Linda Swinfield: artist-in-residence July 2012

Linda Swinfield, Walk 1, 2012, pastel and charcoal on paper

The Gunyah AIR was for me a sincere time of quiet reflection, away from my hectic life of work and everyday existence. I didn’t want to leave its location and beauty. This was a period for me to be only a mother and an artist, it allowed me to reflect upon future directions as an artist and teacher and re-ignite a variety of tangents within my art practice that are often pushed aside in the outside world.

Linda Swinfield, Composite studio two, 2012, Lomography*

We enjoyed the regular company of the kookaburras at dusk, with the occasional magpies and butcher birds competing for treats - accompanied by squeals of delight from Sid. We also listened to the possums on the roof most nights and enjoyed watching the wallabies in the bush in the afternoons.

Linda Swinfield, Trisch and Sidney at the water’s edge, 2012, digital photography

My original proposed goals were a little forgotten and I commenced by drawing in sketchbooks. This included images of seaweed, oyster shells, and a variety of sea treasures we found on the water’s edge, some natural and others manmade. I researched some of the symbols and motifs borne out of these scavenger hunts along the waterways. 

Linda Swinfield, Seaweed drawings, 2012, pastel, charcoal and chalk on brown paper
Linda Swinfield, Composite textures, 2012, Lomography*

We went on daily bush and beach treks and had little adventures including a renegade trip to the historic cemetery in Carrington, two trips to Tea Gardens, as well as a day trip to Great Lakes Museum and a lunch with friends in Karuah.

Linda Swinfield, Cemetery Carrington, 2012, digital photography

I drew daily with a variety of materials, and kept a small diary of drawings and notes about our daily events. The drawings extended into dremmel drawings into plywood and carved linoleum blocks that I am yet to print.

Linda Swinfield, Water movement, 2012, digital photography

Towards the end of our stay I created larger and more finished drawings that were interpretive and a less literal response to the site. Through these works I attempted to capture some more ephemeral aspects of the landscape walks, trails and small frames of sight lines or views formed through the trees. I was quite captivated by the layers of textures within the bush, along the waterline and hope to incorporate them into my print making processes in the future.

Linda Swinfield, Diary page two, 2012, charcoal and pencil on paper

My interest in history prompted me to research the area’s past and its connection to Walter Burley Griffin. I found his original drawings online and then discovered some of the original signposts in the bush around the cove.

Walter Burley Griffin, City of Port Stephens, 1918/19
National Library of Australia
North Arm Cove was the site for Walter Burley Griffin's great city (the New York of Australia), planned in the expectation that Port Stephens would become the main seaport for New South Wales. The land was purchased by Henry F. Haloran, land developer and surveyor, but the city never eventuated. Plans for the city show two railway stations, a business district, Federal and State office sites, a factory district, car parks, wharves, parks and playgrounds. The subdivision commenced in 1918, the outline of which can still be seen from the air.

Linda Swinfield,  Trees with texture at the water's edge, 2012, digital photography 

On our daily walks we took hundreds of photographs, both digital and with an old plastic 35mm film camera that I purchased at Vinnie’s for $1, prior to the residency. This camera enabled Sidney and I to play with Lomography*, our experiments created spontaneous images with surprising results.

Linda Swinfield, Composite studio one, 2012, Lomography*

Three friends assisted me at the Gunyah AIR, without them my time here would not have been as productive. Revisiting was Emily Valentine Bullock who travelled up from Sydney, Patricia Wilson Adams (Pandora Group Artist) also stayed, and Emilie Tseronis visited and took Sid out for playtime with other children.
Linda Swinfield
August 2012

Linda Swinfield, Emily and Sid toasting marshmallows, 2012, digital photography

*Lomography is a term coined in the 1990s, referring to the use of a cheap film camera to take experimental creative photographs. According to www.lomography.com there are 10 rules that define ‘lomography’:
~ Take your camera everywhere you go.
~ Use it any time – day and night.
~ Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
~ Try to shoot from the hip.
~ Approach the objects of your Lomographic desire as close as possible.
~ Don’t think.
~ Be fast.
~ You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film.
~ Afterwards either.
~ Don’t worry about any rules!
Linda and Trisch by the fire, 2012, Lomography*, photograph taken by Sidney Swinfield

You can find out more about Linda's practice at 
and 
www.lindaswinfield.wordpress.com  
and 
www.thepandoragroup.blogspot.com.au                                                                                                                     

Port Stephens Diary of Natural Events - August


An extract from Michael Smith's "Port Stephens Diary of Natural Events"...

