The Carss Park Artist's Cottage, in the former Ranger's house, provides a studio and accommodation for one artist and is located in a picturesque bush park setting on the Georges River. Residencies of up to three months are available to local, regional and international artists across a wide range of art forms. This is a self-funded residency creating opportunities for artists' professional development, and to contribute to Georges River Council's collection and cultural programs.


  

Applications for the Artist in Residence program will re-open mid-year 2020. If you would like to be notified when applications open or for more information on the Artist in Residence program, please contact the Cultural Services Team on 9330 6444 or museumgallery@georgesriver.nsw.gov.au
 

Congratulations to the artists selected for our Artist in Residence Program 2018 - 2020

 

Current artist in residence

 
 

Sofie Dieu
4 February – 1 March 2020

Born in France, Sofie Dieu is a culturally and linguistically diverse artist. With a penchant for ritual and spirituality, her work is best known for its fragility and darkness. Sensitive to cultural clichés, she has developed from it a penchant for the non-obvious and what makes us unique.

Multi-art prizes and award finalist, Sofie Dieu's work was recently included in John Leslie Art Prize, Hornsby Art Prize, Sydney North Art Prize and Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, among others.
 

Future artists in residence

 

Tess Mehonoshen
3 – 29 March 2020

Tess Mehonoshen is an emerging visual artist, currently based in Melbourne. In 2015 she graduated from Queensland College of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Art, Honours (Class I).

Mehonoshen's current practice is concerned with generating a sense of defiance, focusing on adjusting to loss of place, and a subsequent untethered sense of belonging. Working primarily in sculpture and installation on site specific responses, Mehonoshen's works aim to intrude within spaces, subtly disrupting the functionality of domestic sites.

Louisa Chircop
7 April – 3 May 2020

Born in Sydney, Chircop holds an Associate Diploma in Fine Arts from St George TAFE and was awarded the NSW State Commission medal for fine arts. She has won the Basil Muriel and Hooper Scholarship AGNSW. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours Class I and a Master of Fine Arts Research degree in painting both from the College of Fine Arts UNSW assisted by an Australian Post Graduate Award Scholarship.





Becky Gibson
2 June – 23 August 2020

Based in Canberra and currently completing a Master of Visual Arts at ANU, Gibson experiments with the mediums of painting, drawing and printmaking. The cross over and flow of these various art forms help inform her practice and create new paths for future work.  As a painter, she is mainly drawn to the Australian landscape and the visible changes that occur within it; manmade or natural. 





Liz Walker
2 – 27 September 2020

Walker’s work investigates contemporary social and environmental concerns by collecting, repurposing and extending the material possibilities of natural ephemera, found detritus and recycled domestic.

Liz uses an extensive range of resources gathered from around the inner city and rural sites to construct sculpture, assemblage, installations and ephemeral site specific responses to people, time and place. 

In recent years community engagement through creative workshops and collaborative project delivery has become increasingly important to her practice and development as an artist.



 

Venessa Possum
29 September – 20 December 2020

Venessa is a Dharug, Dharawal Muringal-Baragal woman with Irish descent, born in Sydney. 
As an artist and archivist, her site-specific research leads to a diverse oeuvre of gestural painting, drawing, collage, frottage, documentary photography, video art and installations as artefacts. She is also involved in repatriations of Aboriginal material culture, Dharug language as philosophical knowledges and in testing ways to exhibit her creative research in context.
 

Past artists in residence

 

Kassandra Bossell
27 November 2018 – 3 February 2019

Kassandra is a Sydney-based multidisciplinary artist, working in sculpture and installation. A recent postgraduate of UNSW Art and Design, she completed a Masters in Fine Arts (research). Her artwork focuses on human relationships within nature, exploring experiential, cultural and ecological interconnectivity. She has had solo and group exhibitions in Australia and overseas and has completed several residencies. 

As a part of her residency, Kassandra’s contribution to the Georges River community was a wind sculpture of the Richmond Birdwing butterfly. She also facilitated a drop in kite making session as part of Council's 2019 Australia Day celebrations. Her work was exhibited at Hurstville Museum & Gallery’s exhibition In the park: Georges River Artist in Residence in September 2019.



Anne So
5 February – 17 February 2019

Anne is a creative writer who has been awarded a Varuna Writing Fellowship (2017), selected for the Hardcopy Professional Development Program for Emerging Writers (2017), and won a 2018 mentorship with the Australian Society of Authors to develop her book-length manuscript.

