In Place / In Practice: How Kelly Leonard (a.k.a Rock Chick Studio) captures the essence of the iconic mining town, Broken Hill
12/8/26
One of the hills that Regional Arts NSW (RANSW) will die on is that regional artists have a special place in the Australian arts & cultural sector. Our CEO Tracey Callinan explains why:
“If you want to look at where a lot of really cutting-edge work is happening, look to regional places. I believe that one of the reasons that’s happening is because people who are creating in regional places have a really strong sense of place and it works its way into their practice.”
As a RANSW staff member, the best thing about my job is travelling to regional towns around the state. Every place I have visited has a distinct essence and, in my opinion, the easiest way to understand this is to look to the work of the artists that live there.
Almost a year ago, I visited Broken Hill for the first time and met local artist, Kelly Leonard. Kelly’s weaving and jewellery practice perfectly encapsulates a unique sense of place, introducing me to the history, landscape and culture of one of our country’s most iconic places.
Kelly is a textile artist, known for her loom-based weaving. She learnt the craft from second generation Bauhaus weaver Marcella Hempel, who came to Australia in the 1950s.
“Her philosophy and technical skills impacted me for a lifetime because I was 17 when I met her,” Kelly said.
She attended Riverina College of Advanced Education in Wagga Wagga (now Charles Sturt University) learning from Marcella until the age of 21. She describes this educational as pivotal, teaching her the discipline of her craft.
“Marcella worked for industry, in a semi-production mode making blankets for companies like Qantas. She taught me how to look at weaving as a conversation that’s happening between materials and structure. You always sample before you commit to a piece, trying out every possibility and playing with materials and with structure. I still do that now and I specifically learnt that from Marcella.”
Image: Artist Kelly Leonard in her home studio, Broken Hill NSW. Photo by Beatrice Waller.
Image: Kelly Leonard, Weaving with copper and conductive yarn (work in progress), 2025. Photo by Kelly Leonard.
Image: Kelly Leonard, Menindee, 2020. Photo by Kelly Leonard.
But despite having this training, Kelly didn’t always work as an artist, spending many years providing for herself by working as a chef and running restaurants in Canberra, leaving very little time to make her own artwork.
It wasn’t until 2016 that she was able to reactivate her arts practice. In that year, she attended Artlands in Dubbo, a conference held by Regional Arts Australia and delivered by Regional Arts NSW that was designed to spotlight arts and creative practice in regional, rural and remote Australia.
“I heard pivotal people speaking and I met people there that I then went on to work collaboratively with. It was like finding people that speak your language. It was such a strong feeling of, ‘this is where I fit’ after feeling like I didn’t fit for a lifetime. So, whether it was serendipity, timing, or whatever, that was a pivotal moment. After that I went for bursaries and grants and attended Artstate and Artlands. And my career developed from there.”
Kelly ended up getting a job with West Darling Arts, the Regional Arts Development Organisation (RADO) that services Broken Hill, and she made the move west. Though she wasn’t born in Broken Hill, her grandparents met there and it was her mother’s hometown, so she already had a connection to the place. When you look at Kelly’s work now, the influence of Broken Hill is clear.
Image: Kelly Leonard, Transmission (Junction Mine, Broken Hill), 2021. Photo by Kelly Leonard.
Located almost 1200km from Sydney, Broken Hill is about as far west as you can go while still being inside the NSW border. It is located on the lands of the Wilikalyi people and was colonialised in 1885 after silver ore was found.
Broken Hill’s association with mining is inescapable. It has by far the largest economic output of any industry in the area, and the town is shadowed by a mountainous ‘slag heap’, or pile of unwanted byproduct, dug from underground.
Kelly’s artwork combines her weaving practice with ‘fieldwork’ as her primary research tool, where she spends time in the environment collecting sounds and materials, and connecting with place. One important theme of her work is the impact of industry, particularly extractive mining. Woven into her textiles are local found materials like copper wire and quartz.
“I like working with bell wire. It’s used to set the explosives underground in mining, but I reuse it and weave it into my work. It forms an electrical circuit when I hook up a field recorder and headphones. So, I can take the ribbons out there and they act as a receiver for the energies transmitted from the environment.”
