Emily Kate Lyall Byrne 

Project Title: Self and Symbol: The use of Ancestral Ritual and Symbol in Therapeutic Art Making 

Emily Byrne (she/her) is an Irish Australian woman living, practising, and treading lightly on Dharawal country, on the South coast of NSW. As an emerging art therapist, she is deeply interested in the ways embodied expression might support healing in therapeutic spaces.  

Emily grew up in the bush northwest of Sydney and has always connected deeply to nature and creative practices. She also enjoys relating deeply with other people, and the course of her life flowed naturally into the study of Art Therapy. Emily is constantly humbled by the power of intention and presence in interpersonal connection, movement, creation, and the natural environment. It is her passion to bring this intrinsic knowing to her work with others.  

Throughout her formal studies of fine arts, creative writing, counselling and yoga, she questioned how one might relate to place, self, and others in a so-called “Australian” context. She became curious at the spiritual intersection of place and person and asked, as Sarah Johnston once asked, “Who am I in this skin, on this land, and in this time?” Emily found that a deep knowing of self, including one’s own ancestral stories and practices, may be a helpful anchor from which to respectfully relate to this world, and she dived deeply into research on this topic.  

Emily recognises a need for creative practices which support cultural reconnection and identity, acknowledging the importance of symbols, rituals, stories, and myths in the continuation of cultural lines.  She has embarked on a self-ethnographic research project, connecting with her own fragmented cultural knowing and translating this into several artworks. Over nine art-making sessions, Emily explored the beliefs, practices, rituals, stories and symbols of her ancestors. Each piece weaves her own story with the stories of her people and acts as a bridge across continents and through time.  

It is Emily’s hope that this approach may also support others to navigate life in a contemporary context; where stories and symbols must transcend geographical locations, and where many long for a connection to their roots. Emily has found her research project to be a rich and joyful experience and hopes this approach may be the inception of something which grows and extends into the world beyond.