Upcoming artists-in-residence: Lucy Wylie (Cherry) and Othy Willis

Lucy Wylie (Cherry) and Othy Willis. Photo by Kirsten Chow

Lucy Wylie (Cherry) and Othy Willis are artists engaged in a perennial conversational collaborative practice. Our collaboration grew from inhabiting care for Frontyard Projects as Janitors. As collaborators we have written together for PLATYPUS: 00-02. Our artmaking and writing is an ongoing love-letter to shared practice and queer relationality.

"... During our residency at Gunyah, we wish to deepen our collaborating relationship through writing and shared meals, and involve a contemplation of land-based practice within the context of Worimi country. Through soaking in the storied walls of Gunyah from the artists before us we hope to shake up our creative processes, knowledges, and ways. We intend to write a collaborative article together, exploring how spaces like Frontyard serve as a creative commons for artists, dreaming of futures where shared arts-practices can flourish with radical trust. We imagine the writing would be centred within our time at Gunyah, reflecting on how it nourished the process. ..."

Lucy Wylie (Cherry). Photo by Teo Treloar 

Lucy Wylie (Cherry) is a white queer making art on unceded Gadigal land. Riverstone Literary Journal is their publishing project. They facilitate writing workshops and host open mic community poetry events and spend a lot of time in the bush. They tend to Frontyard Projects as a Janitor and have writing published in Cordite Poetry Review and PLATYPUS: 00-02  Energy. @ch3rrryyy333 riverstone.hotglue.me lucywylie.cargo.site
"... I'm looking forward to swimming everyday at Gunyah and getting to know the local birds and trees. I'd like to reflect on rigour and compassion within artistic practice. Writing this article with Othy will be at the fore, I also hope to continue a personal making/writing project exploring chronic pain. ..."

Othy Willis, photo: Kirsten Chow


Othy’s practice navigates through relational practices of repair, dissecting, hacking and creating strange or interesting hybrids. They live on Wurundjeri Country, Warrandyte, VIC, transposing practices from other contexts onto their work: gardening, repairing, tending. Othy talks about tenderness a fair bit and they aim to embed it in the way we come to objects - becoming graceful as materials move through our bodies. othy.hotglue.me
"... Whenever I inhabit a place, I’m looking for how things have come together, if they are to come apart, perhaps I work to repair them, but within this is a consent making, holding relationship with place; Gunyah…a tending to, cleaning, yearning, a practice of where the mundane meets the sublime. ..."

Othy Willis, photo: Lucy Wylie



Upcoming artists-in-residence: The World's Worst Wagga Guild

The World's Worst Wagga Guild, group photo 2026

Fiona Waters, Ruby Hoppen, Emma Louise Hayman, Lois Waters and Owen Lewis, are a group of textile artists from different cities, their collective, The World's Worst Wagga Guild aims to democratise art, foster community, and champion undervalued textile practices. Their collaboration brings together textile-led multidisciplinary artists in an ongoing exchange of skills, techniques and knowledge. They believe that giving it your ‘worst’ can in fact be giving it your ‘best’ – this is why the Guild was named after the 'World's Worst Wagga' - a quilt declared the worst in the world, but is now an important piece of Australian quilting history. The World's Worst Wagga Guild was established in 2023 on unceded Wurundjeri Land by Fiona Waters and Ruby Hoppen. Since then they have expanded interstate and exhibited together in Sydney 2024, Melbourne 2025, and Canberra 2026. worldsworstwagga.com
A "wagga" is a uniquely Australian scrap quilt, traditionally made by drovers and swagmen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These sturdy quilts were an essential part of their swags, made by the swagmen themselves from Wagga Wagga Flour Mill flour sacks, featuring the decorative Wagga Wagga Flour Mill logo.

Fiona Waters, My bellybutton is down here, 2025, scrap fabric


" ... During our residency at Gunyah, we plan to experiment, refine ideas, reflect on our first three exhibitions and to plan our fourth. We will develop an ambitious large-scale collaborative work that previously hasn't been possible with our collective working across different cities. We’ll experiment with shared processes, build modular quilted and sculptural components, and explore new ways of presenting our work. The residency will function as a studio laboratory to refine ideas for our next exhibition and collective direction. ..."


