Residency report: Jo Langdon

Jo Langdon, Gunyah lounge room

We arrived at Gunyah before dusk on the first day to bursts of wattle in the garden, and followed what my daughter Ada, 4, soon called the ‘crocodile rocks’: the stone steps to the jetty with its rock pools and perilous oyster shells. The space was immediately captivating and extraordinary—especially coming from a 2-bedroom apartment and Victoria’s cold June—with its pole structure and spaciousness, loft bedroom, exposed beams and cosy living room. (I especially enjoyed the warm shine of the floorboards and bright teal couch and window seat cushions—the main rooms glowed both in sunlight and firelight.)

Jo Langdon, Ada and the Gunyah window seat

Gunyah offered the impossible gifts of time and space, and new perspectives. The house has many ideal work positions, from the kitchen/dining table to the window seat and the downstairs studio desk, all of which offer views to the water through eucalypts. However, the steady days of sunshine made it hard to resist the deck outside, from where we glimpsed dolphins passing through the cove as well as kookaburras, king parrots, and at the jetty a very friendly white duck… before lighting the fireplace by late afternoon.

Jo Langdon, Ada and the duck at Gunyah 

From the house and on daily walks we watched the water in the cove change colour across the day, moving from a vivid sky blue to deep jade green to silver. Exploring North Arm Cove we encountered a wallaby, friendly border collie ‘stick dogs’ at the nearest public/shared beach, and endless ingredients for Ada to mix into witch potions and spells.

Jo Langdon, Dolphin sighting Gunyah jetty

I’m deeply grateful to Kath Fries and Sylvia Griffin, this year’s application judges, and to the rest of the Gunyah committee and community. This residency offered such a generous setting, and made it possible to undertake a residency flexibly, as a family with a young child—a factor which can often preclude artist and writer parents/caregivers from residency opportunities. During our stay I worked on existing sections of my poetry manuscript, revisited source texts—particularly on the artist Alina Szapocznikow—and drafted new poems, but I’m also excited to see how generative the experiences of Gunyah might be in translating into future works.

Jo Langdon, Gunyah maps


Gunyah residency report, June 2023
Jo Langdon (with Cameron Lowe and Ada Langdon-Lowe)



Jo Langdon, Gunyah jetty



Residency report: Virginia Hilyard & Fiona Kemp

Virginia Hilyard & Fiona Kemp working setup at Gunyah with rescue doggy Saint Susi

We both arrived at Gunyah feeling utterly exhausted from everyday life in Sydney and if the truth be told had decided, before arriving, that we needed a place to rest above artistic production. Very quickly however we felt healed by the gentle embrace of the trees that hold the house and the silence that seems ever present in this place. So much so that our daily ritual of rendezvousing at a designated time in the morning and working through until we were full happened from the get-go.

Gunyah twilight 

Gunyah jetty

What a delight it has been to leave this residency with a swag of newly developed work from the Russian archive of footage and sound we have had waiting in the wings since the taking part in a residency there in late 2018. Here are a couple of screen shots of the work in progress:

Virginia Hilyard & Fiona Kemp, work-in-progress forest beach screenshot 

Virginia Hilyard & Fiona Kemp, work-in-progress composite screenshot

What also needs to be acknowledged is the time spent not at the computer. Time spent meditating in the garden and near the dock, afternoon swims at Hawks Nest walks with our studio companion 15 year old rescue doggy Saint Susi, and cooking up delicious snacks in the well organised kitchen. Time that allowed us to muse about the work we were making and to let those musings guide the work. 

Walking around North Arm Cove

Rescue doggy Saint Susi

Thankyou Kath Fries for sharing this place with us. Our only regret is that we had to leave!

Our take home learning - CUT ON THE ACTION

Fiona on the rocks

Visiting Bennetts Beach, Hawks Nest


Gunyah Residency Report, May 2023 
Virginia Hilyard & Fiona Kemp

Upcoming artist-in-residence: Jo Langdon

Jo Langdon - photo by Sarah Walker

Jo Langdon is a writer who lives on unceded Wadawurrung Country in Geelong/Djillong, Victoria. She is the author of two poetry collections: a chapbook, Snowline (Whitmore Press, 2012), co-winner of the Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize, and Glass Life (Five Islands Press, 2018). Jo's writing is also published in journals including Cordite Poetry Review, Griffith Review, Island, Meanjin, Overland and Southerly. In 2020 her short fiction was recognised in the Newcastle and Olga Masters short story awards, and she was the inaugural winner of the Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. In 2018 Jo was a fellow of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation's Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria. She is also a casual academic who teaches into writing, literature and culture.

Glass Life, Jo Langdon, Five Islands Press, 2018

"... During my residency at Gunyah, I plan to complete my third poetry collection, TEMPER, which comprises new poetry interested in how female domestic experience 'figures' in art. My recent poems have included writing in response to the art and life of the Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow ..."

Snowline, Jo Langdon, Whitmore Press, 2012



Upcoming artists-in-residence: Virginia Hilyard and Fiona Kemp

Virginia Hilyard and Fiona Kemp

Virginia Hilyard and Fiona Kemp are multidisciplinary artists who met whilst doing Masters of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts in 2002. Incorporating principles of meditation and mindfulness, the experience of being in a place is the primary concern for them. Their collaborative work often uses fragments of sound and image collected while in the field … being present in time and place. These gathered fragments become the basis of the tangible artwork - a result of the experience.

