My current body of work centers around creating immersive textile installations that focus on the experiences of being neurodivergent and chronically ill. It reframes knitting and crochet as essential practices of connection, resilience, and self-regulation, encouraging my audience to engage with alternative sensory, temporal, and emotional realities. By transforming the process of neurodivergent survival into a shared experience, the work addresses the invisibility of individuals with a disability and interrogates feminist labour as a space of care, agency, and shared embodiment.
The knitted abstractions move at a far slower pace than my previous paintings in acrylic. Where acrylic demanded speed, knitting insists on taking its time. This deliberate slowness is a refusal to do things in the most efficient way possible. As a disabled human I live through the understanding that disabled people require not simply more time but a reconfiguration of temporality itself. It is about navigating ableist barriers outside of one’s control. As an autistic woman, much of my energy is spent masking, monitoring gestures, words, and behaviours to appear “acceptable” in neurotypical environments. This hidden labour is both exhausting and isolating. My practice mirrors this endurance through the repetitive gestures of knitting and crochet, each piece taking hours upon hours to complete.
Both autism and chronic illness impose temporalities that deviate from the normative clock, requiring constant negotiation with a world that is not interested in waiting and slowing down. I challenge these ideas by making work that can only be made through waiting and slowing down.

Holly Goodridge is a neurodivergent artist working across hand-knitted garments, large-scale crochet installations, and participatory practice. Her work explores neurodivergent embodiment, sensory politics, and collective care. Through  the display of textile works that audiences are invited to touch, she creates spaces that encourage a slowing down, and shared connection.  Holly recently completed her Master of Fine Art at RMIT University in which she won the Lowenstein's Art Management Award (2025). She has also exhibited in contemporary galleries across Melbourne, including The Shape of Rest at Mailbox Gallery (2025), Shrine to the Childhood Friendships We Wish We Had at Bus Projects (2024), Wrestling Before the Gateway at Assembly Point (2023), and Through the Doorway at Seventh Gallery (2022). In 2026 she will be a part of the Craft Victoria Fresh! Fellowship and her works are also held in the State Library of Victoria’s collection (2025).