Residency report: Helena Pastor



A winter Gunyah residency, such a welcome break from the cold of Armidale. Although a mixed offering with the weather, the first few days were incredibly warm (for me) – almost tropical, and a wonderful treat. For the first three nights of my residency, my partner Dave was with me. On the second day, we headed off in the kayaks to One Tree Island, over near Soldiers Point (which I call Santorini because it looks like the Greek island of Santorini in the distance). I really enjoyed being on the water in the kayak, the sun hot on my body. When Dave and I arrived at the island, I stripped off to my bikini and went back into the water – which prompted a fisherman in a little dinghy to ask: ‘Are you crazy or what?’ When I answered, ‘I’m from Armidale!’, he laughed knowingly.



As a writer with a busy life, I always say I want ‘time alone’ but I think the Gunyah is a treat to be shared. A place to mix up time alone with time to socialise in the late afternoon and evening – which is why I’m coming back for a week next February with my writing group. I’m sure they’ll love the Gunyah as much as I do. But even though I felt the absence of others, I enjoyed the uninterrupted time to work and read and think. Like many visitors to the Gunyah, I loved the window seat in the loungeroom, where I sat each morning with my coffee and journal, marvelling at the paradise out the window. Ditto for the back verandah. I also loved the jetty – that feeling of being on a bridge to nowhere. Whenever I needed a break from my work, I’d wander down the path to the jetty. The surface of the water always so varied from the tides or the wind; my favourite was when the water was dusky blue and smooth as glass.



I love how I now have an ongoing connection with North Arm Cove, and how the residents and their dogs (particularly the two Border Collies on the walk to Heros Beach) are so friendly. I wanted to make it to a Coffee Morning at the North Arm Community Hall, but that’s for next time. Thanks to all who make the Gunyah possible – it really is a home away from home.



Helena Pastor
Gunyah residency report
August 2022

Residency report: Wendy Tsai

" . . . As asked by the artists, it is the open question of how, wherever I happen to chance, I am dappled by my elsewheres as I go, and how I might dapple them back In my passing . . . You just venture out again, and continue on your way. In search of little nothings. That way, you encounter ‘small epiphanies’. That is what the artist calls being taken by surprise by an unsuspected connection. A little joy of happenstance . . . "

Brian Massumi, Making To Place In the Artist’s Words, Refracted*


I came with little knowledge of how my 10 days at Gunyah would proceed. Having spent the last 18 months on a large scale mural project, yet to be installed, I knew I needed to ‘re-frame’ and find a new more experimental way of winding away from that work. I also wanted to let Gunyah inform me, to offer up its small epiphanies.

Gunyah wooed me into a stillness, a gifted patience that disarmed pretence. Initially, I played with a couple of representational drawings, imagining myself into a daily ritual, but the place required something more connected to the rhythms and patterns, the sounds and life of organic things. 

Wendy Tsai, Gunyah residency photos

I had brought a range of materials with the hope I might make some large ink brushwork, which by the second day seemed entirely appropriate to a new physical and gestural abstraction. I was finding a kind of new language to respond to North Arm Cove and the surrounding bush, water and seascapes. I was reminded of the work of Australian artist G.W. Bot who intuitively maps the landscape through a personal language of glyphs, and also of Franz Kline, the American abstract expressionist, 1940-60. These research diversions were delightful indulgences. I also read Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest (1972), which paralleled my navigation of human habitation and the native beauty of North Arm Cove. 

Wendy Tsai, drawings in the Gunyah studio

Wanting to work with the blackness of my brushstrokes, I collaged shapes cut from National Geographic magazines, later drawing into the shapes and brushstrokes to mimic some of the patterns which I found in the sand and water. On reflection, these collaged shapes reminded me of the shells and shapes found on the shore.

Wendy Tsai, Water Collage details, Gunyah residency 


Wendy Tsai, Glyphs detail, Gunyah residency 

We welcomed some arts friends for the weekend and explored more of the local beaches and inlets together. While I really needed another few weeks to develop the initial ideas and artworks, I’ve come home with lots to work with and a multitude of photographs.

In my proposal, I mentioned wanting to slow down my observation to a frame by frame activity that resembles breathing. I think getting lost in the process of making became the breathing, the inhalation and exhalation of place.

I am very grateful for this wonderful opportunity and many thanks to Kath Fries and the board of Gunyah for making this special place available to artists.


Wendy Tsai
Gunyah residency report
July 2022


Wendy Tsai, Driftwood, Gunyah residency 


*Simryn Gill, Here art grows on trees, Australian Council for the Arts, for the 55th International Biennale de Venezia 2013








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