Fiona Waters, Knees, 2025. Scrap fabric.


Fiona Waters is one of the co-founders of The World's Worst Wagga Guild. Fi is a queer settler Gemini living and working on unceded Wurundjeri Land. Fi's quilts contribute to the radical histories of scrap quilt-making on this continent, with a focus on making do with what you have, recycling, and textile arts telling stories of self, and community. Fi considers the gendered narratives about textile art, quilting and domestic items and the need for straight lines, neatness and perfection. This 'straightness' is counteracted and 'queered' with the wonky lines and scrap fabric. Humour, nostalgia, and old blankets infused with community history speak to connection, sexuality, gender, and identity.

Ruby Hoppen, St Brigid's Shroud, 2024. Scrap fabric

Ruby Hoppen is one of the co-founders of The World's Worst Wagga Guild. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne, on Wurundjeri Land, where she explores identity and feminism through the production of textile works. Her work interrogates the experience of living with a visible difference and single motherhood. The old world and the new are often difficult to reconcile, her objective is to resolve and stitch together these two frayed components and make them stronger in coexistence. Her work scrutinises the cultural and socio-political inconsistencies within officially documented textile history.

Emma Louise Hayman, Untitled (good omen), 2025. Glazed ceramic, cotton rope, dowel.

Emma Louise Hayman is a ceramic, textile, and performance artist, living and creating on unceded Bidjigal Land, Lugarno, NSW. Their work navigates ideas of place, memory, belonging, and the concept of home, approaching materials intuitively and seeing art-making as playful, and an inherent human need. With a deep interest in local folklore, unexplained phenomena, personal mythologies and outsider art, they are drawn to kitsch, sentimental objects that sit on the edge of taste and comfort. Emma Louise believes use of traditional domestic mediums and ‘craft-based’ practises can become a political and feminist act, reclaiming and elevating overlooked materials within the contemporary art world. 


Lois Waters, Bend, 2025. Found fabric, cotton thread.

Lois Waters is a hard of hearing artist living on Gadigal Wangal land, who uses printmaking and textile processes to visualise her experience of sound. She is interested in what materials can and can’t do, as a parallel for the limits and possibilities of the body. Gently undulating, dissolving, or bent and strange, her textile forms consider how the materials of the body can reform to generate new sensory experiences. Her work mobilises printmaking and textile practices to reframe her experience of hearing loss, and capture associated shifts in the perception of external and internal sounds.


Owen Lewis, detail, 2026, fabric and plastic 

Owen Lewis is an arts worker and artist, working mainly in sculpture, living on Wangal Dharug Land. He explores a wide range of materials with particular focus on plaster, found objects and textiles. Owen's works are tangible meditations on life cycles with each piece becoming an artefact of the perpetual processes of decay, preservation and creation.

Upcoming artist-in-residence: Anne-Louise Dadak

AL Dadak in her studio, 2026

Anne-Louise (AL) Dadak is a curator and creative producer with over fifteen years’ experience across the arts. Living on Wangal/Gadigal Land and working on Dharug Land, she is currently Curator at Blacktown Arts, developing and delivering exhibitions, creative commissions, and public programs that centre local histories, contemporary cultural practice and community collaboration. Working at the intersection of art, design, heritage and public space, AL brings a multidisciplinary approach to curatorial and creative practice, exploring the layered stories of places and collections.  

A Real Experience (exhibition detail), curated by Anne-Louise Dadak.
Blacktown Arts, The Leo Kelly Blacktown Centre, 2025.
Photography by Silversalt Photography, Jennifer Leahy.

A Real Experience (exhibition detail) featuring Mothers' Memories, Others' Memories
by Vivienne Binns, curated by Anne-Louise Dadak.
Blacktown Arts, The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre, 2025.
Photography by Silversalt Photography.


AL was the co-founder of Province Studio and the artist-run initiative The Paper Mill. She has worked with organisations including the Powerhouse Museum, Museums of History NSW, The Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney Festival, Bankstown Arts Centre, PYT Fairfield, City of Sydney Council, Inner West Council, Tangentyere Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. She holds a Bachelor of Design from UNSW and a Master of Museum and Heritage Studies from the University of Sydney, where her research explored the role of visual arts in translating complex heritage across object and place-based contexts. This foundation informs AL's critical and socially engaged approach to curatorial and creative practice.


