Out Of Sight Residency

Out of Site:

an at-home residency

Presented by First Site Gallery

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Of Country

We respectfully acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose lands we conduct the business of the gallery.

We acknowledge the many lands that residency participants, facilitators, mentors and organisers work and live from on these nations now known as Australia – from Malgana, Nhanda, and Inggarda Country in Gutharraguda (Shark Bay, WA) to Dja Dja Wurrung country north west of Naarm (Melbourne), to Ngár-go (Fitzroy) and Bulleke-bek (Brunswick) in Woi wurrung country.

We acknowledge that the sovereignty of these nations has never been ceded and pay our deepest respect to Ancestors and Elders, past, present and emerging.

1 2 3

About Out of Site

Showcase of Developed Work The People Involved

Part

1

About Out of Site

Letters from the organisers

After the final video conference for the Out of Site at-home residency I turned to my partner whom I share a desk within our makeshift home office set up, and he smiled and said well done and gave me a big hug and I cried. The tears were not happy or sad, or even bittersweet. They were a release of emotion that signified both an end and a beginning.

I am so incredibly proud of the Out of Site at-home residency, and everything that was brought into it, and shared within the strange cyber walls of the program. To the participants who applied and engaged readily with their peers and facilitators, to the mentors who gently fostered mini communities of care and critique, to each of the facilitators who shared their knowledge and experiences, and of course to Alice and Fiz for all of their hard work and believing in this project from day one; I would like to share my deepest thanks and gratitude with you all.

The first seedlings of the project sprouted when asked to brainstorm program ideas that could be delivered by the Gallery online. Having been stood down from my job, I was filling my days, like so many others with walks around the neighbourhood and odd baking projects. Finding it hard to finish setting up my studio or to turn off the radio as it churned out statistics and numbers. Like so many others, I was struggling to make anything more complex than a tray of cookies as the forecast of our creative futures became cloudy and unclear.

In suggesting an online residency, I had envisioned a space in which people felt safe to create, to focus on practice rather than outcomes, to focus on the present rather than the future.

As many other organisations, creative and other, moved online, there was also a lingering sense of digital fatigue in the atmosphere. In planning the residency, we also hoped to find a way to balance the online delivery with a tangible element of engagement.

By choosing to focus on ‘site’ and the infinite ways this can be nterpreted, we wanted to start a conversation by centring the individual and asking them what are their places, their surrounds, their environment, what is their practice, how are these things affected and linked or disconnected through the imposed restrictions of a pandemic?

From planning into motion, the residency seemed to become a site of its own. A place of meeting and discussion, but perhaps for some, also one of refuge and distraction.

The final dot to the exclamation mark, is this publication. We wanted there to be legacy that celebrated not only the residency itself but celebrated the participants and all the things they explored and created.

I can’t find the best words to describe how honoured I am to have shared this experience with you all. I hope that our paths will cross again in the future. Wishing you all safety, security and every success possible.

Up until this residency, I felt very cynical about the potential for creating a community online. I felt that it surely wasn’t possible to create genuine connections and have meaningful conversations when your companions are just disembodied heads bobbing around a slow screen. But as Nathan said after the final catch up, this experience seemed to have the tone of “summer camp”.

I jumped on board this project after hearing Karima discuss it during a First Site committee meeting. I had just lost all foreseeable work for the future and had dropped down to one study unit. I was sorely missing a sense of purpose and felt far from any creative community. I didn’t expect that this project would have done such a good job at creating community and reinvigorating my own creative practice.

Reflecting on the residency, it seems obvious that the reason this project was able to create a tangible sense of belonging -brief though it waswas due to the generosity of the participants, facilitators and mentors. Thank you to all of the participants for showing up and for taking the time out of your potentially chaotic and unstable lives to connect with other people and consider what it means to be a creative in this time. Thank you for your dedication, humour, and willingness to grow. Thank you to the facilitators for your readiness to share your practice, what inspires and what challenges you.

Thank you to mentors Amy and Monica for being so willing to jump into a new situation and learn alongside us. Thank you also to First Site Gallery Officer Alice for pushing so hard for this project and for always challenging us to be our best. And thank you Karima for making this residency happen in the first place! It has been a joy working with you and getting to know you, your cat and your living room through my computer screen.

About First Site Gallery

First Site is RMIT's student-led gallery, presenting exhibitions and events created by students, for students. First Site is run by a student committee who set the vision for the space and program exhibitions and events throughout the year.

This year, with the temporary closure of the physical gallery space due to COVID-19 restrictions, the programming of the gallery has shifted. The committee have been working hard on alternate programs to foster student engagement and connection amidst this time.

You can keep up to date with First Site Gallery's exhibitions and programs through their socials. You can explore work from the residency by searching the #OutofSiteResidency tags on Instagram.

Image: Jeremy Phi Nguyen

About Out of Site

The places and environments we inhabit affect our lives and creative practices. But our experiences of place are bigger than that of the physical world. We can also be impacted by virtual, emotional and imagined sites. Amidst the global pandemic, many of our lives have been re-situated and our daily routines disrupted. Where we might normally navigate multiple sites on the average day, we have now been encouraged to centre our lives within the home and for many, the screen. In these circumstances, how can we face the landscapes that our lives are now played out upon, and how can this investigation fuel a reflective and reflexive creative practice?

