Gunyah artist-in-residence program: 2025

Upcoming artists-in-residence: Zipper - Celeste Aldahn and Liam Kenny

Zipper - Celeste Aldahn and Liam Kenny

Celeste Aldahn and Liam Kenny are multi-instrumentalists who write music for post-punk quintet ZIPPER and duo BIG ECHO. Zipper’s 2020 debut EP ‘Dreamer’s Gate’ [Tenth Court Records, Australia and Urticaria Record, France] was textural yet taut, with lashes of new-wave pop brushing up against cinematic dueling guitar, while Big Echo is a dreamy synth-wave pop inspired by our continents vast and mysterious landscapes.

Celeste Aldahn

Celeste Aldahn is a multi-disciplinary artist and arts worker living on the Lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and the Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. Through a punk lens, her studio work investigates the hidden histories of women using sculpture, video, print, textiles and music. She is also a multiinstrumentalist, composer and producer, with numerous releases and international tours for projects Zipper, Nylex and Rule of Thirds, among others. She’s been involved in grassroots organising for over a decade, curating gigs, founding DIY venues and festivals and contributing to international music publications.

Liam Kenny

Liam Kenny is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and graphic designer, who lives on the Lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and the Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. He has been writing, recording and performing music for over a decade in projects Delivery, Zipper, Wireheads and Nylex, among others. He has numerous releases and international tours under his belt and has recorded with luminaries like Calvin Johnson of K Records. As a record engineer, he has recorded and mixed albums for Zipper, Big Echo, Draino and Wireheads.

Wireheads, 'Potentially Venus' LP 2023 - Album cover art, photography

and layout by Liam Kenny

" ... We plan to use our time at Gunyah to write demos... collaborate on song structures and experiment with new sonic directions, with guitar, bass, saxophone, flute, synth and programming drums; using Logic and a four-track tape recorder. As previous Newcastle residents, we also have a network of nearby musicians to potentially draw on. We also plan to explore the area around Gunyah to shape ideas for our forthcoming LP art, merch and video clips by taking 35mm photos and capturing videos and experimenting with cyanotypes ..."

Rule of Thirds, s/t LP 2014 - Album cover art, sculpture/installation,

photography and layout by Celeste Aldahn

You can follow Zipper and Big Echo on Instagram @zipper.unzipped and hear their music on bandcamp

Residency report: Nicola Smith and Elise Harmsen

Elise Harmsen on the Gunyah jetty, 2025

" ... The days were getting shorter and it was the middle of autumn and it was the beginning of May. Elise and I jumped out of the car with three jars of different kinds of pickles each. It was sunny and we collected kindling for the fire in the afternoon. It was a magical time in a beautiful spot. It was the first time I’d spent more than a night away from my son. We walked to the jetty and listened to boat and bird sounds. I made a series of watercolours in the afternoons and sat in the window seat watching the trees before that. The last days were sunny and rainy both and the evenings were devoted to long dinners and discussing our day’s pursuits. Elise read Vernon Lee aloud to me by the fire and by the outside sky, as I untangled a ball of wool. ..."

Nicola Smith @hellonicola

Gunyah residency report, May 2025

Elise Harmsen at Gunyah, 2025

" ... Every time I make a road trip, the sound work Via, 2000 by Caroline Bergvall travels with me. It is a ten minute recording of forty-seven different English translations of the opening line to Dante’s The Inferno. My favourite translation from 1911 provides the tone for our stay at Gunyah - a warm wooded resting place overlooking the beautiful water, land and sky of the Worimi People.

'Midway along the highroad of our days, I found myself within a shadowy wood, where the straight path was lost in tangled ways.' (Wheeler, 1911)

Nicola Smith untangling the wool, 2025

A car packed with three types of pickle, paper, watercolours, knitting supplies and enough wine and cheese to see us through the week. I had also bought with me a giant stack of photographic negatives that I had recently gained access to from the family vault at Koala Storage - a cache of images unseen in my adult lifetime. Antonio, Nicola’s son (and the subject of her latest body of work) sent off to kinder that morning not quite understanding the distance to Port Stephens or how many spoonfuls of ricotta he would receive that day. Antonio and Nicola’s partner Stefan would join us midway through our trip, bringing the wonderful chaotic that only a three year old can deliver. I can imagine it difficult for Nicola to be away from Antonio for an extended period of time. His curious nature and quick feet mark time and space in the precise present.