AL Dadak, Zwischen II, 2024, pencil, ink and guache on paper with object studies, 240 x 180 cm. Language Exchange, curated by Amy Prcevich. Fairfield Museum and Gallery.Photography by Document Photography.

"... This residency at Gunyah will support two research phases: expanding my curatorial thinking and advancing my creative practice. Working on Worimi Land, I will continue my enquiry Zwischen (the in-between) through a focus on the transitional time of dusk, documenting and developing new place-based works, while generating ideas for collaborative, intergenerational projects. Gunyah offers dedicated time for creative and curatorial research, made more significant that this is such a special location on Worimi Land. The inclusive family-friendly approach makes immersive work achievable for me, allowing meaningful place-based exploration possible, whilst also supporting my role as parent of a small child. ..."


AL Dadak, Zwischen II, (detail view), 2024, pencil, ink and guache on paper with object studies. Language Exchange, curated by Amy Prcevich. Fairfield Museum and Gallery.
Photography by Document Photography.


You can find out more about AL Dadak's practice on her website www.aldadak.com

Upcoming artist-in-residence: Cassie Sullivan

Cassie Sullivan with her work, wayi (to hear), 2023,
seven tarlatan monotype prints on frosted acrylic.

Cassie Sullivan is a Lutruwita/Trouwerner First Nations, queer artist based on Melukerdee Country in Lutruwita/Tasmania. She has a responsive practice that crosses disciplines of sculpture, moving image, photography, writing, sound, installation, and printmaking. Cassie works with a deeply considered process driven practice that prioritises a multi-sensory engagement with Country. She explores themes of intergenerational experiences that reside in bodily memory and the ancestral memory of water. Within her creative and cultural practice, Cassie works to constantly question what can be imbued through materiality to give voice to complex identities.

Cassie Sullivan, a spectral, a chronicle (evidence), 2025. Moving image, loop.


"... Site specific practice is important to me and I am drawn to the proximity of water to the studio. During my residency at Gunyah I plan to conduct a slow collaboration with the waterway and surrounding lands of Gathang Country, forming a deeper conversation. I will build on my exploration of a visual documentation of water having ancestral memory through listening, recording, writing, and developing a visual language around this conversation. ..."

Cassie Sullivan, a spectral, a chronicle (i), 2025. Copper.


You can follow Cassie Sullivan, on Instagram @cassiesullivan_._  and go to cassiesullivan.com to find out more about her practice. 

Residency Report: David Haines & Joyce Hinterding

" ... We arrived at North Arm Cove and Gunyah at night in the rain and spent the first few days discovering where we were. We began with the water, paddling our kayaks around the Baromee peninsula and up North Arm Cove on a beautiful, sunny, windless day. The combination of light bouncing off the waves and the sounds of people and birds travelling across the water was hypnotic, inviting us into a dreamy observing headspace, so important to our work. It’s incredible to be able to step out of the house and studio onto the water, float with the tides, and just simply watch the world pass.  Here began our Dérive, or drifting on unguided journeys through a landscape. 

David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Dunes, 2026


Our field trips continued for the rest of the week, and we rode bikes along the residual trails of the Walter Burley Griffin plan, for a visionary Port Stephens City and thought a lot about the concept of a paper subdivision, the meaning of the legalities of it all and the 4000 lots of technically non-residential land. The hidden potential of this imaginary landscape is sustained by occasional interventions that are improvisational and seem to skirt the boundaries of council rules and regulations, a bricolage occupation (so rare against the real estate crisis) and yet the landscape is layered with a history of Indigenous occupation and ceremonial places such as the Baromee Hill site.  Yet as present as the dream of a city and the history are, they are only partially existent, ghosts upon ghosts; psychogeographic thinking looms large in this environment. 

