In 2019, I was on university exchange in Hong Kong - a place where dense city life sits amongst nature walks and grassy mountains. It quickly became a place I enjoyed being. The people and landscape shaped a lot of how I think about our relationship with the environment and with one another. Something I remember noticing about Hong Kong was the coexistence of resourcefulness and waste - improvised systems like plastic bottles channeling rainwater down buildings, set against the heavy use of single-use plastics for takeaway and dining.

I was lucky to receive a scholarship through Westpac, promoting Asia-Australia ties which made this trip possible and opened me to meeting people across other disciplines like law, business and more. As part of this, I attended a leadership week in Shanghai and was opened up to the corporate world and its systems.

While in Hong Kong, I attended a talk by a bio-artist. Her name is Marta De Menezes and her work explores the possibilities of modern biology and biotechnology as new art media. She conducts her practice in research labs - her art studio. DNA, Proteins and Cells offer her an opportunity to explore novel ways of representation and communication. In particular, I was fascinated by her work ‘Nature?’ where butterfly wings were manipulated with the human hand to show humans’ intervention with nature. The butterfly’s genes are unchanged, so the new patterns are not transferred to their offspring.

Until that moment, I didn’t know this field of bio art existed. This multidisciplinary approach that cross-pollinated science, nature and creativity made me very excited. It planted a seed - one that stayed with me while moving around.

During this time, I also travelled through Japan, China, Cambodia, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Thailand. Each place had its own rhythm, culture, and way of life. I was lucky to travel with friends who were more experienced at navigating new places than me. It was a really nice foundation for how to explore new places - with some structure, and also a lot of chance encounters. I viewed a lot of galleries and exhibitions and began to understand more of my own design taste. I reconnected with my love of ceramics - taking my first ever wheel throwing course. I had previously worked at the Australian Ceramics Triennale in Tasmania earlier in the year as an intern, thanks to Vicki Grima. I made sure to take lots of photo’s of unique teapots, especially in Taiwan. I bought from local artists, and my favourite purchase was a small, curved, wooden comb that came in a textile bag.

Later that year, Hong Kong became more unstable, with protests spreading across universities and throughout the city on most weekends. Eventually, it became unsafe, and we were asked to leave the country. It was a strange time to be in Hong Kong, and that’s all I will say here. I was sad to leave, but luckily went to Thailand to stay with friends who had family there. I got really sick in this time, and wasn’t able to do as much as I would have liked to.

While travelling, I was reading “creation…” by x and these ideas I was beginning to think about in relation to industrial design process and outcomes.

I returned home in early 2020, and a week later the entire world changed overnight, thanks to covid 19.