominantly through craft mediums, she engages with the intimate and the everyday, using materiality as a means of reflection and connection.

Amelia Dowling is a Melbourne based textile artist, curator and arts worker. Trained in art history, curatorial studies, fashion design and collections, Dowling’s practice operates at the intersection of textiles, embroidery, psychology and language. Sometimes silly and sometimes sombre, the artist’s work explores concepts around vulnerability, memory and the unconscious. She exhibits in solo and group exhibitions, undertakes commissions and her work is held in private collections in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK

Website: https://ameliadowling.com/
Instagram: @amelia__dowling

Sydney Sydney(they/he) is a curator, painter, maker, and all-round snartist (science artist). They have an honours degree in fine arts and physics from the University of Western Australia, and they are currently living and working on Wurundjeri country. They are working on using emerging technologies in conjunction with textile work to develop new Queer relationships between artwork and viewer. This practice is deeply rooted in found materials and their relationship with the body.
Their debut solo show Other People combined stuffed paintings with augmented reality, and was shown at Schoolhouse Studios and Smith and Gertrude Gallery. They were co-awarded Blindside Gallery’s emerging curator of 2023 with Playroom, exploring trans and gender diverse perspectives of childhood. Their 2024 project The Frankenstein Show brought together over 30 Queer and trans artists to explore the ways we make our own bodies and seek community. They are currently curating performance works in bodies no bodies as part of Melbourne Fringe 2025.
With a background in quantum physics, they are also interested in the physical consequences of seeing and being seen. This has informed their recent exploration of drag performance as a part of their practice. You can see them performing under the mononym of Zero at various venues around Naarm

Website: https://withdotson.com.au
Instagram: @withdotson

Anselma Forlano is a Melbourne based textile artist and jeweller. They are working with queer and Feminist Methodologies to explore themes of love, gender, shame, and absurdity. The labour intensive creation of ‘functional’ objects serves as an act of sublimation, and the objects themselves become an intersection between mundanity and a performative excess, writhing with queered narratives.

Instagram: @anselma_forlano_

Jorja Timms is a multidisciplinary artist with a passion and focus on drawing and textiles, specifically quilting. Jorja is based in Melbourne and completed her Bachelors of Fine Arts in 2021 and her honours of Fine Arts in 2023. Working with themes of queer identity, humor, feminism, religion and interpersonal relationships she uses labour as her medium to explore and express these concepts. Words and text is a big part of Jorja’s work. A tool that she uses to bring humour, confusion, chaos and absurdity to her creations.

Social Dinner:

Making friends as an adult is hard – meet new people and make new connections over food and art! We’ll be serving three courses in the gallery and enjoying an accessible art activity to get the conversations going! Let us know your dietary needs when you fill out the form.
Thursday 25/09, 6pm – 8pm

SOLD OUT!

Free Visible Mending Workshop:

Learning to mend clothes and textiles has personal, environmental, financial, and creative benefits! Louise Samuelsson will be running a fun, entry-level workshop teaching simple hand-embroidery and visible darning. Bring a piece of clothing that you would like to mend, or just come and learn. All materials provided.
Waitlist only – Wednesday 15/10, 6pm – 8pm
Waitlist only – Saturday 18/10, 2pm – 4pm

RSVP HERE!

Keep in Touch is proudly supported by the City of Port Phillip Cultural Development Fund.