Eureka III
Elise Cakebread, 2026
150 x 90cm
Artist Statement
I began this work wanting to reclaim the Eureka Flag.
The flag I used was cheap, synthetic, the kind of object produced for mass consumption and political performance. I was repulsed by it. The hard geometry of the eight-pointed stars, the stark navy and white, the sharp certainty of the symbol. Rather than reclaiming it, I realised I wanted to cover it, obscure it, erase it.
Layer after layer accumulated across its surface. Lace, ribbons, school uniforms, lurex, dance costumes, nightwear, bandage off-cuts, safety pins, threads, remnants from earlier works and other discarded fragments became tangled. Too much, dense and unruly. I deliberately amplified emotional exuberance, ornament, repetition, care and accumulation, embracing qualities long coded as feminine as forms of knowledge.
The work is held together through thousands of repetitive running stitches - the most ordinary stitch, the fastest stitch, and the same rudimentary stitch understood to have been used in the making of the original Eureka Flag itself. Making this work became an act of staring the symbol down, of refusing to look away. Working through such dense layers required a heavy upholstery needle that repeatedly slipped, piercing my fingers. The act of stitching became unexpectedly physical, unexpectedly violent. With each stitch I buried the flag beneath discarded textiles while refusing to look away from its histories.
When the stitching was finished, the flag appeared almost obliterated. The stars had disappeared beneath dense layers of stuff. The white cross dissolved into a field of gestural thread. The work shimmered. It felt transformed.
Then I carried it towards the studio window.
Held against the light, the Southern Cross emerged once more. The stars glowed through the fabric while the stitched surface receded into shadow. I thought I had buried the symbol beneath thousands of stitches. Instead, it shone through.
That moment fundamentally changed my understanding of the work. I realised the symbol could not simply be reclaimed, it could not be erased. Its meanings are too deeply embedded within this place and its histories. They can be questioned, complicated and placed into new relationships, but they cannot be wished away.
It still shines through.
It cannot be erased.
It can only be confronted.
Elise is currently undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy at Federation University, Ballarat, examining how narratives of feminisim can be reclaimed through textile-based art practice in the Goldfields.
This research is supported by the Commonwealth through an Australian Government Research Training Progra Fee-Offset Scholarship.