AUGUST

Eastern Rosellas engage in courtship.
Echidna egg hatches and young attach to a teat.
Cup Fungi appears.
Bandicoots start breeding.
Occasional snow on Barrington Tops.
Wattle Day, some wattles are in bloom.
Cup Moth cocoons on gum leaves.
Young foxes start exploring and playing.
Pee Wees start building their mud nests.
Dagger Hakea in flower.
Antechinus mate.
Male Brown Antechinus die, leaving the females to raise the next generation.
Koels arrive from Papua New Guinea to lay eggs in other bird's nests.
Kookaburras lay two eggs.
This year's baby Quolls become independent.
King crickets lay eggs in Banksias.
Gnat orchids are in flower.
Painted Lady Butterflies emerge.
Pardolotes dig nest burrows.
Welcome Swallows arrive.
Euphrasia Collina is in flower.
Butchers Birds are active.
Koala cubs leave the pouch and climb onto their mother's back.
Donkey Orchids are in flower.
Mosquito wrigglers are abundant in pools of water.
Ducklings can be seen walking to water.
Reed Warblers return from the north.
Pallid and Bronze Cuckoos call.
Cormorants begin nesting.
Potato Orchid flowers open.
Greenhood Orchids everywhere.
Quoll babies are grown up.
Fairy Penguin eggs hatch on Broughton Island.
Wading birds arrive from Siberia (Stints, Curlews and Sandpipers).
Flies overwinter as lavae and pupa in crevices.
Rulingia hermannifolia in flower behind Kingsley Beach.
Gymea Lily in full flower.
Spring has started.
Sawfly grubs cluster on Eucalypt leaves.
Pixie Cap Orchid and Greenhood Orchid have reduced to just leaves on the ground.
Pink Finger Orchid in flower.
Yellow Robins nest.
Skipper Butterflies appear.
Milkmaids in flower.
Sugar Glider twins are born.
Cuttlefish come close to shore to breed in the shallows.
Oystercatchers start to breed.
Red Wattlebirds depart.
Michael Smith, 1999


Emily Valentine Bullock, Cast of Crabs - North Arm Cove, 2011
Emily Valentine Bullock, Cast of Crabs - North Arm Cove, 2011
Emily Valentine Bullock, Cast of Crabs - North Arm Cove, 2011
Emily Valentine Bullock, Cast of Crabs - North Arm Cove, 2011
Emily Valentine Bullock, Cast of Crabs - North Arm Cove, 2011
Emily Valentine Bullock, Cast of Crabs - North Arm Cove, 2011
Emily Valentine Bullock, Cast of Crabs - North Arm Cove, 2011

Gunyahnut: an exhibition by Michelle Brodie from her time as a Gunyah artist-in-residence

Gunyhnut 
paintings of North Arm Cove 
by Michelle Brodie

8 - 25 August 2012

POD Space Gallery
410 Hunter St, Newcastle, NSW




Michelle Brodie was an artist-in-residence at Gunyah in April 2012, to read more about her practice please see www.michellebrodieartist.blogspot.com.au


Previous Gunyah artist-in-residence posts about Michelle's residency can be found at
www.gunyah.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/michelle-brodie-artist-in-residence.html
www. gunyah.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/michelle-brodie-upcoming-artist-in.html

Kate Brown, Anastasia Freeman, Michelle Genders, Robin Hungerford, Renee Oldfield and Thomas Hungerford: upcoming artists-in-residence


Kate Brown, Contraption Molecular, 2010,
still image from stop motion animation

Kate Brown, Anastasia Freeman, Michelle Genders, Robin Hungerford, Renee Oldfield and Thomas Hungerford are a group of friends who each have their own art practices and are coming together to work on a collaborative project. During their residency at Gunyah they plan to work together within the structure and process of film making. This filmatic project will extend their individual practices, as well as open up new and interesting possibilities through collaboration. They will be combining their own individual experience in object, performance, environment, technique, costume, lighting and place.

Thomas Hungerford, Open Forum, 2009, sculptural sound installation 

Aiming to create an art house style film with supernatural, real and surreal elements in a naturalistic setting focusing on the sea and the bush, we’ll each create an idea for a scene in the film and take on the role of directing this scene. Our collaboration will link scenes together through video and non-linear/linear story boards, using editing processes and other effects to complete the film. We imagine that our resulting film will be a series of vignettes with similar themes running through them alongside six different trajectories. This process will imagine a dreamscape of different ideas and techniques while providing a platform for our individual input to fit together. This project lends itself to various creative outcomes as we are all highly technical in our approaches to creative development. Although we are practicing artists in various creative fields, our interests and aesthetic ideas correlate and we have a great respect for each other’s work. After the residency, we intend to create individual spin off works from the film that may be shown as part of a group show at a later date.

