Out of hand: an exhibition featuring work by recent artist-in-residence Caelli Jo Booker

Out of hand, 2013 exhibition invitation

Caelli Jo Brooker was a 2012 Gunyah artist-in-residence and she will soon be exhibiting some of her paintings in the group exhibition Out of hand, alongside Aubry James Byrnes, Annemarie Murland, Marika Osmotherly, Mark Elliot-Ranken and Bernadette Smith.

Out of hand, 13 – 24 August 2013 
The Depot Gallery, 2 Danks Street, Waterloo NSW

Helen Hopcroft: artist-in-residence July 2013


Sophie at the beach, July 2013, photograph by Helen Hopcroft  

First of all, profound gratitude for letting me stay at Gunyah. Sometimes you don’t realise how stressed you are until a quiet space in your life comes along. As soon as I walked into this house, the weight began to lift.

In terms of work, my most productive time was at night, sitting by the fire, after my daughter (Sophie) went to sleep. I’ve been working on a novella and something about Gunyah brought a new clarity to this writing project. While there is still a lot of work to do, I have a clear sense of where it’s heading, which is invaluable. I’ve gone from having a mess of ideas to an organised narrative framework.

The sensual stuff:
~ Best fish and chips at ‘Hook n’ Cook’ run by local fisherman ‘Smasher’. I’m curious about how he got his moniker, but didn’t like to ask.
~ Happiest shop award goes to the Tea Gardens Ice Cream Shack. The tiramisu gelato is decent and the staff are sweet.
~ The Cornerstone Kitchen in Tea Gardens has a coffee/cake happy hour for $4, and I think it runs between 2-3pm, just when the blood sugar starts to tank. 

Helen Hopcroft, July 2013

To find out more about Helen's practice visit her website www.helenhopcroft.wordpress.com

Sophie in a tree, July 2013, photograph by Helen Hopcroft

Ros Meeker: upcoming artist-in-residence



Ros Meeker, Things to Do, 2011
Photopolymer Etching, gouache on Arches BFK paper
28 x 20.5cm

I grew up in NSW, but for the past 28 years I have dwelt in a tall wet rainforest in Tasmania’s south, and as such I anticipate viewing the North Coast through a window of nostalgia and fond memory. I think I can remember the smell of the air and the quality of light.


Ros Meeker, Sonja’s Dream (The Sound of One Hand Clapping), 2012
Photopolymer Etching on Arches BFK Rives paper, 30 x 40cm

My current research concerns the identity of the children of the Scottish diaspora, the children born in Australia, to Scottish parents or grandparents. In a recently presented paper I wrote:
"It wasn’t that my family did not embrace Australian culture. Far from it. Barbeques and days at the football or the beach were common fare. Yet these activities were supplemented with evenings of my father standing by the piano, singing songs of a Scottish home.."

I will use my time at Gunyah to reacquaint myself with the North Coast as ‘place’, and respond to it through documentation of the actual landscape/ground and through memory of childhood holidays. I plan to amass a photographic and found archive of frottages (I'm always looking for a new texture to bring into my work and to me rubbings carry an authentic sense of real placedness), which will figure into collages and ultimately etching plates. These works would look back nostalgically to 1960s/70s holidaymaking coastal culture, past ideals of Australian identity and also contain that which I rediscover during residence.


Ros Meeker, What to Wear
Photopolymer Etching, gouache on Arches BFK paper
28 x 20.5cm


Currently a MFA candidate at the University of Tasmania School of Art, Ros Meeker’s thesis in the making is titled Familiar Ground: Expressing Post-Diasporic Scottish Identity through Collage and Print. The project continues an art practice that long term has engaged with contemplation of the physical ground and the psychological landscape. In her art practice Meeker works on paper producing prints ranging from the miniature to large scale, using both modern and traditional forms of etching. Her work sometimes takes the form of installation and she has an ongoing interest in the curation of small group shows. Meeker has had a number of solo shows in Hobart and interstate, and exhibits with the Osmosis group and Hunter Island Press. Her work is represented at the Henry Jones Art Hotel and held in various collections such as CSIRO, RACI and the Allport Library. 

You can view more of Ros' artwork at www.onewall.com.au/2012/05/ros-meeker
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