Planned amidst the first round of lockdown restrictions in Victoria, the Out of Site at-home residency, began as a reflection on being moved out of the site of the gallery and into the site of the home. This reflection developed into considerations of practice and place, and how restrictions to accessing physical sites would impact creative practices in different ways. With the exhibition program postponed, as a committee we wanted to find ways to keep students engaged with the gallery and keep fostering creativity.

A residency typically involves the residents accessing a site, but as social distancing became the norm and everything gradually shifted into the digital realm, we wondered if it would still be possible to cultivate a sense of community online. With an open call out, we wanted students from a range of courses and year levels to take part in the project. The response to the callout was wonderful, and we were so excited that so many students were interested in taking part in a residency online. The core program for the residency was the workshop series. We selected a range of practitioners from a variety of creative disciplines who each engage with site differently.

We invited three practitioners from our RMIT community to celebrate the diverse knowledge within our school. In addition, we invited two creative practitioners from outside of the university. This was an important choice, as it allowed us to present the participants with alternative perspectives and ways of engaging with site.

In designing the workshop series, we wanted to give participants the opportunity to reflect on the tangible and intangible sites within their lives. From locating ourselves within our community, to exploring unconscious spaces, to re-acquainting ourselves with our bodies, these workshops expanded the meaning of site from a diverse field of creative methods, mediums and experiences.

To support the participants throughout the residency, we decided to include a mentor program. Members from the First Site Committee were assigned to groups of five students from the residency. The groups were organised to include students from different courses and year levels. We wanted to create smaller communities within the residency to encourage participation and focused feedback.

The Workshop Series

Neptune, a Dream Archive

Presented by Manisha Anjali

Image: Dream Journal, Nathan Tilghman

Manisha Anjali works with text and performance. Her practice and research explore narratives and languages of dreams and exile. She is the author of Sugar Kane Woman, a collection of poems about the dreams and hallucinations of exiled Indo-Fijian women, and runs the Neptune dream archive.

In this workshop, Manisha introduced us to the world of dreams. We were guided by suggestions to work with a lit candle, remove the presence of our name and ego, and recreate the moods and images of our nightly venture into the subconscious. To help us reconnect our life and artistic practice with our own hidden subconscious worlds, we learnt about the Butoh dances of Tatsumi Hijikata, the surrealist practices of automatic writing, and Jungian Dream Association.

Image 1: last tram home (inside), Grace Stuart

Image 2: last tram home (outside), Grace Stuart

CHOREOGRAPHY: DIGITAL, OFFLINE, REAL AND IMAGINARY

Presented by Amrita Hepi

Amrita Hepi is an artist working with dance and choreography through video, the social function of performance spaces, installation and objects. Utilising hybridity and the extension of choreographic or performative practices, Amrita creates work that considers the body’s relationship to personal histories and the archive.

This workshop ventured into different ways of exploring and understanding movement in an artistic practice. Taking the cue that choreography is the organisation of time and space, Amrita guided us through texts and techniques, helping us to reconsider our own relationship to the choreography of bodies, words, and communities.

Considering how to communicate movement offline, in an increasingly online reality, Amrita discussed Remy Chalips’ Airmail Dances, a series of postcard instructions for movement, which led into a discussion of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s’ ‘Do It’ prompts. As you will discover, these ‘Do It’ prompts directly inspired Part 3 of this publication.

Curating Inclusive Cities

Presented by Dr. Tammy Wong Hulbert

Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert is an artist, curator and lecturer in the RMIT Master of Arts (Arts Management) program. Her art practice stems from her interest in expressing the complicated, multi-layered and fragmented ‘hyphenated’ space between cultures, due to living in a super-diverse, postcolonial society.

This workshop explored art’s potential in instigating social change, and how the communities that we live and work in can inspire and guide our own artistic practice. Tammy discussed her own experience as an artist, curator and academic, and introduced us to the key takeaways from her paper ‘Curating Inclusive Cities’. This led onto a collaborative exercise where we worked together on hypothetical projects, questioning how we could respond creatively to develop community in various scenarios.

Image: Iona Julian-Walters

What Is Your Unrealised Project?

Presented by Kate Rhodes

Kate Rhodes is a curator at RMIT Design Hub and has worked on art, craft and design exhibitions, workshops and creative activities both in Australia and internationally. Kate is a current PhD candidate at Monash University, investigating writing and curating in art and design.

Throughout this workshop, we explored the role of questions, conversations and collaboration in stimulating creative practice. These ideas were guided by Kate’s discussion of WORKAROUND:Women Design Action, a show held at RMIT Design Hub Gallery in 2018 and curated by Naomi Stead, Fleur Watson and Kate.

As the final workshop in the series, Kate helped us to imagine where our work could go from here. Framed by the question ‘What is your unrealised project?', we shared our imagined performance pieces, hypothetical festivals, and impossible installations.

