Emma Bingham

Holding through practice

Image: RISE artist Emma Bingham working in her studio. Photo: QVMAG.

Based in nipaluna/Hobart, Emma Bingham brings a deeply embodied and intuitive approach to her practice – one shaped as much by daily ritual as by lived experience.

Working from her studio at the Salamanca Arts Centre, where she has been a resident for almost four years, Emma maintains a consistent and disciplined studio routine. "I’m there pretty much every day and I think that that daily discipline allows me to create work in an incremental and generative way," she explains.

Originally grounded in drawing and printmaking, her practice has expanded into abstract objects, images and installation, with paper often at its core. Her work is informed by an interest in the body – not as a fixed form, but as a surface shaped through encounters with others. "I work with materials and processes that have literal and metaphorical resonances with the body and care: paper/skin, wax/flesh, fold/contain, scale/reach, cloth/wrap, stitch/repair, pigment/stain," she says.

"The materials themselves have a profound influence on the direction that the work takes. I work incrementally, between different materials and projects concurrently, often with just the smallest shifts and adjustments at a time."

Image: Emma often uses paper as a central material in her works. Photo: QVMAG. 

These interactions leave traces, residues, and subtle accumulations over time. Rather than beginning with a fixed idea, her works emerge through process: gestures held in the body, repeated and remembered, gradually forming meaning.

This connection between making and lived experience is central. Alongside her studio practice, Emma continues to work as a nurse - having spent 25 years in neonatal care and now working in palliative care. These experiences inform the quiet language of her work, where gestures of holding, tending and presence are embedded in material and form.

Her RISE work, Holding Pattern, is an ongoing series of 100 charcoal drawings developed over several years. Each work is created through a repetitive, physical process: the paper held within the 'holding space' of her arms, charcoal rubbed into its surface and then erased.

"As I turn and rub, turn and rub - a circle emerges through the repetition of gesture and layering of pigment residue," she notes. "When I’m not sure what to do, this physical process holds me in my studio space, and I find this process of repetition and reflection becomes generative.

"Subtle shifts occur in the interstices - the small intervening spaces - which deepen my understanding of my practice and direct the next iteration of my work."

Image: Emma works on a new artwork. Photo: QVMAG.

Being part of RISE marks an important milestone. For Emma, it is both an affirmation and an opportunity – to see her work situated within an institutional context, and in dialogue with a broader community of artists.

Her advice to others is simple but grounded in experience: stay connected and keep making. "It’s so easy to lose confidence and momentum after art school." Building and sustaining a practice beyond formal study can be challenging, but community and routine play a vital role.

Through her work, Emma invites viewers into a quieter space - one where meaning unfolds slowly, and where traces of touch, time, and memory can be felt as much as seen.

Explore more of RISE