Lisa Waup: TRACE
Gunditjmara and Torres Strait Islander woman Lisa Waup (b. 1971) lives and works as an artist and curator in Naarm/Melbourne. Working across a diverse range of mediums and disciplines, Waup’s practice celebrates the transformative power of art making. At her hands, everyday materials like paper, textiles, and found objects become tactile carriers of individual and collective memory.
Now open at MARS Gallery, Waup’s solo exhibition, TRACE, brings her meditative approach to the fore. Featuring a series of works on paper first exhibited at the 2025 TarraWarra Biennial, the exhibition is a continuation of the artist’s ongoing experimentations with printmaking as a site of exchange. Across the exhibition’s ten works, acts of repetition and layering operate as generative forces, allowing patterns and gestures to emerge organically and gradually —sometimes by chance.
In TRACE, Waup asks us to consider how the past, the present, and the future might coexist and overlap. What stories do we want to hold onto, and how might they change as we continue to grow, evolve, and transform?
Thank you for speaking with us, Lisa. To begin, can you share some of your earliest memories of art making?
Some of my earliest memories of art making are grounded in paper most often through drawing. There was always paper within reach, as if it quietly waited for me and in many ways, it still does. It became a place I could return to, a space where I could drift into other worlds shaped by imagination and colour.
Nowadays, you work across many mediums, ranging from jewellery and fashion, to weaving, printmaking, photography, sculpture, and digital art.How does your multidisciplinary approach shape the way you see and interpret the world? Do certain ideas arrive already tied to a certain material, or do they evolve naturally through experimentation?
I am deeply guided by materials. For me they often arrive already carrying memory and story, this is especially true of the found and vintage objects I encounter in my travels. I don’t hold a hierarchy of materials; they present themselves to me in many ways. I often collect whilst travelling, discovered in second-hand shops, found on the side of the road, along the beach, or while walking through the forest. Each carries equal potential. Sometimes I come across materials that align with a narrative I have already begun to consider. At other times it is the material itself that quietly reveals a story waiting to be told. Whether I am creating a piece of jewellery or a woven form, the materials become the conduit through which I explore and communicate these stories.
The materials you work with carry their own sets of associations and histories. Your works often suspend these histories in a moment of tension, showing that time fluid. Can you say more about how you navigate the relationship between past, present, and future within your practice?
The number three holds a quiet significance for me. It speaks to the rhythm of past, present, and future an ongoing sense of continuity that shapes an understanding of who I am. It is also deeply personal reflected in my three children, each carrying their own presence while remaining connected to a shared story. I think of three as a space of transformation where what has been, what is, and what is yet to come are in constant dialogue. It suggests a connection between generations, experiences, and moments in time. A continuity that is never fixed but forever unfolding. Within this there is a deeper awareness of self, one that is formed through these layered relationships and the movement between them.
Found objects have been recurring point of inquiry for you. What does it mean to reposition “old” or used objects? What shifts — either conceptually or emotionally — when an object is removed from its original context and re-situated within your work?
Found objects have long been a recurring point of inquiry within my practice. To reposition “old” or used materials is for me an act of both listening and transformation. These objects already carry traces of a lived experience – histories that are often unseen yet still present. When I bring them into my work, I am not erasing their past but allowing it to shift and be re-read in a new context. Something changes in that movement. Removed from their original function, these materials are no longer bound to a single purpose they open into new possibilities, new stories. There is both a conceptual and emotional shift to what may have once been overlooked or discarded is given space to be reconsidered and to hold value again. In this re-situating, the object becomes a point of connection between past and present. It carries memory forward while also making room for new meaning to emerge. I am interested in that tension – between what the object has been and what it is becoming and in how this transformation invites a deeper reflection on care and the stories we choose to hold onto.
This April, you are presenting a solo exhibition titled TRACE at MARS Gallery, featuring a body of works previously exhibited at the 2025 TarraWarra Biennial. Reflecting on the title, what does the word “trace” mean to you?
