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| Gathered Collective work-in-progress at Gunyah |
Gathered’s time at Gunyah was immensely restorative, healing and inspiring. It was particularly special conversing with the locals over coffee and cake at the North Arm Cove community centre. Everyone was proud to share the histories of the area and introduce us to their impressive community garden that surrounded the hall. It was so special to have the time and space to decompress from the fast pace of everyday life. We all enjoyed spreading out in the various ‘making’ areas of the home; particularly the jetty where we were lucky enough to spot dolphins on multiple occasions. During our stay, we also visited various sites close to North Arm Cove, including Mungo Brush and Seal Rocks. Whilst making, it was valuable to work alongside one another to bounce off ideas and feed off one another’s creativity.
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| Gathered Collective work-in-progress at Gunyah |
The long periods of rain before our arrival provided an abundance of mushrooms at Gunyah. Charli was especially grateful for this mass presence of fungal kin, spending a large chunk of her time observing and
foraging mushrooms around North Arm Cove and Mungo Brush area. Charli formed mushroom atlases each day, categorising her harvests by place, body, colour and texture. This allowed her to make fungus papers with varying tones and formations, experimenting with new techniques and materials to capture relations between her moving body, other bodies and mycelium expanding underfoot. She created a large-scale hand-sewn patchwork with papers made from mushrooms foraged among different landscapes. When exposed to light, the piece reveals an intricate fungal network unfurling across each page, connecting the rhythms and cycles of place into a new material assemblage. Charli evolved her previous work with the beetroot anthotype process by creating on a larger format, experimenting with beeswax as a natural method of preservation. She also speculated new ideas by hand-sewing written pieces onto second-hand fabrics.
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| Gathered Collective work-in-progress at Gunyah |
Claire was particularly interested in creating handmade papers from recycled artworks and foraged plant matter from site. She used rain and lake water as the basis of this making, and was also able to explore the potentials of natural dyes to tint the paper with turmeric and beetroot juice. She also experimented with different caffenol recipes for her pinhole photographs which she took around the bank of the lake. It was valuable to have a studio she could set up for this research, and during her time at the residency she successfully refined the caffenol recipe for both film and direct positive paper.
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| Gathered Collective work-in-progress at Gunyah |
Anna engaged walking as a method of researching the ecologies which inhabit the surrounds of Gunyah. While embarking on a walk, she focused particularly on noticing intersected paths between human and non-human beings. Perceiving a footprint as a trace of an ecology’s presence, she wandered through areas of North Arm Cove and Mungo Brush to locate sites of crossing, specifically where diverse tracks met one another. These traversing marks etched into the ground, signify points of interconnectivity and plurality among differing organic existences. She imagined this place of meeting, as a method for dissolving the individual and awakening a site in which multiple beings become one multiplicate whole. These crisscrossing paths were documented through stitching onto repurposed fabrics. Fabrics with organic fibres were sourced from various second-hand stores and dyed with ethically foraged seaweed and found rusted objects. Comprising of plant-based material and thread, the work over time will return itself to the natural world, biodegrading and feeding a new emergence-interchange of organic life. The textile aimed to appear as though it exists-with the environment, the structure of the piece camouflaging with organic elements. As though to move, think and be-with the earth, rather than impose itself upon a place.
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| Gathered Collective work-in-progress at Gunyah |
Gunyah residency report, May 2024
Gathered Collective
Claire Paul, Charli Gerry and Anna Seymour