Image: My Unrealised Project, DomDom D'Monte

Sound, Space and Place

Presented by PHILIP Samartzis

Philip Samartzis is a sound artist, scholar, curator and artistic director of the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture with a specific interest in the social and environmental conditions informing remote wilderness regions and their communities. His art practice is based on deep fieldwork where he deploys complex sound recording technology to capture natural, anthropogenic and geophysical forces.

Philip’s workshop explored sound recording and deep listening techniques as an avenue to understanding site. Throughout this session, Philip discussed his own path to sound art, including the two seasons he has spent documenting the sounds of Antarctica. The sounds in ecosystems across the globe are changing, due to the monumental impacts of climate change. How, Philip asked, can sound art play a role in the fight against climate change?

Image 1: Deep Listening 1, Ritika Skand Vohra

Image 2: Deep Listening 2, Ritika Skand Vohra

Part

2 Showcase of Developed Work

When planning the residency, we decided not to focus on outcomes the way many other residencies do. As the program was scheduled for the semester break, we wanted to make space for participants to take in the workshops and reflect, as well as creating and receiving feedback on their work if they wanted.

On the following pages are the works submitted by the participants of Out of Site. With practitioners from a multitude of disciplines and with so many talents there is a wonderful variety of work. We have organised the work developed during the residency by method of engagement.

LISTEN

Jacob Agius

Listen: https://nightshiftprod.bandcamp.com/album/ky-ketsu Kyûketsu

Kyûketsu is the Japanese word for 'bloodsucking'. This work is inspired by the Japanese film Kyûketsu Dokuro-sen and created from field recordings taken in 2019 during a study tour of Japan with RMIT University and an internship with the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, in the foothills of Victoria’s National Alpine Park. The sounds featured are crafted from recordings of unique places within these regions such as the Chichu Art Museum in Naoshima, Uguisu-bari floorboards in Kyoto and the Kiewa River and Falls Creek in Victoria.

Jenny Hickinbotham

Hello Mr Bowerbird

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/jenny-hickinbotham/hello-mrbowerbird

My song about a bowerbird at Johanna River Farm & Cottages July 2020.

Johanna River Farm

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/jenny-hickinbotham/johann-river-farm

During the Out of Site residency with RMIT I stayed at Johanna River Farm near the 12 Apostles on the Great Ocean Road. This is what I heard over ten days of relaxing, walking with my dogs, painting and singing with Mr Bowerbird.

Bridget Bourke

Morning Largo

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/bridget-bourke/morning-largo

Morning Largo is a 20 minute piece exploring inside and outside the mind during lockdown. The piece features gathered sounds from morning rituals: showering, making coffee, breakfast. Combined with excerpts from their dream journal and the morning news updates during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bridget explores how our relationship with time has become more and more distorted within the lockdown.

LOOK

Lucy Maddox

The series of prints created during the residency is, in essence, a self-portrait in isolation. Our focus has turned away from the external world and towards our own space, our own selves and bodies, and in particular our hands. Hands have always appeared in my work, but they have become particularly meaningful now. Communicating solely through buttons and screens, our hands are starved for human touch, yet we are so afraid of what we may have brushed up against that we wash them until the skin cracks.

My work in this residency has moved from simply capturing hands as they are to exploring their communicative possibility and the meaning added by the objects they hold. I also took the opportunity to learn to create prints outside of a traditional studio, using hand-printing methods and materials.

The process of cutting into the vinyl, applying the ink to the plate, and hand-pressing the paper with a baren adds further meaning to the works. Like many artists I have found solace in making during this time. We watch our hands as they create in our own personal site right in front of us.

DomDom D'Monte

Updated

character I created for The Little Bang Espresso Shop. Looking to create a 3D model and animate before the year is out.

Image: Our Hero, Little Bang Espresso Stop Motion Puppet Prototype (WIP - Jan 2020)

An exploration in Augmented Reality and a dedication to to the Little Bang Espresso Coffee Shop and it’s team for always bringing me back from the brinks of exhaustion to meet a deadline.

Image: A Little Bang in your Life!, Animation Concept Still (WIP- 2020)

Original Illustration of a Sacred Piece. This is both my anchor and my compass in life. It has journeyed with me through some of my most trying times, and symbolises my deep connection to family.

Image: The Nomadic Creative, journal entry (Jan 2020)

Nathan Tilghman

Five Buildings in Denham

Anna Hechtman

Image: soft

A delicate weave built from many threads to create a fabric reminiscent of that favourite comforting blanket from childhood.

A soft weave with a sparkle border. Is the eye drawn to the mellow centre or the shiny outer surface?

A weave of many threads and layers that serves to enclose. Comfortable and luxurious. Created during a time where there was so much uncertainty in the world.

Image 1: soft sparkle weave

Image 2: wrap

Grace Evangeline

Stuarttime marches on, regardless is a durational piece using a hand-woven tapestry with rose stems and living ivy, made following a research of cultural wounding, reconciliation and anti-monumentalist theory. 'time marches on, regardless', is a tapestry encased in a wooden frame, evocative of the colonial monument.

