03/08/2026
For our final artist spotlight we spoke with artist Ella Rizzi, about her textile work 𝘓𝘰𝘰𝘮 showcased in Gallery 3.
Rizzi reflects on hand-made loom and deconstructing fibres as a measure of time and labour, and how audiences can gain an appreciation for a range of everyday fabrics by interacting with her works.
𝘓𝘰𝘰𝘮 is available for viewing in Gallery 2, until this Sunday, 9th of August.
Ella Rizzi
Trocadero Projects is supported by Arts & Culture Maribyrnong City Council
Trocadero: Textiles play an important role in your work, both as a material and as a connection to the women in your family. How has working with textiles shaped your understanding of craft, labour, and history?
Rizzi: I think one of the things that has become most apparent to me through working with textiles is just how difficult it is to describe the amount of labour held within them. And I don’t only mean the act of weaving itself. There is the building of my hand-made loom, preparing the loom, pulling apart and deconstructing fibres, and then hand-twisting them back together into something new.
Rizzi: There is a very particular physicality to it. You are working with your hands, watching the hours pass, watching the sun go down, and sometimes you realise that you’ve only made 30 centimetres of yarn. And that yarn still has to be woven. But even at that point, it already contains so much time and meaning.
Rizzi: Then you begin to think about where the material came from. Maybe it was an old blanket, or inherited yarn. You start to consider the labour that has already been held within it, the hours spent by someone else’s hands, long before the material came into yours.
Rizzi: I think that is what textiles have really taught me: to see an object not just as a finished thing, but as a record of time, of repetition, care, physical work, and often invisible labour. That has become particularly important to me when thinking about the women in my family, and the broader histories of domestic and gendered labour that are so often essential, but overlooked or undervalued.
Trocadero: What do you hope viewers notice when they spend time with the materials in Loom?
Rizzi: I think one of the most
