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.

Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas, Gunyah residency, 2025 

 
On our first morning we walked to Hero’s Beach. Could we swim through the rivers and oceans to the land of our ancestors? The water’s temperature was Mediterranean, a sign to heed.

We collected rocks, sticks and shells to rub, wanting to continue a practice in archiving, planning and dreaming. Maissa’s exploration in how we remain and how we connect.

Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas, Gunyah residency, 2025

At night Katie tried to teach Maissa tatreez, Palestinian cross stitch. The motifs tie us to land. At Gunyah, we decide that Ward el Sham, damascene rose, motif of Bilad el Sham ties us to each other. Katie stitched it on everything - a handmade fisherman’s hat from Tripoli, a rubbing of single waraq areeshi, vine leaf. Charcoal rubbings of tatreez brings us closer.

Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas, Gunyah residency, 2025

In our afternoons, we returned to the jetty. Wearing our thobes we talked about the boats bobbing on the river. Could we sail through the rivers and oceans to the land of our ancestors? We know our people's trade routes connected them with our city’s ports. We imagined roots.

Maissa filmed our imagined return.

Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas, Gunyah residency, 2025

At Gunyah we rolled waraq enab together. The leaves picked from the grape vines growing wild in our migrant backyards half an hour away from each other. We argued about everything; the rice stuffing, the same way we argued about how to make fool medames, a poor people’s dish of fava beans from the Arab world. We laughed and made up over videos for a future tiktok influencer project coming out soon.
Could we just earn enough money to fly over the rivers and oceans to the land of our ancestors?

Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas, Gunyah residency, 2025

Katie wrote a poem in English about our time at Gunyah.
Maissa responded with writing in Arabic language and turned it into a song, a secret for now because she needs money to pay a producer, another project.

Maissa’s niece, an artist and a musician, visited with her partner, a Yuin man. While Jace spent time feeding us off the land and waters, fishing and collecting oysters. Tamara and Maissa tried their hand at composing songs from words sewn together from Katie’s poem.

We returned to our family homes with a big pot of waraq enab to share with our loved ones, and a plethora of ideas to work on together and make reality. After some rest comes revolution. Free Palestine. ..."

Gunyah residency report, February 2025

You're only half an hour away

Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas

@maissa @kootie75

Upcoming Artists-in-Residence: You're only half an hour away, Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas

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

You're only half an hour away, is a collaboration of multidisciplinary artist and vocalist, Maissa Alameddine, and writer Katie Shammas. They are artists from Lebanon & Palestine, now based in Sydney on Dharug Country, their collaborative practice evokes ancestral stories.   

Maissa Alameddine, A lullaby for a rising, 2024, still from video 

Maissa Alameddine grew up in Lebanon, now lives and works on the unceded lands of the Cammeraygal and Dharug peoples. She is an interdisciplinary artist and vocalist, working across photography, video, installation, sound design and live performance. Maissa’s work explores the idea of migration as a chronic injury. Her work is personal, exploring inheritance and transference of heritage in the complexity of the diasporic experiences. Her work centres on storytelling and community, working through intersectional and intergenerational approaches that challenge normative discourses and prioritise self-determined processes in the contemporary art world. Maissa is co-founder and creative producer of Arab Theatre Studio, an arts collective initiated out of Dharug Land. @maissa

Maissa Alameddine, Song For Sitti- Song for my Grandmother,
video and textile installation, The Blake Prize 2024

Katie Shammas is from Galilee Palestine, now living on Dharug Country in north-west Sydney. She is a member of Sweatshop Literacy Movement and Arab Theatre Studio. Her writing has been published in Meanjin, Povo, Kindling and Sage and Red Room Poetry. She has performed work for Cement Fondu: Better Nature; Word Travels: Chasing Home, and RedRoom Poetry: Speak Australian. She is the mother of two daughters and works in the environmental sector. @kootie75

Katie Shammas reading The song that fills the valley, POVO, Sweatshop, 

Better Read than Dead, Newtown 2023

"... During our residency at Gunyah we plan to collaborate deeply, creating art that navigates memory, resistance, and connection in a space of healing and possibility. Amid grief from witnessing ongoing genocide on our homelands, we seek rest and reflection, and time together to lay the foundations of a long-time project we have been wanting to develop. Our process of collaborating at Gunyah will honour our shared heritage and respond to the tension between urgent creativity and grief. By reflecting on and researching ancestral journeys between Haifa and Tripoli, we plan to harness the stories of our elders who travelled these routes. Then we will infuse these narratives with art and music. ..." 

Katie Shammas, Knowledge of Land, Kindling and Sage, November 2023

You can find out more about You're only half and hour away: Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas on Instagram @maissa and @kootie75.