EXCLUSIVE: Wai-Sai shares her Making It journey
The latest episode of Making It Australia saw Makers embrace food, designing paired food costumes and creating tasty self-portraits.
Hot temperatures only increased the difficulty of the challenges, with Sai-Wai’s candy-melt hands and Dan’s sugar glue falling through.
George took out the Master Craft with her intricate self-portrait using foods starting with G, and Rizaldy and Dan won the first challenge with their fish’n’chips paired costumes.
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But, one person had to leave the show.
After being eliminated in a shock announcement, Sai-Wai sat down with OverSixty to answer our crafty questions and share her plans following her time on the show.
O60: What was the highlight of being a Maker?
Just being around like-minded people. Meeting that tribe of weird little misfits.
O60: It seemed like you all had such a great bond on the show as well.
Yeah, yeah we did. Honestly it was pretty much immediate.
Quite a few of us were from Melbourne, and I remember even that first day, when we were flying up to Sydney… I remember being at the airport just [thinking] ‘I wonder if anyone from Melbourne is going to be on the show’ and just looking around and I clocked Russell straight away…. Russell had their little sequined backpack and I was like ‘Oh! Fabulous’.
I think when we landed I saw that Steph had been sitting right in front of me and she had this fabulous pink handbag. And then I think the next person I noticed was Jack when we landed because Jack had some amazing floral pants.
We just knew who our people were. It was really funny.
O60: What surprised you most about your Making It experience?
How kind of comfortable I was at doing it. I think it says a lot about the professionalism of the people we were working with, in terms of the crew, that they made the whole thing really comfortable and… made me feel really, really at ease. That I could be myself.
O60: On the show, you created pieces that reflected your Asian heritage, could you tell us a bit more about what it was like to represent Asian creatives on the show?
I think that one of my main drives to actually go on the show was to kind of represent Asian creatives. And I think once I met... everyone else who was part of the show, I was really happy to see that there was a breadth of age, experience, and diversity as well on lots of different fronts, and that was really refreshing.
I think coming from a migrant background as well … I think it’s one of those things that’s coming from a place of love from your parents where they want you to be a particular thing because they’ve worked so hard to get to a point, and if you are outside that mould, that can be quite difficult. So, I think there’s a lot of Asian creatives that do have that experience, and either had to go into the field they don’t necessarily feel passionate about to please somebody else, or [push against it to pursue] that dream.
Just being able to showcase my background and tell that story as well. And I think a lot of my art practice explores my sense of place as part of the Chinese diaspora, as well. It’s all tied in there, I can’t extract it from my work or part of my experience. It’s part of who I am.
O60: What’s next for you after Making It?
It’s been quite an interesting journey. So after we finished filming, I had a bit of a break, and I had an exhibition up in Sydney open, [and] managed to get a road trip in, then came back and managed to get some freelance work with the wardrobe department of an American reality series that was filming in Melbourne… I think that screens next year.
And at the moment I’m working towards an exhibition in November… I’ll have an exhibition in Melbourne in about November.
O60: It looks like you’re now tending to the barn’s garden now that you have been eliminated, can you give us an insight into what’s been happening behind the scenes with the eliminated Makers?
Yeah, so hanging out there. So Harley and Susie have locked us in the shed and they trot us out every week. But yeah, looking after the garden, I’m quite happy with that.
O60: Last but not least, if you had the chance, would you do it again?
Oh yeah, yeah. It was fun!
It was really fun, and honestly, I would say that you know, if there’s going to be a season two and anyone thinks of applying, just do it.
Making It Australia returns next week on Wednesday night.
Image: @makingitau / Instagram