Oct 8, 20192 min read

Residency 2019 in review

Updated: Oct 10, 2019

Residency 2019 in review

Everything worth pouring energy into comes with a compelling and beautifully perilous uncertainty. On the one hand, there is a forward momentum, driven by the idea. But the idea - you know it - is not the thing; it can only be made of what you know, and yet it is the sense of something not yet known, not yet invented, not yet made, that urges you forward. It is a place of possibility and of necessity. This is where trust finds its natural habitat. We never really know what will emerge from the residencies. They are realised in the conditional atmosphere of curiosity, speculation, a daring to wonder "what if..." This advance in the spirit of trust and curiosity, and perhaps most of all a heart felt knowing that we have something to learn in the forest, about the place and ourselves, and what we are within it, is an advance in place, epiphanic if you like, deepening, leaping, elevating but also emphatically grounding. The forms that the inquiry takes become a double portrait of the artist and the forest.

This year things culminated in two events. On Friday, October 4, we opened our first gallery exhibition at Spring Street Studio. It was a first for Canaipa Mudlines, because we have always emphasised the site, the ephemeral, the situated work. The question was, what could grow in the fertile soil of the interior site? Many of the works came about during the days and nights of the residency. Others were the work of previous weeks. The brief to artists was to bring something, take up the opportunity and see what happens.

The second event was the forest walk. We welcomed local residents who had heard about the walk and who, despite having lived many years on the island, had not yet taken the Binging trail through Turtle Swamp forest. We are so grateful to have made these new friends, who were enthused to pass their Saturday afternoon, walking through the forest, conversing, looking, commenting and wondering, much as we had done a week earlier, when all this started!