Rachel Rutt has always been moving. Across continents, across mediums, across the delicate lines of identity that come with being many things at once – model, artist, child of migration. With Portals, her first solo exhibition at China Heights, this movement becomes method. Woven from hand-dyed silk and suspended in space, the works seem to breathe. They shimmer. They shift. They ask what it means to adapt and at what cost.

Rutt's exhibition unfolds as a soft reckoning: with the complexities of assimilation, the reciprocal shaping of landscape and self, and the myth of ever arriving whole. “I had never felt at ease,” Rutt says. So she learned to build from that unease, thread by thread. Working on four- and eight-shaft looms, she embeds questions into cloth. Can impermanence hold you? Can survival stretch into self-definition? Is belonging something made, not found?

Below, we speak to Rachel Rutt ahead of her exhibition, which opens on Friday the 6th June, about weaving as language, the radical politics of softness, and why Portals isn’t about resolution but the rhythm of becoming.

Portals is your first solo exhibition. What does this moment represent for you? 

In many ways it feels like arriving home. Creating this body of work has allowed me time and outlet to process omnipresent themes in my life, including migration, being a mixed race and third culture kid, otherness and the concept of belonging and share it with my community in a way that will hopefully invite others to do the same.

Your exhibition explores the diasporic condition through movement, alienation, and adaptation. How have your own experiences shaped this perspective?

As a child I lived between worlds. Born to parents of completely opposing cultural heritages and growing up in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan - countries of which neither were citizens - I spent my early life in transience and awkwardness, always the alien. No matter where I went, I was different. When I immigrated to Australia at the age of 15, those differences were further exacerbated. Never before having lived in a western nation, my assimilation experience was a process of endurance and resilience, of which I am very proud. But I’ve spent a lot of my adult life pondering the effect of assimilation, and how it can be reconciled.

I appreciate very much what becoming an Australian has offered me, however, one grows to suspect that the process of naturalisation also involves the loss of something precious - an ephemeral purity that may or may not be diminishing as one melts into the pot. My reactions to this fear have expressed themselves in various ways. For example, at one point I began adopting Australian expressions and pronunciation, just to fit in. In my twenties, I gave that up when I felt people had stopped asking me if I had an international accent. The humour in all this is that no matter what end of the pendulum I was swinging on, I had never felt at ease. It wasn’t until I finally realised this that I began to gain self acceptance. I didn’t need to justify myself.

You’ve described weaving as both mathematical and endlessly versatile. How do you balance structure with spontaneity in your practice?

When I started weaving my teacher was adamant about the importance of repetition.  She especially emphasised that creation is most often a process of problem solving. It was through this repetition that I learned the value of patience, logging and trialling, and respect for those who came before, whether great artists or humble artisans.  How weaving could be an extension of my own hand, building a relationship with the loom as a tool whose power I could wield. Eventually these repetitive processes became innate, and the intensity of the mathematics relaxed into trust.

Preparation of a loom can be divided into two parts: the warp and the weft. Both can be simply or intricately planned. For this series I set the warp with the intention of knowing that my weft would be reactionary and subjective. My favourite technique is Leno, which involves hand manipulation of the warp threads when weaving. I play around with it a lot. In the end I think it’s always about respecting the parameters of one’s tools, but not fearing being confined by them. I still have plenty to learn, and many techniques to explore.

Silk plays a central role in this series. What initially drew you to the material, and how does it reflect the themes of fragility and resilience?

I love it’s luminosity. It’s also incredibly strong, which is very important with weaving, especially for the warp (vertical threads). So while it has this reputation for being delicate, it’s actually the opposite. Silk is also an integral part of chrysalis, one of nature’s most gorgeous transformations. As a whole, it really mirrors quite a lot of misconceptions we can have about strengths and weaknesses in ourselves and others. It’s often at our most vulnerable we learn the greatest life lessons which equip us with the tenacity to grow and evolve.

You mention a return to the "bold simplicity of tabby" after experimenting with double weave. What did this simplification reveal to you?

It showed me what was unnecessary, which was crucial. I remember reading recently that plain weave (tabby) is admired by both novices and experts alike, because of its simplicity. In that way, I think it emphasises the idea of connection, how we can be on opposite ends of the spectrum, as individuals or cultures, but connected by the same basic principles.

Your work is activated by light, air, and space. How do you see the gallery at China Heights influencing the way ‘Portals’ is experienced?

Being able to create work with a specific space in mind has completely set the intentions of dimensions and dynamics for this show. The gallery room is huge and bright, allowing me to really explore how the weavings could take up space, but also respond to and be influenced by these elements. Some of the pieces are experienced three-dimensionally, and this is an exciting step forward for my work.

There’s a lyrical quality to both your writing and your textiles. Do you see language and weaving as parallel forms of storytelling?

Definitely. Weaving is such a universal cultural language and a time travelling bridge that takes us from the ancient into the present day. It has the capacity to tell the stories of our collective human history, as well as those closer to home, such as family heirlooms or traditional dress. Textiles evoke earthiness and belonging, a sense of our place in time.