Anne used the residency to revise her 80,000 word manuscript, to then submit it to a professional editor/publisher. Anne’s contribution was to facilitate a writer’s workshop for those wishing to write a memoir, personal essay or creative non-fiction piece.




  
Jill Samera
19 February – 3 March 2019

Jill is a visual artist and creative writer with a strong focus on community involvement. She utilises acrylics, watercolour, mixed media and restored ceramics and is inspired by the Japanese art of ‘Kintsugi’ - using a modern technique to restore broken ceramics. Her writing consists of short stories, poetry, plays, screenwriting, spoken word and lyrics for song writing; and has won various writing awards. As a result of her residency, Jill’s work was also exhibited at Hurstville Museum & Gallery’s exhibition In the park: Georges River Artist in Residence in September 2019. Jill's contribution to the local area is a Sketching Trail, for people to see Carss Park from another point of view.

 


Elder
5 March – 5 May 2019

Elder is a professional videographer, photographer, music video creator and resident of Carss Park who has been working in photography and video since 2007. As a lifetime resident of Carss Park, Elder felt compelled to tell the story of this location, through a combination of photography, video, writing, and other mixed media. Elder’s work was exhibited at Hurstville Museum & Gallery’s exhibition In the park: Georges River Artist in Residence in September 2019. Elder is currently working on a solo exhibition of his work.




 
Soupsue
7 May – 2 June 2019

Soupsue is a trained visual artist often working in installation and collage. With a focus on recycled materials and found imagery, she utilises resources associated with mass production, media saturation and waste.

Inspired by her residency, Soupsue exhibited her works at Hurstville Museum & Gallery’s exhibition In the park: Georges River Artist in Residence in September 2019. Some of the works exhibited included 'Modern midden, 2019', which included discarded items she had excavated from the waterfront near Kogarah Bay that dated back to the 1960s, and 'Midden, 2019', clay models of an extinct mud oyster which was unique to the Botany Bay area.

Soupsue's contribution was a workshop exploring the history of the Carss Park area, followed by a practical hands on clay activity, for local students attending the Beverly Hills Intensive English Centre.



 

Michael Ambriano
4 – 30 June 2019

Having grown up both next to the sea and in close proximity to the Royal National Park, Michael's love of the outdoors and nature grew tremendously. Ever since he was a child he has had a fascination with the landscape and he has tried to harness this passion when producing his work. Having grown up in the Sutherland and St George area, he has had fond memories of Carss Park. Michael prefers to paint from plein-air sketches and the landscape images he produced during his residency were exhibited at Hurstville Museum & Gallery’s exhibition In the park: Georges River Artist in Residence in September 2019. Michael's contribution was the delivery of a plein-air workshop for a local painting society.




 
Dawei Xu
2 – 28 July 2019

Dawei Xu was born in Nanchang, a small city in Southern China. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in 2002 and then went on to study further at Collage of Fine Arts (UNSW), completing a Master of Design in 2005. Since graduating he has worked as a full time illustrator and also art tutor at institutions such as Western Sydney University and Shine Art Academy. The landscape images he produced during his residency were exhibited at Hurstville Museum & Gallery’s exhibition In the park: Georges River Artist in Residence in September 2019.

As a part of his contribution, Dawei facilitated a family watercolour workshop at Hurstville Museum & Gallery in November 2019.





Helen Amanatiadis
2 September – 27 October 2019

Helen Amanatiadis is a Sydney based artist whose practice encompasses textile, sculpture and installation.  She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (1992), Bachelor of Art Education (1994) and a Master of Art (2016) from UNSW Art & Design. She is a current Master of Fine Arts (Research) candidate at UNSW Art & Design.

Through her practice, she explores human evolution and consciousness attained through the complex process of shaping the natural world into technological inventions, as well as the tensions and contradictions in the human story from primitive/ancient to modern/industrial. 

Helen's contribution was facilitating a weaving workshop for high school students at Hurstville Museum & Gallery in November 2019.



 
 

Emma Davidson
29 October – 22 December 2019

Born in Sydney, Australia, Davidson utilises a variety of printing techniques such as Letraset, typewriter, stamps, stencils, woodblock prints, solvent transfers and photocopying. Using this technology, they create collages and zines with found objects and texts.

Top image: Richmond Birdwing butterfly sculpture, Kassandra Bossell.
Artist in residence studio images: Photography by Matthew Vasilescu www.mattvas.com.au