Fiona Kemp and Virginia Hilyard, The Circle is

Everywhere, 2020, still from 360 video diptych.



" ... During our residency at Gunyah we plan to develop raw data (video, audio, VR) we gathered on Kotlin Island in Russia. Immersion at Gunyah – through stillness, observation and listening – provides perfect conditions to mature the work - important processing before embarking on a companion piece in Finland ..."


Fiona Kemp and Virginia Hilyard, The Circle is

Everywhere, 2020, 360 video diptych and samovars,

installation at Articulate Project Space.


Fiona Kemp lives on Gadigal and Bidjigal Country, she is a multidisciplinary artist whose body of work explores the way certain objects, images and repetitive practices resonate memory. The media varies according to the nature of each project and additional study in clinical psychology informs the theoretical underpinnings of some of the work. Memory Time and Memory Space was the research focus of a PhD awarded from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, 2010. 


Fiona Kemp and Virginia Hilyard, Work-in-progress,

2020, still from 360 video triptych.


Virginia Hilyard lives on Wangal and Gadigal Land, she works across media including handprocessed film, the digital image and field recordings. Undertaking artist residencies in Thailand and The Philippines, exhibitions included Womanifesto II and Cities on the Move, Bangkok; Experimenta, Melbourne; Artspace, Sydney and Art in General, New York. Other artist residencies include the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and National Centre for Contemporary Arts on Kotlin Island, Russia. Recent works include Remembering Yellow – made with her mother who lives with dementia – exhibited as part of the Womanifesto, Trans-southeast Asia Triennial, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Museum, 2021. 
@avventura2046


Fiona Kemp and Virginia Hilyard, Work-in-progress,

2020, project based project at Articulate Project Space,

Sydney, various screen based works


Gunyah Artists-in-Residence Program 2023 Announcement

There was a record number of applications this year, thank you to all the artists who applied! 

And thanks also to our selection panel: Sylvia Griffin (previous Gunyah artist-in-residence) and Kath Fries (Gunyah AIR coordinator). 
Congratulations to the artists selected! 

Gunyah Artists-in-Residence 2023:

Jo Langdon
Cara Johnson
Virginia Hilyard & Fiona Kemp
Jodie Herden
Catriona Pollard
Aryadharma Aaron Matheson






Residency report: Annelise Roberts & Jack Palmer


We had a peaceful twelve days at Gunyah in November. I started doing another round of edits on my novel Totem, a bit of a painful process - made much easier by all the distractions/inspirations nearby. The moon eclipsed and turned blood red on our second night there - we went and watched it down on the jetty. Another night we saw bioluminescence in the foam lapping at the shore of the boat ramp down the road. As promised by my friend Vanessa Berry (and as other artists in residence have mentioned in their reports), there were two very friendly sheep dogs just up the road who were available for pats on afternoon strolls; we also saw the silky backs of a pod of dolphins one sunset at the cove (after many fruitless evenings scanning the waves), were visited by kookaburras, and I returned several times to the Yacaaba headland to do the challenging walk to the summit. The window seat was my work station and I spent many hours there reading, thinking, half or fully asleep, and idly taking notes. Plans and schemes were formed and ideas took shape. I'd love to return one day. Thank you Gunyah!

Annelise Roberts
Gunyah Residency Report
November 2022





My time at Gunyah was very productive. I set up downstairs, with my computer, monitors, midi controllers and guitar, with a full window view of the bushy back yard and North Arm Cove waters. It was a dynamic setting, there was always weather, bird wars and boats to watch from the still and contemplative room. I managed to write a substantial chunk of an audio/visual piece of music I had been envisaging. This is the first piece of music I have written with actual music notation for possibly 10 years, so it was nice to connect with that style of working again. I found the residency productive in the standard sense, the sense I was expecting, but I also found it to be productive on a deeper level. The landscape, the atmosphere, and the inward facing process of writing music that is yet to be played unearthed some emotional holdings that I didn’t know were there. In this way the residency became a space to explore and process these feelings and really confront unexamined beliefs I have about myself as an artist and composer. Hard feelings at times, but so refreshing to unearth, process and return back to Melbourne feeling quite different. I look forward to developing further what I started at Gunyah next year.

Jack Palmer
Gunyah Residency Report
November 2022



Residency Report: The Bowerbird Collective


The Bowerbird Collective spent ten blissful days at Gunyah. In addition to finalising the visual design and audio of our second 'Songs of Disappearance' album, this year in partnership with the Australian Museum, we worked on the sound design for 'Our Country', an immersive experience by Australian Geographic, Tourism Australia and Northern Pictures. Find out more about our album at songsofdisappearance.com and 'Our Country' at ausgeo-ourcountry.com. Anthony was also able to celebrate his 36th birthday with family on a beautiful sunny weekend.


Gunyah Residency Report, October 2022
Anthony Albrecht and Simone Slattery
The Bowerbird Collective
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