David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Dunes, 2026

We walked across the incredible coastal Sand Dunes on the east coast between Hawks Nest and Mugo Brush, and contemplated sleeping at the rocky headland of Yacaabah Head with the dingoes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible on this trip, but we are keen for another time. The dunes are timeless and full of temporal effects; it is entropy and negentropy at play here as the invisible wind facilitates the appearance and disappearance of patterns and traces in the sand, opening the way for thoughts on weather systems in virtual environments, and the sorts of things that tie form and function to presence and absence. A kind of mapping of the Invisible. The full-spectrum infrared camera rendered our imaginations onto another planetary world altogether. Suddenly, we were no longer on Earth but on a new, unnamed planet. This is why, for us, walking outside often leads to experiences equally as vivid as the wildest science fiction. 

David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Rockpool, 2026

Further afield, the volcanic rock formations on the southern side of Port Stephens are utterly dreamlike and hold imaginative signs and significance in their composition. Here is a kind of negentropic process that resides in what the mind is capable of constructing, unlike the one in photosynthesis, where a plant takes chaotic, raw sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide and actively uses energy to structure them into highly ordered sugars and plant matter. Here, the effects of entropy established by the wind, sun, water temperature, and weather work together not only to decompose the rock but also to create new geometric forms that enter our perception. Watching all these different flows of low- and high-entropy states in action inspires all kinds of ideas about negentropy and how it forms bridges between physics, biology, and information: Here we have country, a landscape that is seemingly unknowable, yet it produces things inside us.  A circle of lichens, growth patterns, and weathering patterns, hidden functionality and significances yet to be discerned. Documenting, recording, and collecting field data on these structures, signs, patterns, and formations is an important source of inspiration for our work in the game engine space, where we are developing speculative environmental techne in art.  

David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Wind Grass, 2026

Gunyah as a residency carries all these energies. A space, place, and time to allow observation, collation, planning, testing, visualising, reflecting, and experimentation. It carries the spirit of a collective for lots of people, something rare in this world. As a meeting place, the name perfectly captures the generosity of spirit that has made it a sanctuary for people all these years. ... "


Gunyah Residency Report, May 2026
David Haines & Joyce Hinterding

Upcoming artists-in-residence: GARUWA - Genevieve Grieves & Kieran Mpetyane Satour

GARUWA: Genevieve Grieves and Kieran Satour

GARUWA is a First Nations-owned production house. GARUWA (gah-roo-wah) translates to ‘ocean’ in Gathang, Worimi language. Founded by Worimi siblings Genevieve Grieves and Kieran Satour, First Nations knowledges are central to GARUWA’s ways of being. We amplify community voices, support the next generation of storytellers and create a better future.

GARUWA, Descendants, still from pitch video. 
https://garuwa.com/descendants-pitch

" ... During our residency at Gunyah, we are looking to reconnect deeply with our Country. The enriching experience will inform creative development and enable us to deepen GARUWA’s capacity for storytelling and collective healing. As a remote working team this time together will be invaluable in deepening connection, dreaming together and putting our plans into practice.
We plan to further develop Descendants, an emotional, healing journey exploring the harrowing legacy of Australia’s Frontier Wars, connecting the traumas of dispossession with ongoing systemic racism and segregation faced by First Nations peoples today. Australians will find deep human connection across insurmountable divides to heal intergenerational trauma ..." 

Genevieve Grieves, Motherhood in the Colony (portrait) 2023, 
Photographer: Jody Hains

Genevieve Grieves is a proud Worimi woman, award-winning filmmaker, educator, and Co-Creator and Creative Director of GARUWA. A leader in Indigenous storytelling, she creates works grounded in First Nations knowledge, cultural authority, and systemic change. Her acclaimed projects include Lani’s Story - SBS, Power to Country - ABC, and Motherhood in the Colony, as well as co-curating First Peoples at Melbourne Museum. Genevieve also leads sector change through initiatives like the annual First Nations Impact Lab with Doc Society, building bridges across communities and mentoring the next generation of storytellers with a vision for justice, sovereignty, and enduring cultural resilience.

Genevieve Grieves, presenting Power to Country case study at First Nations Impact Lab 2025.
Photographer: Ned Mansfield.

