Bio
Nicole Clift (b. 1994) is a South Australian visual artist, predominantly working in painting and tapestry weaving. Nicole’s studio practice engages with concepts concerning natural philosophy and meteorology to speculate on intangible phenomena such as time, entropy and gravity. Nicole's works are abstract, with the field of Abstraction itself referenced as an intriguing language for the intangible.
Nicole was recently commissioned to create new work for the 2024/5 major survey exhibition 'Radical Textiles' for the Art Gallery of South Australia, exhibited alongside works by Sheila Hicks, Sonia Delaunay, Kiki Smith and more. In early 2026, Nicole will be in residence at PADA Studios, Lisbon for 2 months working on a new spatial methods of creating with painting and weaving within architecture.
Nicole's diptych painting 'Particle Wave' recently won the 2025 RSASA Abstract Prize youth category, and her tapestries were selected for two international textile prizes held in Victoria, Australia in 2024.
Nicole holds a first class Honours degree in Visual Art (2019) from Adelaide Central School of Art, South Australia. Nicole has contributed writing to fineprint magazine, the 2024 Neoterica exhibition publication, various solo exhibitions as well as the 2025 Wakefield Press monograph on Dr Sue Kneebone.
Artist Statement
My painted and woven surfaces are concerned with different types of density: optically through pattern and pigment saturation, as well as a physical material density. I feel this preoccupation with 'dense' or 'full' surfaces is my response to the increasingly intangible screen-based imagery of our time.
My curiosity for approaches to intangible planetary phenomena (time, light, entropy, gravity etc) bleed into my abstract paintings and handwoven tapestries by way of ancient motifs, modern abstraction and optical pattern. Engaging with these concepts, and with an ancient medium such as painting and tapestry weaving helps ground me within our current age of systems collapse.
I particularly enjoy the material density unique to tapestry, with each element of the design physically stored within the one surface. I like thinking of textile processes as, among many other significant things, highly complex ways of storing energy and material. In the same vein, I like to consider my tapestries as momentary configurations of wool and silk, which may one day be unwoven for another purpose. Temporal in nature.
Photos: Rosina Possingham