This winter, I headed up to New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale, N.S.W. with poet/painter/partner Kit Kelen, to continue work we started at our first residency there in 2022. The timing was perfect – after my solo exhibition in late March I’ve been trying out new approaches, and there’s nothing like a trip to shake things up.
The creative adventure began before we’d even arrived in Armidale. Stopping off on the way, I spent an inspiring day making monotypes with Black Gully Printmaker Cat MacGregor at her Bellingen studio. Our journey from Bellingen to Armidale was along the Waterfall Way, with the first stop just out of Dorrigo being the magnificent sub-tropical rainforest of the Wonga Walk.
The land up around Armidale is another story. It’s drier there, vegetation is sparser, the grasses are tussocky. The winter air was crisp and cold. One of the joys of a residency at NERAM is having the leisure to visit exhibitions over successive days, and there was plenty of thought-provoking contemporary art on display as well as an excellent semi-permanent exhibition, “Wonders of Hinton”. On the Thursday evening, we were delighted to join the Black Gully Printmakers’ weekly meetup in the Museum of Printing, Kit and I making monoprints (his first ever!) and exchanging ideas with fellow printmakers.
Sincere thanks to NERAM’s Director, Rachael Parsons and Head Curator Belinda Hungerford for inviting us back and for all you do for artists and the region’s broader arts community.