Kate Brown, Flight over Hollywood, 2009,
still image from single channel video

Kate Brown is an artist and musician. She has exhibited at Firstdraft, been in residence at Anyplace Project Space and was a part of the 2011 PACT Ensemble. With video, performance, installation and sound as major components of her practice Kate analyses the functions of the body/object to explore ways of remapping space and time. While the themes that occupy her practice are vast, she strives to investigate surreal, subtle illusory and technical qualities in light, sound and movement. Kate is currently undergoing a mentorship with PACT theatre’s Julie Vulcan and Cat Jones and collaboratively devising curatorial art projects for the UWS archive, Sydney Museum and Historic Houses Trust.

Kate Brown and Samuel Bruce, Dimensions perceived by the organs of hearing, 2011,
a collaborative sound installation and performance exhibited at Firstdraft Gallery

Kate has studied Fine Art at the University of Western Sydney and been awarded a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. There are many influences that come into Kate’s practice; her main focus is directed at the subtitles of the world and documenting them. She has exhibited widely in Sydney and interstate, and is determined for her rigorous art practice to take her far and wide collaborating, exhibiting and creating. Kate Brown is currently working on new projects that intertwine her visual arts practice with contemporary performance methods.

Anastasia Freeman, Collected turnings, 2006,
video still, exhibited in Crtl+alt+del, Canberra Contemporary Artspace

Anastasia Freeman is an interdisciplinary artist working with drawing, video, performance and installation. Anastasia creates a rich visual language that operates within the construct's of its own other-worldliness. Whimsical gestures and weaving narratives inform much of her practice. Her recent work leans towards that of the relational and has been collaborative in nature.

Anastasia Freeman, The postcard project, 2010, interactive installation
and hand drawn postcards, exhibited in The Sophia Exchange, Kudos Gallery

Anastasia trained at The Julian Ashton Art School, The School of Contemporary Arts, University of Western Sydney, and has been awarded a Bachelor of Art Education from College of Fine Arts, UNSW. Currently she is the Art Editor and contributor for Pan Magazine literary biannual. She has been making and exhibiting work consistently for the past decade, collaborated on projects and curating Sydney exhibitions and fundraisers. In more recent years, her art practice has become a vehicle for exploring and documenting relationships and the relational through interactive installations and various forms of portraiture.
For more information information and images of Anastasia's art practice please see www.lamaisondemilleplateaux.blogspot.com.au

Michelle Genders, Things you can see to indicate things you can't see 1, 2012

Michelle Genders is a Sydney based emerging artist. Her multidisciplinary practice includes drawing, small scale sculpture, wearable objects, installation and images. She uses a mixture of enduring and ephemeral materials to generate gestural and expressive work. Michelle's process is labour intensive and meditative where simple solutions are chosen. Her current body of work explores the intersection between science and spirituality with respect to the polarity that appears to categorise our experience - that which is inside of us and that which is outside of us. Aspects of these areas that she has been researching and responding to include cosmology, rhythms in nature, human interpretation of nature and the cosmos, mystical poetry, visual illusions and human perceptual processes. Her own experiences in the natural world have also influenced her work.

Michelle Genders, Neoplastic nudibranch neckpiece, 2011

Michelle has been awarded a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours in Jewellery and Object studies, from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. Her work has been included in the annual Utility exhibitions and national exhibitions including The Exchange Project, Graduate Metal 12, Flight and Awareness Muscle. In 2011, she curated and exhibited in Above Earth Below Sea, a group show of work by Japanese and Australian jewellers. Recently Michelle was a studio resident at Firstdraft Depot Studios and presented her resulting work in her first solo exhibition Phenomenal at Paper Plane Gallery in Rozelle. 
For more information and images of Michelle's art practice please see www.michellegenders.blogspot.com

Robin Hungerford, Virtual Reality Simulator, 2009

Robin Hungerford is interested in the ways in which technology shapes our culture, our perception of the world around us and the interior worlds of our own bodies. His amorphous and enigmatic video works allude to a kind of blossoming biology which may be the result of increasingly sophisticated genetic interventions or perhaps even their unexpected side effects. Meanwhile colourful mixed-media constructions, encrusted in simulated plant growth, take on a life of their own; thriving like weeds on the fuzzy boundary which separates the synthetic from the organic and hints at the new plasticity of life as we know it. 