Antonio's quick feet, 2025

We arrived late in the afternoon and were greeted in the kitchen by a large yet timorous huntsman. Building the courage to manoeuvre all eight legs to the window with a long broom gave the introduction an other-worldly feel. After feeling pleased that we had completed the entry ritual, we realised that there was no escape once the panes were closed. The eventual release was cathartic - not knowing when or where we would next meet (and a lesser burden than a daily haunting of the window each evening). After dinner we spent the evening knitting and talking by the fire. Nicola managed to unfurl a ball of wool that had been causing trouble.

On the Gunyah jetty, 2025

The mornings bought fine and invisible rain. Mist sat heavy over the water and I would film the sunrise to send to my partner overseas. Fog and mist translate feelings of near and far so effectively. Nicola worked upstairs projecting scenes from a recent trip to Rome from which she painted from and I spent the days adapting a short story into film - The Compost of Rome 1906 by Vernon Lee (pseudonym for Violet Piaget), a French born British writer of the Victorian period.

Nicola Smith drawing at Gunyah, 2025

The days were mostly spent like this. Nicola working upstairs, myself downstairs until the sky decided to turn all the shades of blue in the world and we would reconvene to eat, drink, talk and knit the rest of the evening. The persistence of the past is heavy at Gunyah. You can hear it in the creaking walls made from deep rusty coloured tree boughs and the light that reflects up from the water and quickly moves across the rooms, seeking a place in which to rest before the million years of stars arrive at nightfall. We’re so appreciative of this time and space. Our knitting is unfinished. ..."

Elise Harmsen @esusannahh

Gunyah residency report, May 2025

Nicola Smith and Elise Harmsen at Gunyah, 2025

Upcoming artists-in-residence: Nicola Smith & Elise Harmsen

Nicola Smith and Elise Harmsen

Nicola Smith and Elise Harmsen met while working alongside each other at 55 Sydenham Rd’s Studios, on Gadigal Wangal Land, in 2015. They got to know each other through a shared a love of the cinema of Chantal Akerman and dill pickles. Nicola and Elise have gone on to have exhibitions together at 55 Sydenham Rd, Verge, KNULP, and 20 Macleay Street.

Nicola Smith, Je tu il elle, after Chantal Akerman, 2016, oil on linen, 45 x 60 cm

Nicola Smith is a painter living on Gadigal Land. She makes paintings in watercolour and oil looking to scenes from the cinema and from everyday life. From 2015 to 2024 Nicola was represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery. She has shown at Artspace, AGNSW, ACCA, AGSA, NAS Gallery, Firstdraft, 55 Sydenham Rd, KNULP, and MacDowell, USA.

Nicola Smith, I waited for me to believe in god, 2020, oil on gesso board, 25 x 35 cm

Elise Harmsen is a photomedia and performance artist who lives on Cammeraygal Land. Her experience working with archives drives her interest in the nuances of digital images and their relationship to memory, time, and space. From 2014 to 2018 Elise was a resident artist at 55 Sydenham Rd where she ran the adjoining studios. In 2022, she won the HIDDEN Films Award and in 2020 she was a finalist in the National Photography Prize, MAMA Albury NSW.

Elise Harmsen, Rests are moving silences, 2022, Dual video projection onto painted glass, installed at Verge Gallery, Darlington.

“ ... During our residency at Gunyah we will be planning our fourth exhibition together, to be staged late in 2025. Elise will be making a film, and Nicola will be making watercolours from Harmsen’s film. Our work will also be informed by the architecture of the house, and its surrounds. Having shared studio space in the past, and spent time making shows together, we have a simpatico way of working. We’re looking forward to being surrounded by the sounds of birdsong and lapping water ... ”

Elise Harmsen, Echo, 2022, Film stills after Antonioni's L'Avventura, at Knulp Camperdown, in Hear the echo... Why is it empty? with Nicola Smith, Photograph: Alex Gawronski.

Follow on their residency on Instagram @gunyahartists, Nicola Smith @hellonicola and Elise Harmsen @esusannahh.

Residency report: Bron Belcher & Harriet Gillies

"... We have spent two weeks in an amazing part of the world for what has been a peaceful, productive and inspiring residency.

Gunyah is the perfect setting for collaboration that allowed us to challenge ourselves to write with confidence, risk and ambition. On arrival, we immediately walked down to the pier and were met by over a dozen dolphins, who swam under our feet on the jetty before heading for the horizon. Day two day three, also dolphins, amazing. The residency was full of anticipation for when they would return. They played us hard.

Bron Belcher & Harriet Gillies, Gunyah residency 2025

We got to spend hours in this contemplative and beautiful setting, reflecting on our ideas, impulses and lives, and carving out time to do this together has been a real gift.

