ABOUT
Rebecca Diele during her residency at the Australian Tapestry Workshop. Photograph by Michelle Sakaris.
Rebecca Diele’s practice explores the tension between structure and freedom, strength and fragility, control and release. Working through systems of repetition and restraint, she investigates how order contains the potential for its own disruption. Her work holds these oppositions in balance, creating a charged space where tension itself becomes productive — a site for transformation rather than resolution.
Grounded in process and material inquiry, Diele’s practice unfolds through a language of precision and patience. Each gesture — whether a mark, a cut, or a fold — functions as both an act of construction and a point of rupture. Her works sustain the moment just before collapse, where fragility and strength coexist. They invite a slower encounter, one that asks the viewer to attune to rhythm, variation, and the subtleties of change over time.
Through this sustained negotiation between rule and deviation, Diele examines how systems evolve under pressure and how disruption can become a generative force. Her practice is not concerned with resolution or final form, but with the continuous state of becoming — the point at which material, gesture, and intention remain in dynamic conversation. In this way, her works operate like living systems: composed, reactive, and always on the edge of transformation.
Rebecca Diele is a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. She holds a Master of Contemporary Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Her practice is informed by an earlier career in fashion and design, which continues to shape her sensitivity to form, structure, and material behaviour. This background informs her capacity to weave together precision and experimentation, constructing environments in which materials are both disciplined and free.
Diele has exhibited at Five Walls Gallery, Craft Victoria, Linden New Arts, Off the Kerb, the Australian Tapestry Workshop, and George Paton Gallery, with residencies at the latter two. Her recent works extend her investigations into spatial installation and systems of rhythm, exploring how disruption, tension, and repetition generate new possibilities for transformation. Her art offers a language of balance and suspension, where systems breathe, falter, and reform — tracing the ever-present potential for change that resides within structure itself.
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Grounded in process and material inquiry, Diele’s practice unfolds through a language of precision and patience. Each gesture — whether a mark, a cut, or a fold — functions as both an act of construction and a point of rupture. Her works sustain the moment just before collapse, where fragility and strength coexist. They invite a slower encounter, one that asks the viewer to attune to rhythm, variation, and the subtleties of change over time.
Through this sustained negotiation between rule and deviation, Diele examines how systems evolve under pressure and how disruption can become a generative force. Her practice is not concerned with resolution or final form, but with the continuous state of becoming — the point at which material, gesture, and intention remain in dynamic conversation. In this way, her works operate like living systems: composed, reactive, and always on the edge of transformation.
Rebecca Diele is a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. She holds a Master of Contemporary Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Her practice is informed by an earlier career in fashion and design, which continues to shape her sensitivity to form, structure, and material behaviour. This background informs her capacity to weave together precision and experimentation, constructing environments in which materials are both disciplined and free.
Diele has exhibited at Five Walls Gallery, Craft Victoria, Linden New Arts, Off the Kerb, the Australian Tapestry Workshop, and George Paton Gallery, with residencies at the latter two. Her recent works extend her investigations into spatial installation and systems of rhythm, exploring how disruption, tension, and repetition generate new possibilities for transformation. Her art offers a language of balance and suspension, where systems breathe, falter, and reform — tracing the ever-present potential for change that resides within structure itself.
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Rebecca Diele respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which she lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne). She pays respect to Elders past and present and extends this respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. She recognises that sovereignty was never ceded and that creative practice continues in dialogue with this place — its histories, rhythms, and the enduring presence of First Peoples’ cultures.