Kieran Mpetyane Satour is a Malngin, Pertame & Worimi Director drawing inspiration from his ancestral heritage to produce culturally nuanced, evocative and thought provoking films. Kieran's films celebrate the beauty, strength and resilience of Indigenous peoples in the face of colonisation, including NGURRAWAANA - Aesthetica Film Festival, MAHIKA KAI - Māoriland Film Festival, We Are Warriors: Through The Fire - Bronze Lion, Cannes Festival of Creativity, and The Truth About the Telegraph - Beyond Borders Documentary Festival. Kieran is the Co-Founder of 100% Aboriginal owned production company GARUWA and the Co-Founder of Indigitek, a not-for-profit established to increase the success of Indigenous people in STEAM.

Kieran Satour, Barkindji Country, 2025, 35mm film

You can follow @ga.ru.wa @gengrieves @ksat21 on Instagram and go to garuwa.com to learn more about their collaboration and previous work. 

Kieran Satour, BARKAA on Barkindji Country, 2025, 35mm film

Upcoming artists-in-residence: Haines & Hinterding

Joyce Hinterding and David Haines

Joyce Hinterding and David Haines are based in the Blue Mountains, on the land of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples, their renowned collaborative and individual practices operate at the creative intersection of art, aesthetics, and observation. Together, Haines & Hinterding, are known for approaching energy not merely as a subject, but as a ‘mode of expression'.

Haines & Hinterding, Geology, 2015. Installation view, Energies: Haines & Hinterding, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2015. Real-time 3D environment, 2 x HD projections, game engine, motion sensor, spatial 3D.


"During our residency at Gunyah we will work specifically with the volcanic geomorphology of the Port Stephens area for a new work commissioned by the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, for 2027. This project continues to build our vision of a speculative environmental techne, grounded in field trips and real-world scanning and recordings. We aim to invent a critically minded psychogeography for unprecedented imaginary landscapes, sparking a provocation about people's position within the post-colonial Anthropocene."
    Joyce will be making field recordings of the maritime radio environment, walking out along the coast to 3D scan the coastal geomorphology, photographing Lichens, making hydrophone recordings in the harbour and river environments, and working on sound processing and post-production in a digital studio they'll bring to Gunyah.
    David will be focusing on the rocky coastline and estuarine worlds, working with 3D scanning to capture geological formations, doing field recording and underwater photography; and working with sound processing and post-production software.

Joyce Hinterding, Floric Osscilator, 2023. Graphite on glass, wood, mixer with headphones. Dimensions: 2 units, each 85 x 85cm. An antenna that scavenges electromagnetic energy and a capacitor that stores it.


Joyce Hinterding is based in the Blue Mountains, on the land of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples. Her practice explores the broader concept of energy through fieldwork and research into electromagnetic phenomena, incorporating large sculptural receiving antennas and experimental graphite drawings. Joyce often collaborates with artist David Haines to create large-scale, environmentally inspired artworks featuring immersive, real-time interactive 3D. She has exhibited widely, nationally and internationally, including the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, 2022, and the Sydney Biennales of 2002 and 1992. Joyce is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney and represented by Sumer Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand.

David Haines, Field Study 2, 2023.  665 Nanometer Infrared Photograph, Queenstown, Tasmania. Dimensions: 100 x 100 cm.


David Haines lives and works in the Blue Mountains, NSW. His individual practice is characterised by a multidisciplinary, free-ranging approach that incorporates post-object art, photographic and digital technologies, and aroma. A central, defining thread in his work is the concern with the intersection of hallucination and the environment. David often collaborates with artist Joyce Hinterding to create large-scale, environmentally inspired artworks featuring immersive, real-time interactive 3D. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally since 1990, including Tate Liverpool (1993), the Sydney Biennales (2002, 2022) and the Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art (2004). David is represented by Sumer Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand.

Haines & Hinterding, Pink Steam, 2022. Video and sound installation: Single Channel Video shot in hyper colour infrared at 470 nm on a specially modified camera, Stereo Sound + 6 Channel live sound of Cosmic Rays (muons).


You can follow Haines & Hinterding on Instagram @joycehinterding and @davidhainesart and go to haineshinterding.net to find out more about their practice.
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