I engage the concept of ‘cultural wounding’ using woven English rose stems in the tapestry, symbolic of the embedded history of colonial harm. The stems cannot be removed without destroying the textile, nor can they be touched without the barb of a thorn piercing your skin. The bottom of the tapestry has a live English ivy woven into the fibre. The use of the English rose, and ivy are not coincidental, but symbolic of the harmful and engulfing nature of colonialism. The symbology of the English ivy in an anti-colonial work of art can be perceived as a direct reference to colonial history, as the English ivy mimics the acts of the colonists by strangling other plants of their nutrients and taking their native territory by force. However, the gesture of care involved with gardening, and tending to a living organism to encourage growth, can be recognised as an act of reconciliation in its own way - the duality of these two considerations creates a complex depth and furthers the meaning of the hybrid object.

The use of organic textile in this work also contrasts with the use of materials traditionally used within the colonial monument – things like stone and bronze, which are used for their capability to withstand time and weathering – as a natural fibre which can decompose and will not impact the environment while it does. This natural deconstruction and decomposition acts to portray an image of a deconstructed empire.

Image: Time marches on, regardless, May 2020, tapestry woven with rose stems and ivy

Image: Time marches on, regardless, July 2020 tapestry woven with rose stems and ivy

Druidic Catalogue challenges the ethics of non-renewable resources and capitalism, and encourages people to engage with their own environments by demonstrating the vast amounts of colour available in the environment. Each of the colours was sourced in Altona, Vic, from natural sources or litter.

Image: Druidic Catalogue, 52 coloured ink swatches derived from organic matter and trash

Jules Konda

Please Stand Here is a participatory work that responds to COVID-19 by inviting a re-activating of public spaces. As quarantine restrictions ease, there is a need to reactivate our public spaces in a gesture that celebrates these spaces, celebrates our increased ability to move within them and marks this unique time in our history.

A series of directional diagrams are created along pathways and in local parks and squares. In the style of old dance charts, with dotted lines, arrows and simple bold symbols, these diagrams beckon children and adults to participate and move through the space. This simplistic physical-based intervention invites our community back out to play.

Accessing the work in small groups, people will exercise their legs and imaginations. The work is visually simple and striking. It hopes to engage people to take that step, to explore the world and engage in a familiar space in a new way. Please Stand Here invites a small everyday adventure to unfold amongst another day of life in our post COVID-19 world.

Image: Please Stand Here, work in progress, 2020, spot marking paint on bitumen

Image: Please Stand Here, work in progress, 2020, spot marking paint on bitumen

Image: Please Stand Here, work in progress, 2020, spot marking paint on bitumen

Lily Simatupang

Overgrown is a story-driven video game inspired by Japanese horror RPGs. There are three possible endings to the game depending on the decisions the player makes.

Image: Overgrown, game still

Image: Overgrown, starting screen artwork draft

Audrey Ng

When you live consciously, life becomes quite strange. The mundane experience of drinking strawberry milk can be mystifying, only if you want it to be. What’s it like taking an easily found object, and indulging in it until it becomes an uncommon experience?

A humble red brick is picked up and smashed into pieces. The remaining fragments and pigments are mixed with concrete to sculpt a series of experimental objects, telling a story of milk and bricks.

Image: Strawberry Milk Seven Ways

Have you ever said a certain word repeatedly, to the point it begins to sound weird? When you collect your medication over and over, the words on the pharmacy packaging don't seem to register anymore. The package is dragged across a scanner to create a composite image. The words make as much sense as they did before.

Image: Need help managing your medication? Just Ask!

Yuchen Xin

The three works discuss ideas relating to unconscious self-expression and absurdities in everyday life. The process starts by collecting and exploring the use of ready-mades and found objects. It is during the collecting and finding that the value of the object is redefined, not as waste, but rather as an idea or method to evoke expression.

These anthropomorphic characters made by artificial material channels both my personal universe and emotions in human conditions. Furthermore, they also draw upon an interest in investigating the absurdities of life and using it as a source of inspiration to establish unusual bonds among various materials.

The three works form through considerations of the significance of using kitsch artificial material as a basis to create artworks. Kitsch is the attempt to possess the experience of intensity and immediacy through an object. It has the function of enlarging a particular spirit within the object by emphasizing its visual impact and thus it also speaks to the absurdity and illogical aspects that coexist within our everyday lives.

By using an alter-ego form, these assemblage characters not only reflect aspects of my everyday life, aesthetics and indicate my existence but also allow me to examine and depict deeper aspects of human conditions that we usually are not aware of in our daily lives.

Image: Yeah? mixed materials, 2020

Image: Big Head, mixed materials, 2020

Image: Man-eating Flower, mixed materials, 2020

Iona Julian-Walters

In Bleedthrough, Iona has created a series of small books that she collaborated on with other artists from the residency (Ritika Vohra, Grace Stuart, Jake Parker and Fiz Eustance). Each book focuses on a different 'site' whether that be place, concept or even body part. Working with materials she had on hand, Iona created these books out of cheap office paper, drawing out these sites while also exploring how the nature of the material’s breakdown could lead to different understandings of site as unfixed or changeable. The works were then sent to her collaborators who were asked to work into and on these books within their own practice, further fragmenting the idea of site or experience as fixed or singular. You can view the full books on Iona's Instagram @eastern_common_froglet

Image: Bleedthrough, Gender, collaboration with Jake Parker, ink, texta and found objects on paper.

