Step into a space where creative practice holds pain, power, and possibility – where healing isn’t a metaphor, it’s a method. Grounded in the belief that creativity is essential to living, artmaking becomes a practical way to navigate pain, assert agency, and reclaim control.  For the artists of the SICK AF Collective, healing is not separate from their work – it is embodied within it, born of necessity and care.

Spanning small-scale objects, textiles, photography, print, writing, jewellery and installation, the exhibition gathers artworks defined by an ‘essential making’. Notes, repetitions, and fragments sit alongside finished pieces, extending each work beyond its final form and into the conditions that produced it. Here, constraints and energy limitations are not just managed – they are negotiated. Adaptations and refusals are embraced as vital components of the creative process, where limits are transformed into new material languages.

Rather than illustrating making as a finished story, Creating Space centres on what happens over time – slow, ongoing, and often imperfect. This is a practice led by curiosity rather than clinical timelines. It is where survival is negotiated and care takes form. Here, care is not prescribed; it is practiced. In this approach, the process is never hidden. It remains visible as a trace, informing how each piece is encountered.

Following the inaugural  SICK AF exhibition, which centred the languages of illness, and THE STORM, which navigated rupture and uncertainty, Creating Space shifts focus to what comes next: making as a method of care.

The artists in this exhibition are moved by experiences of illness, disability, care, and distance; realities that deeply inform their work.  Across these works, individual voices emerge through personal systems of meaning and repair.

The act of making is shared with the audience not as an explanation, but as something lived, unfolding through material, time, and process. This is not symbolic. It is lived. Repeated. Essential.

Across the exhibition, artists speak from within their practice.

For Amanda Alderson, curation and creating beautiful objects has been a beacon of light in her recovery process.

Nadeen Brown’s multidisciplinary practice transforms her lived experience of disability into visual activism.

Claire B. Bushby sees creativity as a form of faith and a way to foster collective care, resilience, and deeper engagement with the world around us.

For Brad Coleman, the act of creating is more than just a visual pursuit – it’s a moment of stillness amid the demands of daily life.

Lucinda Crimson’s vibrant work sits in juxtaposition to the limits of her energy, with that negotiation shaping both her process and the work itself.

Catherine Higham, primary carer for her husband Geoff, explores what it is to be human, within living systems that converge.

With minimised use of her dominant hand, Shayne O’Donnell turned to her left, embracing variation, where uncertainty becomes part of the process.

Learning to adapt after chronic illness reshaped her body, Annamaria Weldon keeps her sanctuary alive with words and beauty.