Ilka White

Ilka Jane White is an Australian artist. Her practice spans projects in textiles, drawing, sculpture and installation, art-in-community and cross disciplinary collaboration. Direct engagement with the natural world is central to White's making process. Her current work explores relationships between the mind, body, time and place, and questions the separation of these elements.

Early life and education White was born in Ivanhoe, Melbourne and grew up in the rural Victorian town of Maryborough, Shire of Central Goldfields with a steady stream of musicians, artists and makers dropping into the family home. White went on to study fashion design so she could become a costume designer and maker for the theatre. After a few years working with costumes, White studied weaving and attained an Associate Diploma in Studio Textiles from Melbourne Institute of Textiles – now RMIT University. Between 1999 and 2011 White taught on art and textiles at RMIT and was the teaching artist in residence at the Australian National University School of Art in 2012. In the World: (head, hand, heart), 17th Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial, National tour, Australia, 2006 WALK, Portland Arts Centre, Portland, Victoria and National Tour, Australia, 2006–2009 Drawing Out, First Site Gallery, RMIT and Big Screen, Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia, 2010 Life in Your Hands: (Art from Solastalgia), Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, National Tour, Australia, 2012 Material Culture''', Counihan Gallery, Brunswick, Australia, 2012 Petite: Miniature Textiles, Exhibitions Gallery, Wangaratta, Australia, 2012 Spinifex Country, Flinders University City Gallery, Adelaide, Australia, 2013 TIME, Poimena Art Gallery, Launceston, Australia, 2013 Contemporary Textiles, Exhibitions Gallery, Wangaratta, Australia, 2013 GhostNets Fish, Martin Browne Contemporary, Paddington, Australia, 2014 Partnership, Lot19, Castlemaine, Australia, 2014 Artists for the Tarkine, Brightspace, St Kilda, Australia, 2014 Walking the Merri, RMIT Project Space, Carlton, Australia, 2014 Group Exchange'', 2nd Tamworth Fibre Textile Triennial, National tour 2014-2016