Image: Bleedthrough, Merri (detail), collaboration with Fiz Eustance, ink, graphite and acrylic on paper

Image: Bleedthrough, River, (detail), collaboration with Grace Stuart, ink and acrylic on paper, 2020

Image: Bleedthrough, Lungs, (detail), collaboration with Ritika Skand Vohra, ink and cotton on paper, 2020

Roberta Govoni

Time is a series of 5 photographic collages. The photos were taken during my Art Residency 'Out of Site', organised by First Site Gallery, during the COVID-19 pandemic lock down. Each collage is made of 12 photographs taken during my everyday walks around Thornbury, Victoria. Each photo is an object, person or landscape that reminded me of things that changed during the lock down.

Image: Empty Loneliness

Image: Purple Grange

Time

Confusion and everything is upside down. Random and weird findings Time to reflect Time to relax and understand Time to change Sealed windows, people are forced to face themselves Closed, open, closed Escaping and distractions are no more, If you want.

Rules to follow, being watched Ghosts of habits that are not making much sense Waiting or not Enjoying the nights at home

Harriet Donegan

The World

I used to think the self becomes an adult when the self feels genuinely compelled to watch the news. Tonight, after par-boiling the potatoes, I hurry downstairs to turn on the television. The anchor appears to me in mid-sentence: that is the world this Tuesday ladies and gentlemen, have a lovely evening.

What is the world? What is the world? What is the world?

I flick through the other channels. Masterchef is on Ten. I mute it to watch the miming bodies move in ungraceful chaos around kitchen benches. People are sweating over the presentation of a plate. One woman cries over what looks to be a Panna Cotta that won’t set. I can’t help but laugh. Is this schadenfreude?

One channel appears to be running behind for their news still has eight minutes more. They are talking about a woman, Kathy Sullivan, who was not only the first American woman in space once upon a time, but this morning, at the age of sixty-eight-years old, Kathy Sullivan became the first American woman to dive to the deepest point in the ocean. The anchor switches to the weather. According to the weather woman, who is resisting at all costs the natural process of ageing, there are thunderstorms destined for Beijing and Mexico tomorrow, it’s going to be fine in London and windy in Ohio. There is a long sign off. The anchors occupy their hands with the gathering and shuffling of papers while their waxy, large heads nod and smile down the camera at this body, at all the bodies on all the couches. What is the world? What is the world? What is the world?

It’s Laundry Season at Harvey Norman, I am told with exclamation. I can save seven hundred, eight hundred, as much as nine hundred dollars on a front load washer if I want. I imagine the script in allCAPS. T’s voice travels down the staircase to please turn it down. T is in a late class that makes me grateful for the morning-ness of my course. I like the few hours I have to myself in the evening and wonder if this is also schadenfreude.

I have to turn down the ads to a hard-to-hear-volume of five, so it doesn’t feel so much like they are yelling at this body to get up off the couch and BUY. BUY. BUY. I would like to sit, sit, sit and find out what the world is. I lower the volume and a distinct memory visits me. One of afternoon time between my finishing school and going to swimming training. In the memory I am sitting on the corner of our family’s black leather couch not able to make out what the television is saying because my brother is erratically adjusting the volume, up/down, mute/unmute. I remember this being the very first way his obsessivecompulsive disorder presented to me. He still does this, and I still wonder what the implications might be if he were to resist flicking ten times up/down, mute/unmute. I wonder if it’s ever my life at stake he is trying to protect by changing the volume in this way.

What is the world? What is the world? What is the world?

The Winter Beach Town

On the second day of winter

I wake up and draw my blinds to a violent wind reshaping the tree line. I would like to take this body out walking along an unperturbed stretch of sand. Rows of power lines in the distance swing like skipping ropes. I remember waiting for the bell to ring in school, never exactly knowing when to jump in. The new and oppressive weatherboard sharing our fence line obstructs any way of ascertaining if the bay is flat this morning. The Bureau of Meteorology tells me that the north-westerly wind lifting anything not significant enough to stay on the ground is doing so at forty-four kilometres an hour. I have never known where north, east, south, west goes: this body is always moving. I turn over the idea of Weetbix for breakfast.

On our drive towards the front beach you commentate what you see, which is mostly poor jogging styles and tradies’ that get the ladies. I look up to see a cluster in high vis embarking on a mid-morning lunch of meat pies and sausage rolls. There is a squadron of pelicans in the sky. I don’t understand how their large bodies defy gravity the way they do. I think about how you probably have an answer for all this. But I am busy manifesting stillness and so remain mostly silent. I wind down the window to hear the sound specific to The Winter Beach Town. It is one of power tools, AM radio, and clunky, well-equipped Utes. Last winter I didn’t think there was any space left to build but it seems there is always space and if there’s not there is winter to knock homes down and re-build. Or, in the case of your next-door neighbour: burn it down, claim it on insurance and then build again only bigger and more intrusive.

