Upcoming artist-in-residence: Helena Pastor

Helena Pastor

Helena Pastor is a regional writer from Anaiwan Country, Armidale. Her writing has attracted two Australian Society of Authors’ Mentorships, along with residencies at Varuna Writers’ House, Bundanon and other awarded programs. She has completed two postgraduate degrees on Creative Nonfiction writing and her first book, Wild Boys: A Parent’s Story of Tough Love (UQP, 2015) is an intimate insight into reconnecting troubled teenagers with their families and communities. In 2020, she received a New England Writers’ Centre/Varuna Fellowship and Create NSW funding to develop her third book-length manuscript: ‘One Fork, One Knife, One Life’ – a memoir based around the wartime and migration experiences of her Dutch mother and their mother/daughter relationship. She is also a songwriter and enjoys collaborating with other artists. What you plan to do during your residency: I will be enjoying the natural beauty of The Gunyah and North Arm Cove, working on a second draft of ‘One Fork, One Knife, One Life’, writing about growing up in the Berry Bakery, and my family's long history with Seven Mile Beach National Park, NSW. 

Helena and her mother, Seven Mile Beach National Park, 1970



During my residency I will be enjoying the natural beauty of Gunyah and North Arm Cove, working on a second draft of ‘One Fork, One Knife, One Life’, writing about growing up in the Berry Bakery, and my family's long history with Seven Mile Beach National Park, NSW.

Berry Bakery, 1967


You can find out more about Helena and her work on her website: www.helenapastor.com



Upcoming artist-in-residence: Wendy Tsai



Using drawing as primary research process, Wendy Tsai re-forms the information gained through observation and intuition into personal narratives that interrogate meaning and given-ness. While attracted to and nourished by the natural environment surrounding her home on Dharug and Gundungurra Country, in the Blue Mountains, Wendy also recognises the devastating impact of climate change and human interference, allowing this disquiet to inform her work, through intimate reveries that are both tangible and ethereal. Relying on an embodied knowledge of place, Wendy has a ritual of walking to experience and adapt to the idiosyncrasies of the natural world. She also photographs, collects and manipulates digitally the images that hold specific memories of place. Her drawings are an attempt to ‘be in’ place through a peaceable communion grounded in the landscape. Wendy regularly at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre Gallery. She also has work in collections in Tasmania and in the Kedumba Drawing Collection.

Wendy Tsai, Inside out #3, 2020, graphite on paper, 55 x 75cm


During my residency at Gunyah, I intend to rest from a hectic routine of family support, to walk, to sit, to reflect and process the stillness in the context of such beautiful natural surroundings. I would like to start the process of drawing and writing as a means of grounding myself in daily rituals and observations. I would also like to use video and film to experiment with the process of slowing the art-making into a frame-by-frame activity that resembles breathing.

Wendy Tsai, Inside out #2, 2020, graphite on paper, 55 x 75cm


You can see more of Wendy's work on her website wendytsai.com.au and instagram @wenrts


Wendy Tsai, McRaes #4, 2018, charcoal on paper, 76 x 89cm






Residency report: Blake Lawrence


It’s difficult to put words to the value and pleasure of my time spent at Gunyah on astounding Worimi country and waters. Once I slowed down I really felt the land open itself to my perceptions (and vice versa) and reveal so much beauty and rhythmic vitality, all around.



Multi-species anthropologist Deborah Bird-Rose speaks of these rhythms and vibrancies as shimmer (in a translation of Yolngu word bir’yun—a brilliance or shimmering). It was such a pleasure to behold the shimmer of the area in the Australasian Gannets soaring and diving along Jimmy’s beach, a single watchful Sacred Kingfisher in the mangroves of Pindimar, the stoic Spangled Drongos in Hawks Nest, the total orchestra of birdlife moving with the tides along the Tea Gardens foreshore and of course the dolphins (and squid!) from the solitude of the Gunyah jetty.



During my time at Gunyah (with shimmer in mind) I completed a costume for presentation at the Powerhouse Museum, and re-purposed a large textile for an upcoming show. I read deeper into Jane Bennet’s Vibrant Matter, and felt my sense of self, place and time collapse and expand. It was also so nice to have time and space to do really simple parts of my practice that are the first to disappear when things get busy—to sketch, to play, to dance. 




I will really hold onto the things I’ve learned and experienced here at Gunyah. Immense gratitude to the Gunyah team, and of course to this vibrant country—Worimi, Worimi, Worimi.


Blake Lawrence
Gunyah residency report
June 2022



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