We worked on our parallel projects over the two weeks, Bron developed her writing project, which when we arrived was 50 pages of dense, eclectic and chaotic writing. Over the two weeks, Bron pulled it apart and assembled it back together as the beginnings of a meditative and experimental film project that is exploring the unaspirational and antispectacular as a site of deep meaning.

Bron Belcher & Harriet Gillies, Gunyah residency 2025

Harriet spent the first week deep in a hole of research. She read, listened to, watched and wrestled many ideas and theories around time, consciousness, dopamine, technofeudalism, black holes and attention. In the second half of the residency she completed a full first draft of a script, which she thought would be a short film, which is now maybe a 6-part tv show. Or at least a miniseries…

We were able to read each others work in progress and support each other in developing the ideas further, which definitely pushed both of us to go further with our ideas than we would have if working alone. It also made for great dinner conversation overlooking the water each night.

Bron Belcher & Harriet Gillies, Gunyah residency 2025

We tried to kayak, but it seems one of them likes to fill up with water. Luckily we had already made it to the other side when we really noticed, and now have a pretty efficient way of emptying a waterlogged kayak. It didn't dampen our spirits in the slightest and now we both think we could go on Survivor.

Bron Belcher & Harriet Gillies, Gunyah residency 2025

One night at sunset we saw a murmuration of about 500 White Cockatoos who were dancing in formation and over the surface of the water, which at that point was reflecting the orange sky and looked like literal melted gold. That made our hearts swell and made us feel so grateful to be in this place and with each other. How lucky we were to have the opportunity to go slower and deeper. That’s where the real work happens. ..."

Gunyah residency report, March 2025

Bron Belcher & Harriet Gillies

@bossy_model @harriet_gillies

Bron Belcher & Harriet Gillies, Gunyah residency 2025

Upcoming artists-in-residence: Bron Belcher and Harriet Gillies

Bron Belcher and Harriet Gillies

Bron Belcher is a writer and director, and Harriet Gillies is a performance artist. They have previously worked together on three large scale contemporary performance projects at Next Wave Festival and Rising Festival; sharing a love of experimentation and rigorous creative process. Bron lives and works in Merri-bek, Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land (Melbourne, VIC), Harriet lives and works on Gadigal Land (Sydney, NSW).

Bron Belcher on the set of Asian Male 60s Lead, a Tough Crowd production, 2023

Bron Belcher is the Director of Schoolhouse Studios, an artist-led space for creatives and the local community in Melbourne. She has ten years of experience leading experimental and contemporary practice in Australia’s preeminent arts festivals and organisations. She has held integral roles at organisations such as RISING, Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, Next Wave Festival, Dark Mofo, and Brisbane Festival, working across Australia and internationally. Bron is also the co-founder of film and television production company, Tough Crowd, currently with a children's feature film in development and hosts a podcast about Australian film.

toughcrowd.pictures

Harriet Gillies, 8/8/8:WORK, Rising Festival, 2022

Harriet Gillies is an award-winning performance artist and writer/director, whose work spans digital, durational, participatory, visual, immersive, new writing and hybrid text forms of contemporary performance. She worked with Robert Wilson at the Watermill Centre and Marina Abramović at Kaldor Public Art Projects. She's presented works in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and North America. Residencies include La Serre: Arts Vivants in Montreal, Bearded Tit in Sydney, the Cad Factory in Narrandera. Harriet makes risky work in an increasingly risk-averse environment by embracing complex and paradoxical ideas. Her creative process allows audiences to contemplate the way that technology shapes contemporary psychology.

harrietgillies.com

"During our residency at Gunyah we are looking forward to being immersed in nature, deepening our collaborations and supporting each other's practices. We will be dramaturg and creative collaborator for each other..."

During their residency, Bron plans to develop a performance art project developed from her road trip through the Nullarbor: "Driving solo through the Nullarbor was life changing. By design, I had no one to talk to so began writing to express the many thoughts and feelings that came up on this journey. I know have 50 pages of dense, eclectic and charged writing I want to transform into performance."

Harriet plans to work on a short film storyboard about deep time: "My short film, I Want to See the Altars, is about a CEO who wakes up one day with an unshakeable drive to build altars out of everything around them to celebrate the beauty of the world. This drive threatens everything they have built for themselves, but sees them happier than ever before."

Residency report: You're only half an hour away, Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas

"... When we arrived at Gunyah we were heavy with the responsibilities of family life, work and the ongoing genocide of our people in Palestine and Lebanon. With so much weight inside us there was little space for the cells of creativity to bump and shine.

Each day walking down to the jetty at the mouth of the Karuah River, we imagined the water stretching to Bilad el Sham, the levant. Breathing deep our souls expanded far from Worimi country all the way home.