It’s depressing, isn’t it? I said looking out the all weatherboard window last night. It was dusk and there was a great deal to contemplate.

Mmmm, you hummed looking out at the rows of parallel panels.

I studied your face, an amalgam of boredom and fear.

The tree’s will grow, your mum said, as if saying so might will them to shoot up overnight.

It’s not so much the house, I said, just that someone would do that.

We arrive to find the beach undisturbed. I say out loud how The Winter Beach Town is superior to its summer counterpart. You agree. Today is no exception. The colours are all marvellous melancholy ones. I hear kettles coming to the boil six streets over. The Winter Beach Town encourages copious amounts of tea then later, wine. Mine white, yours red. It is for contemplating the structure of a sentence and locating what Anne Boyer might mean when she writes the satanic jewel of mortality on the shores of Venice about her breast cancer.

What’s Next?

On a Thursday, the last one in July, I buy a Tattslotto ticket to enter the Saturday night draw. My sister and I split the more expensive ticket because we agree, ten million each is plenty. The lady at the newsagent grins a heartfelt good-luck to us, even goes as far to stick up both her thumbs as we walk out onto the street robust with possibility. I study our numbers. Beginners luck only applies once, I say. T pins it next to the door. People are made to acknowledge by way of a kiss as they come and go. For three days my sister, her partner, T and I talk about what we will do with our money. For three days I think about my bookstore in an attainable, three-dimensional way.

I throw out two pairs of shoes then buy two new pairs. My foot has grown, I say into my phone. But how can that be! Mum says. She feels distant and close at the same time. I picture her walking around the house sweeping, probably, then staring out the dirty windows she keeps telling me she wants to clean. I can see her blue denim jeans hugging her nimble legs. She has red lipstick on, reapplied to be the brightest kind. She is sipping a gin and tonic.

Over antipasto at T’s parents place, his businessman Dad asks me what it is I plan to do once I finish in October. You do finish in October, don’t you? Yes, I say, I do. My hands break down a toothpick I had been using to politely pluck olives from the mix, then another, then another. I open my mouth to see if the blankness in my head translates to anything. It doesn’t. There is a thin woody mess on the thick marble bench and I wipe it onto my lap. I watch him watch the skin on my face turn red. It’s works like a mirror. Oh not to worry, plenty of time, he says in a voice I haven’t quite heard before.

On Saturday evening we gather with a sense of occasion. There are now two tickets by the door. The number twenty-six has been drawn two-hundred and sixty-eight more times than the other numbers, my sister’s partner says. I count seven twenty-sixes on the wall. We sit, our body parts crossed, eating anchovy toasts, sipping wine and emitting positive, millionaire energy. My sister enters ‘what to do when you win Tattslotto’ into a search engine.

• Take a breath

• Give it time to settle in

• Don’t immediately tell everyone you know

• Get to know your relationship with money

• Put together a plan with financial advice

In his essay on writing, Alexander Chee composes one-hundred dot points on his experience. Which, upon reading, and re-reading, I see directly translates to my own experience. In it, he says, 13. Typically, a novelist's family will not believe the novelist to be someone who does 'real' work, even after the publication of many novels.

14. It is said that families should try not to punish their writers. I am the one who said it.

Jake Parker

testing testing

testing testing

is this thing on?

god microphones are weird, right? they’re just balls of metallic string that collect people’s spit and chewed up food that’s made its way out of their teeth. I always think about this when it’s my turn at karaoke… anyway, excuse my bedroom lighting. This is my first video and I’m too poor for a ring light.

testing testing

I’m considering this vlogging thing as a side hustle. do you think someone famous will sponsor me? let’s hope it’s not Ellen.

testing testing

I must confess that I’m missing. I’m missing my friends and my lovers—if you’re watching this, I’m giving you a big smooch. Do I look just as good on camera? I’m missing the overenthusiastic workers at Lush, especially when they’d wash my hands in some stinky volcanic clay. I’m missing shaking hands with people I just met and making them feeling awkward about it. It’s polite!

I’m missing feeding myself slimy dolmades in the park when it’s somebody’s birthday. I don’t even like them that much but they’re fun to hold when the oil drips down your hands. what are you guys missing? bonus points for mentioning me.

testing testing

does anybody remember cold pints? I once heard that the small curve at the top of the glass is to prevent people from dropping their drink. drunk hands slip across the condensation and catch themselves without thinking. utter genius.

testing testing

I’m going for night walks and unpacking the small stuff. last night, for example, I was juggling three bottles of wine and a takeaway lasagne through the park when I saw some guy jogging around with dumbbells over his head. I don’t know why, but I was just waiting for his sweaty hands to drop the 5KGs on his bald shoulders. maybe gym weights also have small curves to prevent them from being dropped.

testing testing

do you ever think that everyday technology can’t be trusted? I mean touch screens are a biggy. I still think about boomers repeatedly pressing computer monitors and being super confused as to why the magic in their finger is out of juice. it’s fair enough though, when I used my uni’s library printer touch screen for the first time, my thumb accidentally rolled and doubled the digits on the screen. I ended up waiting for 55 copies of notes on early 2000s internet humour whilst a line of people tapped their feet. and that was at a time when I thought I knew the feeling of being productive.

