Artist Residencies

All That We Are, Tasmania/ Lutruwita 2024

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December 1-14 was a time for me to immerse myself in a personal arts-based research project at the fabulous Shaper studio of All That We Are artist residency in Lutruwita/ Tasmania. Inquiring into the nature of connection and relationality, using the symbol and metaphor of the placenta as both a subjective and universal symbol of ancestral connection and mediator of intertwined identities.

During my residency I was undertaking a heuristic research inquiry about attachment, differentiation, and an understanding of authentic self. Using emergent, creative exploration – including visual art forms, somatic expression and the written word, as a process of excavating what it means to be human, to be fallible, to be achingly here, having traversed life until this point. Using a paring back of colour to reveal traces of experience through phenomenological resonance and inner reflection.

“I’m surrounded by images of placentas and it’s just dawned on me that I’m trying to birth something …I’m trying to mother my inner child I’m trying to re-parent my adult children …I’m trying to reconnect with my mother… I’m trying to birth my authentic self.

And with any birth there is pain in the body …it’s deep and visceral. Revelation as a revolution… as an opportunity to connect to a profound force that feeds me, like a placenta nourishes.”

Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Greece.

In October 2022 I travelled to Skopelos, a beautiful Greek island in the western Aegean Sea to undertake an artist residency with the Skopelos Foundation of the Arts. The focus of my residency was to explore the phenomenological nature of being, in relation to place and its connection to both held and emergent memories.

The body of work that revealed itself during this experience was held by threads of present experiencing; shapes, colours, light and shadows. Sensory noticing and evocations of times past.

Each day started with creating a companion drawing – this would be my witness throughout the studio day…a grounding resonance, a holding space for what would emerge throughout creative process and experiential knowing.