More details soon…

I am am excited to announce that I will be completing a split residency at Salamanca Arts Centre The Artist’s Cottage in May and then again in November though to the end of December 2024.

This residency is a follow up to the residency I completed there for a month over the New Year 2021-2022.

I was lucky enough to complete a residency at The Artist's Cottage just as Tasmania opened its borders to the world in 2021. I also happened to become classified as a close contact when a passenger on my flight tested positive to Covid19. This meant that even though I repeatedly tested negative, the majority of my residency was spent in isolation inside the cottage as I listened to Hobart’s parties outside for Christmas, the Taste Festival, Sydney to Hobart and as the city called in the New Year with fireworks witnessed from the front steps of the cottage. It was a wonderfully surreal experience...

I was also there as the children from the Davenport jumping castle disaster were helicoptered over one by one to hospital. While bells tolled for funerals but also weddings and celebrations. As mobs of angry men passed shouting "freedom" ironically unaware that I, quarantined in my little paradise cottage felt totally free in my solitude and that they had already achieved their goal with borders and businesses open.

The mountain and I built a deep conversation and I recorded the hours of hold music with TASHealth while I wrote poetry as each negative test came in. I plan to take all the snippets of my original residency and build on them with a comparison of my experience of Hobart, this time with 'freedom of movement’

There will be visits to Kunanyi not just look and talk to my mountain companion from the back steps of the Artist’s Cottage interpreting her mist cover as replies to my conversation.

I couldn't have asked for a better place to be "stuck" and I am truly excited of returning and completing my Hobart experience.

Kunanyi - in progress
Photo: Justin R Bannon