testing testing

yeah I could learn shorthand yeah I could walk to the beach yeah I could feel the sand yeah I could sharpen all my pencils yeah I could be a cam model yeah I could read all my books for school in one sitting yeah I could shop online for the perfect ‘first outing since iso ended’ celebration yeah I could co-ordinate a different group of friends to call on Houseparty every night yeah I could sleep yeah I could show my face in public yeah I could download exercise apps to stop myself from developing a tum yeah I could clean the dust from my living room yeah I could master the perfect cosmopolitan yeah I could study the history of lighting design yeah I could reply to all my dating app messages yeah I could write. or I could just be human. or I could just lie upside down and stare at how ugly I look in the mirror. Y’know? testing testing maybe if I tell that eccentric guy I went on a couple of dates with in Latvia that I’m thinking about doing my postgrad in Vienna or Budapest he’ll also fantasise about us seeing each other, about doing each other’s crazy make up, about smearing it up to our noses, about making art in our underwear, about rolling around on the hardwood floor and calling it dancing, about shopping at corner stores for vodka and smoked almonds, about wearing stretched and woolly clothes, about wearing each other.

testing testing maybe these absurd daydreams I keep having about living on the other corner of the globe can be attributed to the current lockdown. I wanna be somewhere else, but not JUST somewhere else, as FAR AWAY AS GEOGRAPHICALLY POSSIBLE somewhere else. maybe looking up affordable studio apartments for rent in Paris is a bad idea right now. I’m teasing myself. maybe that’s just fun though. more erotic than porn at least.

testing testing

the liquid lipstick I bought this morning when I was naked in bed was expensive. YSL Velvet Tatouage. The colour reminded me of a rouge my mum’s friend once coined as ‘slut red’ (I still cringe).

if I was living in America I could have engraved the lipstick with something like ‘Knock ‘em dead’ or ‘Baby’s 1st’. but I live in Australia and we don’t bother to engrave our luxuries. we don’t exercise a plastic-wrapped, expensive version of promiscuous. I bought it because I want to feel prettier. I want to feel queer-er. when I go out and smile, I want someone nice to give me the signal and rub their index finger on their front teeth.

testing testing brands and luxury. maybe not. testing testing are you guys still watching? maybe not.

testing testing my colleague sent me a message today saying she missed the sound of my work keyboard n its click clacking. I worry about her. I should send her some ASMR videos of drag queens playing with their acrylics. that’ll cheer her up. after all, ASMR is just vlogging which involves ending an interaction with a hug.

god I wanna be touched. but like, in a deeply impersonal way too. I just wanna be running my fingers through the hair of a random lover. if anybody is watching this and has thick, luscious hair, feel free to DM me a video. Instagram can’t censor our hair kinks.

testing testing where are the absent minded touches? are they present now? I’m certainly aware when I touch my own face or bump into a stranger in public. At the supermarket people steer their trollies into the cereal boxes, just to avoid grazing somebody else’s unbought good. I had hay fever at Psorakos the other day and BOY did the mob almost torch me between the zucchinis and the snow peas.

testing testing okay yeah I think this mic is working.

testing testing follows the questionnaire Jake posted on Instagram asking: “What do you miss touching the most in the world pre-isolation?”, with all the answers in italics woven into a piece of autofiction.

Image: anywhere but here

Nathan Tilghman

View Catalogue: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yh5e2vj248tr4un/ WXNW_Digital_Catalogue_Nathan_Tilghman.zip?dl=0

Ritika Skand Vohra

Memory-thresholds 1

Watch: https://youtu.be/xXuzhssrTTA

Hand-stitching and documenting, cotton on polaroid photograph and dissolvable textile material.

Image: Memory-thresholds 1, revisiting sites, r ecollecting places (detail)

Alaka

Padinjattayil Shaji

Working with the idea of internal impetus by embodying emotions.

Dancing Within the Confines

Jake Parker

Participants

Jacob Agius

Bridget Bourke

DomDom D’Monte

Harriet Donegan

Evi Garritani

Roberta Govoni

Anna Hechtman Jenny Hickinbotham

Iona Julian-Walters

Jules Konda Lucy Maddox Audrey Ng Alaka Padinjattayil Shaji Jake Parker

Lily Simatupang Ritika Skand Vohra Grace Evangeline Stuart

Nathan Tilghman Cristina Ulloa Yuchen Xin

Mentors

Amy Bartholomeusz

Monica Do

Fiz Eustance Karima Sulaiman

Part The People Involved 3

The Do It prompt, also described as a word score or set of artist instructions, is a playful invitation to create. The expression of a Do It prompt was introduced to our group by one of the workshop facilitators, Amrita Hepi. The Do It project started from a conversation curator Hans Ulrich Obrist had with two artist friends in Paris. It became the theme for an exhibition in 1994 and has been repeated and reiterated by many artists and organisations since.

To celebrate the closing of Out of Site, we wanted to end the project in a way that continued the explorations of creativity shared during the residency. We asked the participants and mentors who took part in the residency to share a prompt of their own.

