Gillian Lavery graduated from the University of New South Wales in 2014 with a Masters of Fine Arts degree, First Class Honours and the University Medal.
Lavery's art practice sits at an intersection between drawing and contemporary textile art. Her subtle and often minimal work emphases materiality and the act of making. She approaches the territory of drawing with an emphasis on repetitive making processes, familiar to her from her background in textiles. Lavery transforms mark-making investigations back and forth between textile and drawing mediums. This results in work which is simultaneously intimate and abstract. It contains evidence of the hand and yet is almost unreadable. Lavery uses the drawing process, be it with thread, ink or pencil, as a means with which to explore objects and ideas. She considers her mark-making in conjunction with language, the use of marks as both sign and index. Recently she has explored more performative directions, bringing the making process, be it drawing or stitching, into the gallery space.