Material Encounters presents a series of handmade woollen support objects within an exhibition environment designed to invite moments of rest and stillness. Comprising blankets, cushions, daybeds, pillows, and handwoven textiles, the installation creates a space where visitors are encouraged to slow down and engage with the work through touch, rest, and quiet contemplation. Rather than functioning as objects for observation alone, the works are activated through use, inviting tactile encounters that foreground the relationship between body, object, and space.

Visitors are invited to sit, lie, or wrap themselves within the work, allowing moments of stillness to unfold through tactile engagement. Within these encounters, the objects create opportunities for self-care and, when facilitated, experiences of supported care, where the simple act of a person gently placing a blanket over the body becomes part of the work's relational dimension.

The work proposes that material forms create the conditions for rest, while the weight, warmth, and tactile qualities of felted wool and handwoven textiles engage the senses, inviting present-moment awareness. Drawing on phenomenological understandings of embodied experience, the exhibition positions the body as the primary site through which the world is encountered, suggesting that perception emerges through our sensory relationships with materials, objects, and space.

The work is informed by Joseph Beuys' use of felt as a material of warmth and protection, alongside Henry Emerson's photographs of natural landscapes, whose quiet, distilled imagery has shaped the exhibition's contemplative tone. Drawing on these artistic influences, Material Encounters brings material, site, and embodied experience into dialogue.