Kate Tribe, second from right, with her fellow exhibiting artists at Connect@Gunning Station. Photo courtesy of Kate Tribe.
In possibly the most meta move from Southern Tablelands Arts this year, Connect@Gunning Station is exhibiting art created on a train, in its art gallery, which just happens to be in a train station.
Yet it’s not a gimmick; textile artist Kate Tribe creates many of her cross-stitch pieces on trains and has done so for many years.
“Southern Tablelands Arts visited my home studio in the Highlands when I opened it up as a part of the arts trail,” Kate says. ”I got to know them, and I found out about Connect@Gunning Station.
“Because I had already made that connection between my art and trains, I was instantly like, ‘How do I make this happen?’”
Textile artist Kate Tribe ”stitches her feelings” on train journeys. Photo: Kate Tribe.
The exhibition, aptly named Enjoy the Journey, features works Kate created between 2012 and 2025, which were largely stitched on a mix of commuter trains and destination trips throughout southern NSW. Kate formed the habit in response to a desire to make use of her travel time.
“You don’t notice the time if you are using the time for benefit,” she says. ”I can do all these non-digital things; it’s not wasted time, and you can kind of be in a bubble of your own.”
Kate’s transition from crafter to artist took place over a lifetime, having begun cross-stitching as a child. It wasn’t until her grandfather, to whom she was close, died that Kate took her craft free form, discarding the patterns and experimenting with what she calls ‘’stitching her feelings’’.
The first time Kate stitched without a pattern, she surprised herself. The geometric patterns seen in the exhibition came about naturally because she’s analytically minded and her work life involves a great deal of data.
“I’m often asked if I’ve ever done flowers or more traditional cross-stitch designs, but the natural geometric patterns just come naturally to me,” she says.
Kate has found that the geometric nature of her work has an appeal to an audience not traditionally associated with cross-stitch.
“At the opening of the Gunning exhibition, I got a whole load of questions from men in the audience who wanted to know my thinking behind it and how I created the designs. Because they are quite different from what you think of when you think of cross-stitch.”
Kate sees this same trend with visitors to her home studio.
“I see couples or families come into my home studio, and often the men have been dragged along, expecting it to be really boring, and then they go, ‘Oh wow, this is very cool.’”
Two of Kate’s pieces that can be seen at Connect@Gunning Station. Photos courtesy of Southern Tablelands Arts.
The themes covered in the exhibition are varied, with Kate following her feelings that often express themselves in unexpected ways.
Her series titled Commuter Life is a direct reflection of the amount of time she spends on trains, with many people seeing the rail tracks within the final designs.
Her series Being Pulled, however, speaks to the feelings of being pulled between various aspects of her life that she loves. A fulfilling job, a satisfying home life and the desire to spend more time doing all of them.
The rare expression of joy about the modern conundrum of not having enough hours in the day is a result of Kate’s focus on creating a lifestyle packed to the brim with things she enjoys doing.
“I’ve always been a big reviewer of what do you hate in life and how do you get that out of your life?”
Kate rides trains all over southern NSW. She talks of day trips to Bungendore and Goulburn and regular trips through to Canberra or Melbourne to visit family. All the while stitching out her patterns.
Kate explains how the train travel often leads to surprising conversations. People are curious to know how she is creating her designs, and she even comes across fellow travellers with their own train projects, such as the young man who struck up a conversation and was then keen to get a selfie with Kate for his collection of selfies with strangers with whom he had an interesting chat on a train.
“I have no idea who this person is; we exchanged first names, but out there is this random selfie with us on a train. I was holding the cross-stitch I was doing at the time, and he was holding one of my portfolio cards with a design of mine that he had chosen from a selection of my work.”
If you would like to see Kate’s commuter-inspired designs, you can catch Enjoy the Journey every Friday and Saturday between 10 am and 3 pm until 5 September at Connect@Gunning Station.
The exhibition is also online at Southern Tablelands Arts.
You can view more of Kate’s work, as well as wearable pieces made from the creations, on her website.
