Holding (woven embrace)

Showing at Counihan Gallery in the

Merri—Bek Summer Show until December 18

Holding

Holding is an intertwined series of works exploring the things we hold and contain for ourselves and for others.

Holding, 2024 - (ongoing)

In our life we hold so much. Holding pain, expectations, insecurities, grief. Grief for our loved ones, climate grief, grief about the state of the world, grief over genocide.

We hold anger and disappointment. Over our treatment of First Nations people. For the so many deaths of women at the hands of their partners. For apathy.

We guard and contain. Our feelings, our children, our bodies. We support, we organise, protect and grow.

We hold our anxieties, our relationships, our families. We are trapped, obscured, held back. Buried.

We crack, leak, weep. Ferment and fester. We hold on for dear life.

We collapse, we break, we let go, we fall apart.

A doorway gallery with various pottery and ceramic vases and bowls inside, broken and distressed. Behind, a muslin cloth hangs, covered in drips of clay slip.
A collection of various raw pottery pieces, including bowls, vases, and pots, in various states of collapse - arranged against a muslin cloth dripping with clay slip.

Shown at Glimpse Art Space in May 2024.

Review by Kannitha Lim

Holding (I don’t know what you expect)

2024 - 2025

Close-up of raw pottery or clay vessels, some with open tops, some collapsing on a cloth surface with scattered clay and debris.
Various raw pottery vases and bowls stacked together, with a prominent tall, carved clay piece in the foreground.
Various raw clay pottery pieces, including cups and bowls, stacked together, some broken and collapsing.
Close-up of various unglazed clay pottery tubes and vessels stacked on a surface.
Close-up of ceramic vase with handle, with clay and broken pottery shards scattered to the right, on the surface.
Close-up of a small, rustic ceramic bowl on a surface scattered with broken pottery shards and stones, with larger clay forms in the background.

Selected Photographs showing at Hysterical Legacies, October 8th - 24th 2025, Birnbeal Gallery, Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, Naarm/Melbourne.

A lifetime of holding things. Holding things in, holding for others, holding it together.

Holding pain, expectations, insecurities, shame and grief. Grief for what could have been and for what never will be.

A lifetime of pain, being dismissed, misunderstood, and disregarded.

We guard and contain. Our feelings, our children, our bodies. We support, we organise, protect and grow.

We hold our anxieties, our relationships, our families. We are trapped, obscured, held back.

Buried.

We crack, leak, weep. Ferment and fester. We hold on for dear life.

We collapse, we break, we let go, we fall apart. We re-emerge.

Hysterical Legacies - curated by Amelia Saward

Melanie Hoult is an interdisciplinary artist based in Naarm. She is drawn to working with natural materials, with a particular love for installation and ceramics. Melanie is passionate about social justice, the environment and our place in it. Her current series of work explores themes of fragility and strength, love and grief, and the connections we weave.

Melanie is a member of SLOWPOKE - Slow Power Collective, co-runs Glimpse Art Space in Northcote, and makes functional ceramics as Night Forest Studio.

After a couple of decades of holding on to (and refusing to let go of) her desire to make art while life had other ideas, Melanie has spent the last couple of years coming back to and embracing her art practice.