Robin Hungerford, Like a Hole in the Head Part 2, 2009

Robin is a Sydney-based artist whose work utilises a diverse range of media and techniques including papier-mâché, drawing, video, kinetic installations and, on occasion, live insects and animals. More recently his practice has expanded to include himself as a performer in videos and live works. He has been awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Sydney and a Master of Visual Arts from the University of Sydney. Robin has exhibited regularly in Sydney artist-run-initaive galleries, was a finalist in the 2010 Helen Lempriere Travelling Scholarship and one of the artists featured in Let the Healing Begin at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. Hungerford's most recent work Shamanic Organic Contemporary Cuisine is a live multimedia and performance spectacle loosely based on the format of a televised cooking show, and was featured as part of the 2012 Nextwave festival in Melbourne.
For more information and images of Robin's art practice please see www.robinhungerford.wordpress.com

Robin Hungerford, The Fix, 2011, video still

Renee Oldfield is currently studying production design at Enmore Design Centre. She works across illustration, textiles and video; around the themes of natural forms and the human body. Renee has assisting with theatre technical production and set design in a number of theatre performances in Sydney and the Blue mountains. She also expands beyond theatre working in experimental performance, collaborative projects and her own solo practice.

Renee Oldfield, China, 2012, costume design

Renee is originally from Blue Mountains and has a background in fine arts and theatre production. In 2009, she lived in London where she worked on live performance art shows and worked at the Victoria and Albert museum, assisting with exhibitions as a volunteer. She has worked with a Sydney based poetry group Caravan Slam in Sydney and at the Pete's Ridge Music Festival. 

Renee Oldfield, drawing and collage 

Thomas Hungerford is an artist and multi-instrumentalist. His practice revolves around creating audio and visual installations made from a variety of materials such as musical instruments, electric motors and a variety of modified ready-made objects. These installations are designed to create a feeling of 'otherworldliness' and induce a hypnotic-like trance within the viewer. Thomas also performs bass guitar and vocals in the experimental grind-core metal band Mother Eel.

Thomas Hungerford, Raging Horn, 2007, sculptural sound installation

Thomas has been awarded a Bachelor in Fine Arts with Honours from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. He explores the uncharted territories of the human subconscious, alternative realities, popular culture, peoples relationship to the planet, existential possibilities and the unknown. His work consists of video, audio and sculpture as installation; is often interactive and relies on the viewer’s presence to function.

Thomas Hungerford, Intoxication, 2006, sculptural sound installation detail view 

Gordon & Madeleine K Snow: June/July 2012 artists-in-residence

Being school holidays we approached our Gunyah stay in a hands on way - with all the family working on drawings, paintings and sketches. Even when visiting the sites around the area we would stop to capture the view with a drawing.

Coming from a suburban landscape we enjoyed the shift in pace at North Arm Cove, seeing wallabies, looking out through trees, warm fires, and the gentle lapping of the water.  

...here is our visual response to our stay at North Arm Cove.  

Madeleine K & Gordon Snow at Gunyah
Gordon Snow, Gunyah Vantage, 2012, watercolour on paper
Madeleine K Snow, Beach, 2012, photograph
Gordon Snow, Gunyah Boat, 2012, watercolour and charcoal on paper
Madeleine K Snow, By the lake,  2012, charcoal rubbing on paper
Our studio outdoors at Bennet's beach
Louis Snow, Dinos, 2012, texta and pencil on paper
In the studio at Gunyah
Hannah Snow, Story, drawing and watercolour
Gordon Snow, Gunyah sunset view, 2012, photograph
Madeleine K Snow, Rear of Gunyah, 2012, watercolour on paper

Find out more about Gordon and Madeleine K Snow's art practices:
www.gunyah.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/gordon-madeleine-k-snow-upcoming.html 
www.artinfoink.blogspot.com.au 
www.madeleinekelman11.com

Linda Swinfield: upcoming artist-in-residence


Linda Swinfield, The Three Graces - Lillian's table, 2011

Linda Swinfield is a printmaker and paper sculptor, working with contemporary and traditional technologies including laser cutting, Photo-Lithography and digital manipulation processes. Over the past six years family and memory have become central themes in her practice, relating to the birth of her son and passing of her mother. 

Linda Swinfield, Houses and horses, 2009

Whilst artist-in-residence at Gunyah, Linda plans to purse two projects. The first is a continuation and evolution of wood block prints and drawings begun just before the birth of her son. Secondly, Linda intends to begin a photographic series where she removes the man made elements in the landscape, forming a panoramic image without civilised human intrusions. 

Linda Swinfield, Installation view, 2009

Linda has a Masters of Fine Art from The University of Newcastle and currently teaches art history and theory at Hunter Institute of TAFE. She exhibits with Kerrie Lowe Gallery in Sydney and the Pandora Group in Newcastle.
 
For more information and images of Linda's work please see www.lindaswinfield.wordpress.com

Linda Swinfield, Paper houses, 2009