artisan

Seljak Brand was founded by sisters Karina and Samantha Seljak. It was a love of Australian resources that drew Karina home from her work in local food production in Brooklyn, New York. Trained in fashion design, she’d become acutely aware of the waste in the manufacturing world. Sam had worked at Indigenous creative agency Gilimbaa for several years and had started multiple community-driven initiatives in Brisbane. She was ready to crystallise her learnings from purpose-driven business into her own social enterprise, Seljak Brand. Inspired by the resourceful and mutually beneficial business practices Seljak Brand saw sprouting up all around them, they poured their time into understanding the circular economy and closed loop models. Seljak Brand’s respect for Australian wool lead them to the oldest weaving mill in Australia, which retains all of its production offcuts for future use. Using these offcuts to make blankets, they incorporated a closed loop system that re-manufactures the blankets at the end of their useable life. After working with Australia’s oldest wool mill for a few years, they started running out of waste – which is a good problem to have! But they wanted to divert even more textiles waste from landfill, so they looked overseas. Discovering a mill in Lithuania that collected its own factory floor waste, and processed the waste of other mills, they took their first step into globalising their supply chain. Today, Seljak Brand work with mills in Australia, Lithuania and Italy to make their recycled wool blankets. This enables them to work locally as much as possible, and tap into the scale that mills in Europe offer.

Adele Outteridge gained her BSc from the University of Melbourne in 1967 then worked as an Experimental Scientist with CSIRO. She studied with the School of Colour and Design in Sydney from 1984-88 and returned as lecturer, tutor. She taught at the Ku-Ring-Gai Art Centre from 1983-89. Adele now travels to all states and internationally lecturing and teaching. Her work in artists’ books, printmaking, sculpture and drawing has been exhibited widely, is held in private and public collections and has appeared in major publications in Australia and overseas. Studio West End was established in 1998 by Adele Outteridge and the late Wim de Vos. Since then they have provided a unique venue for teaching, mentoring, and exhibiting in a wide variety of visual art and design media. Their work is exhibited, published and collected nationally and internationally. “The teaching and practice of art is an integral part of our being. Without it there is no cultural development for humanity”. (Wim de Vos 2014)