The word “trace” speaks to what is left behind, what lingers – sometimes visibly, sometimes just out of our reach. For me, it is tied to memory, to presence, and to the subtle imprints of experience carried through time. A TRACE might be fragmentary or incomplete, yet it still holds weight. TRACE suggests something that has been, and in some way continues to be. In my work I think of TRACE as both material and the intangible. It exists in the surfaces of the hand-made paper, in seemingly invisible printed inks and in the histories embedded within the materials. It also lives in repetition and in the accumulation of mark making. These traces become a way of holding onto memory while also allowing for transformation. The title reflects an ongoing inquiry into what we carry forward and how our stories, identities, and even past/experiences persist and evolve. A TRACE is never fixed, it is something that moves between past and present, revealing itself in layers over time.
You have previously described paper as your “first love”. The works in TRACE are, in some ways, a love letter to paper, showcasing its tactility and its ephemerality in all its beauty. What draws you to medium, and what surprises you about the medium?
Paper has always held a quiet pull for me; it was my first point of connection to making and in many ways that connection has never left. I’m drawn to its tactility, its responsiveness and its ability to hold both strength and fragility at once. It carries a sensitivity that allows even the smallest gesture to remain visible whether through mark, fold, tear, or stitch. What continues to surprise me is its capacity for transformation. Paper can be delicate and ephemeral, yet it can also endure, layer, and hold memory in unexpected ways. It absorbs, resists, and reveals often all at once. There’s a resilience within it that I’m constantly returning to. In these prints paper becomes more than a surface; it becomes a site of accumulation and exchange. It holds traces of process, of time, of touch. In that sense, it feels like a conversation one that is ongoing, and still unfolding.
This exhibition is also a continuation of your ongoing experimentations in printmaking, which you studied at RMIT and the University of Melbourne, and now teach in the Drawing and Printmaking program at the Victorian College of the Arts. You’ve spoken about the role of “coincidence” within the process of printmaking. Can you expand on how chance operates within this process, and what ideas or questions it opens up for you conceptually?
I often return to the sense of anticipation, of not quite knowing what will emerge when I print. There is a particular excitement in the act of pulling a print, a kind of quiet magic held in that moment of reveal. So much remains uncertain until the print is released to the light for the first time. The texture of the paper can shift the surface in subtle or unexpected ways, transparency or opacity inks can soften or intensify the image. Even colour behaves differently in this process, altering the final image in ways that can’t be entirely predicted. This is where coincidence begins to operate. Chance is not separate from the process, but embedded within it, arising through the interaction between material and timing. It might appear in the way ink settles, in the pressure of the squeegee, or in the way the paper receives and transforms what is given to it. These moments of unpredictability open up space for something beyond intention to enter the work. Conceptually this invites me to think about letting go of control and about the role of the unknown in making. It raises questions around trust. I must trust in the process in the material and in what might emerge through this chance. Coincidence becomes a way of allowing my work to speak back and enabling it to shift direction and to reveal in ways I may not have anticipated. It’s this balance between control and surrender that continues to draw me in. The moment of lifting the print, of seeing it fully for the first time still carries a sense of wonder for me.
Ideas of exploration also arise in this exhibition. In To TRACE (III & IV), for instance, the work gestures to the act of searching for something that remains elusive. How does this sense of searching shape your broader practice?
In To TRACE (III & IV), a sense of searching shapes the work. My practice is drawn to processes that hold uncertainty and are gradually revealed through making. It informs how I work with materials through repetition, allowing things to accumulate, shift, and dissolve rather than settle into fixed outcomes. Each work becomes a kind of tracing, responsive to what is already there and what emerges through layering. Searching becomes a way of working attentively with what is felt but not fully seen, allowing absence, memory, and transformation to quietly guide the work as it unfolds.
What do you hope viewers take away from the exhibition? Are there particular memories, feelings, or questions that you would like your works to evoke?
I would like viewers to question what or who once occupied a place given to them. To consider what remains, even when something is no longer visible or present in a direct way. Rather than prescribing a fixed reading, I hope the works open space for reflection on individuals’ memory, absence, and the quiet traces that shape how we understand ourselves and others. I am interested in how something can feel familiar yet slightly out of reach, like a memory that cannot be fully retrieved but is still felt. I hope the exhibition evokes a sense of pause and an attentiveness to what lingers beneath surface appearances.
