Exhibition photography by Ali McCann.
Sheepy (2026)
Photographic print & needle felt sculpture
Commissioned by T.R. Carter for site-responsive exhibition Quid Pro Quo
This work is basically me wrestling with wool. It’s a material loaded with ideas of comfort, care and “salt-of-the-earth” wholesomeness, but also tied to the violence and control that sit beneath Australia’s pastoral self-image. I’m drawn to felting because it’s calming and connective, but I’m also very aware that this softness comes at a cost to living animals shaped by breeding, extraction and colonial agriculture.
I buy my wool roving from CWA-style charity craft stores, places wrapped up in regional, Christian and gendered traditions. Being in those spaces as a Queer man has made me realise how culturally gate-kept felting can be, and who tends to be excluded from its lineage. When I've asked about workshops or how to get involved I've been kept back. So I push against it. Where the gate keepers of craft traditions makes cute felt sheep, I make pornographic ones.
The work ends up sitting in that uncomfortable space between pleasure and harm, care and exploitation, inheritance and refusal. I’m interested in burying those ethical tensions inside wackiness, parody and queer camp.