Yolanda Eke joins RE/CRAFTED, an exhibition exploring transformation through the hands of the artist.

For Saturday Indesign 2026, we have invited ten artists to transform selected pieces from our collection through their own creative practice, giving familiar Few & Far forms new meaning and expression.

Yolanda brings a layered, intuitive painting practice to the exhibition, shaped by memory, landscape and an enduring fascination with light.

Yolanda Eke is a Gold Coast-based Australian artist whose paintings move freely between abstraction, landscape and figurative work.

Some begin with a desire to hold onto the atmosphere of a place; others emerge from small rituals and moments of absurdity she notices in everyday life, with humour and unexpected details keeping the work open and human.

Time spent living in Spain continues to surface through her work alongside the Australian landscape and coastal life. Rather than working directly from photographs, Yolanda allows ideas and impressions to linger until they begin to take shape on canvas.

Her process is instinctive and layered: paint is built up, scraped back and disrupted, allowing memory, colour and fragments of place to gradually find their own direction.

Why did you choose this piece?

I chose the Helio lamp because I can’t think of many things that make more of a difference to a home than lighting — apart from art. Bringing those two things together felt like the perfect combination of two things I absolutely love.

I have painted lamps before and sold them, but they were quite labour-intensive, so I eventually concentrated more on my artwork. This felt like a lovely opportunity to revisit that idea in a completely different way.

Did anything surprise you during the process?

What I found most interesting was how much the piece changed under different light sources. It looked different in daylight, at various times of the day, and again when the lamp itself was switched on.

Because I was painting both the shade and the base, I needed to find a way for the two to remain connected even as the colours and surfaces changed with the light.

What did you notice about your object that perhaps wasn’t obvious at first?

I hadn’t initially realised how differently the light would fall across the angled surfaces of the base compared with a flat or vertical surface. I loved the shape and the way it caught the light, but it made choosing the right medium and application more challenging.

Did you know straight away what you wanted to do, or did the idea evolve?

I began with a clear idea and had already sketched out what I wanted to create, but the piece evolved once I began working with the changing light.

I became excited by the idea of bringing together different parts of my painting practice in one object. On the base, I used the more textural approach found in much of my work, dragging and blending colours so that layers are revealed through one another.

The shade became looser and more gestural, with less thickness of paint so the light could still pass through it. The finished piece grew from finding a balance between those two approaches.

What materials and techniques did you use?

I used acrylic and ink, applied with palette knives and brushes, along with pouring and dripping techniques. This allowed me to create heavier texture on the base while keeping the marks on the shade looser and more translucent.