She is currently looking to expand on this by designing a ‘milk-crate studio’ to fit inside her van. The intention is to travel and make work in response to the places she visits.
More recently, Kelly has also been learning a new craft and is exploring similar ideas through jewellery making. Taking the same principals of discipline and sampling from weaving, she has produced wearable art with ‘a raw and unflinching aesthetic’ (www.rockchickstudio.com). Central to this work is highlighting the process itself, leaving the evidence of the construction methods, materials and surfaces visible. She sells her work at local outlets, including the Broken Hill City Art Gallery, Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum and The Old Vic Studio Gallery as her alter-ego, Rock Chick Studio.
This shift into jewellery was driven by grief. In late 2024, one of Kelly’s mentors, Michael Petchkovsky, passed away. The process of jewellery making became a way to process this loss.
“After Michael’s death, I had to just saw, grind and file every day as a way of working through grief. That’s why I went into a whole different area, and it gave me something else to focus on. The name Rock Chick comes from Michael. He thought it was really funny that I lived out here and would call me Queen of the Rock Chicks.”
Image: Kelly Leonard’s jewellery works in progress in her home studio, Broken Hill NSW. Photo by Beatrice Waller.
Image: Kelly Leonard, Lucky Dog, Broken Hill NSW, 2025. Photo by Kelly Leonard.
Kelly incorporates local stones into her jewellery too, continuing her practice of embedding place directly into her work. In July 2026, she also had the opportunity to learn from contemporary jeweller and lecturer, Melinda Young, who travelled from her home in Wollongong to Broken Hill. Supported by funding from the Create NSW Next Steps Professional Development for Individuals program, Kelly was able learn stone setting so that her practice could continue to grow technically and conceptually.
Kelly also reflects on the significance of being a regional artist as both a challenge and an advantage.
“I think there’s positive and negative things about working as an artist here. Some things are harder, like access to professional development opportunities. TAFE isn’t running any jewellery courses or any art courses at all, for example. But there’s also freedom out here. I love the space and it was easier for me to be able to afford a house, which is my studio, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that anywhere else. I do feel supported by West Darling Arts and the Broken Hill City Art Gallery. And it’s a small pond of artists here, so I see people working a certain way and the ideas and the context and the philosophy driving it, like all of that makes sense for me and I just want to be around it.”
Despite never having been to Broken Hill before, I immediately knew something of its identity and the conversations about industry, environment and culture that are a part of daily life there through Kelly’s work.
Our country’s relationship to the mining industry is captured and critiqued in Kelly’s work. Her work perfectly encapsulates the ongoing national conversation about its role in Australia’s economy and its impact on the environment. country’s relationship to the mining industry is captured and critiqued in Kelly’s work. Her work perfectly encapsulates the ongoing national conversation about its role in Australia’s economy and its impact on the environment.
Kelly Leonard, therefore, is a great example of what regional artists uniquely offer the arts & cultural sector in Australia. They capture the cultural heritage, landscape and contemporary life that inform our sense of place and form our national identity. We can look to artists like Kelly to understand a little more about who we are as a nation and how we might like to be known.
Written by Beatrice Waller, Operations & Engagement Manager at RANSW
Image: Kelly Leonard and Maurizio Hirmer, Walking and Listening, 2026. Performance at Slag Heap, Broken hill. Photo by kelly Leonard.
Learn more about Kelly’s life & practice here: www.rockchickstudio.com/
You can purchase Rock Chick Studio pieces from Broken Hill City Art Gallery, Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum and The Old Vic Studio Gallery.
You can also find her work at the following upcoming exhibitions and markets:
- Walking + Listening: a collaborative performance with Maurizio Hirmer at Slag Heap projects and the Old Vic Studio Gallery (15 August 2026)
- Mundi Mundi Music Festival: Rock Chick Studio market stall (20-22 August 2026)
- Beyond the Dust Street Festival: Rock Chick Studio market stall (October 2026)
- River Stories at CAD Factory: exhibition (2027)
Cover Image: Kelly on the Slag Heap Broken Hill, 2026. Photo by Tanja Bruckner.