Participants

Jacob Agius

Bachelor of Communications (Media), 2nd year

Jacob Agius is a multi-disciplinary artist, film composer and sound designer. Their work utilises field recordings and audio processing techniques focusing on the importance of deep listening, sonic textures, films and the intersections between the self and the unknown. During the Out Of Site Residency, Jacob composed three sound pieces forming the project Kyûketsu (Japanese for 'bloodsucking') using field recordings from their study tour of Japan with RMIT University, and an internship with the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, in Regional North Victoria in 2019. The sounds featured within these pieces are crafted from unique places such as the Chichu Museum in Naoshima, the nightingale floorboards in the Nijō Castle in Kyoto, and the Kiewa River and Falls Creek in Victoria. Inspired by these sounds and the Japanese film Kyûketsu Dokuro-sen, Jacob crafted these pieces to create new sonic environments within the listeners' home to transform their living space.

jacobagius95@gmail.com https://zagadkaj.wordpress.com/ @zagaadkaa

Turn off your lights, Turn off your eyes, Listen to what's around you; Expand and retract in the darkness.

Bridget Bourke

Bachelor of Design (Digital Media), 3rd year

Bridget is a Sound Artist who has composed scores and sound design for animation and short films during their studies. They enjoy experimenting with recorded sounds to create new textures and meaning. Throughout the residency, Bridget has gathered sounds from their morning rituals: showering, making coffee, breakfast, and cleaning. Combined with excerpts from their dream journal and the morning news updates during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bridget explores how our relationship with time has become more and more distorted within the lockdown.

DomDom D'Monte

Bachelor Of Design (Animation & Interactive Media), 3rd year

A Renaissance Man for all seasons, ‘DomDom’ has danced through the Valley of Death and come out on the other side with even more determination, creativity and sense of purpose. Straight out of high school in the early 90’s, he was privileged to be trained as a technical illustrator in the Australian Automotive Industry by ‘The Greats’, learning the old ways of ink, paint and film. Whilst witnessing the dawning of computers and something called, “The World Wide Web” enter the industry. A 20+ year career in illustration, graphic & web design, his creative journey finds him now in 2D/3D animation and effects in a Bachelor Degree at RMIT. During this residency, he has explored the concept of the “NOMADIC CREATIVE” - One whose creativity is never limited by the state of the world, the space they inhabit, or the tools within reach, at any given time.

domdidit@gmail.com www.linkedin.com/in/domdom001 @domdom_001

Connecting with Ancestors

1. Find an Ocean and Beach that means something to you. (It may be it’s name, a memory, a sound, etc. - Follow it.)

2. Walk along the shoreline (where the water barely tickles your feet.),

3. Listen to what is around you. Find it’s tempo. Make your steps follow this rhythm.

4. When you feel ready... ...Face the ocean, eyes closed & breathe...inhale & exhale.

5. NOW...REALLY BREATHE... taking every sound, sight, smell, and particle of air you can possibly fill into your lungs and your soul. CHERISH IT! BECOME IT!!! NOW DANCE LIKE NO ONE – NOT EVEN YOU, IS WATCHING. IMPORTANT: DO NOT HOLD YOUR BREATH! - Instead, let it decide when it wants to leave, and allow it. (Repeat Twice or as long as you need.)

6. The next step is yours – Forward, Right, Left, Back –YOU CHOOSE. but with every step forward, in whatever direction, do it with PURPOSE. Whether it be with force, with finesse, with style, but always with Love and Kindness at the core.

7. Now simply pass these instructions to the next stranger you meet. One Love. DomDom

HARRIET DONEGAN

Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing), 3rd year

Harriet Donegan is a twenty-two-year-old student at RMIT. She studies words; they give her great comfort. She is a gin drinker; with her left hand, she explores the body and the world that permeates the body. She swims laps in Melbourne’s fifty-meter outdoor basins, one day she would like to drive around Australia to swim them all.

donegan.h.a@gmail.com https://readhdon.com/

Fall down somewhere soft, close both your eyes and fall asleep

Evi Garritani

Bachelor of Fashion and Textiles with Sustainable Innovation, 1st Year

Evi is from Fremantle Western Australia and moved to Melbourne this year to study Fashion and Textiles with Sustainable Innovation. During isolation Evi has been living by herself and has come to appreciate life at a slower pace. Sustainable fashion has always been something Evi's admired over the years and she never thought she would be studying it in such a way that truly resonates with her values towards the fashion industry. She loves experimenting with natural dyeing techniques as she's researched the synthetic dye industry and the many ways it impacts our waterways. Throughout this residency Evi has delved into her dreams and began writing a dream journal to record her crazy and wonderful dreams which hopefully begin to start making sense and influence some creative new ideas to improve her practice.

evijg01@gmail.com https://evijg01.wixsite.com/bepresent https://evijg01.wixsite.com/evieats @evigarritani and eviieats

Roberta Govoni

Bachelor of Arts (Photography), 2nd year

Roberta Govoni is a second-year RMIT photographer student and creative producer based in Melbourne. She has been freelancing since 2014 and she enjoys using her skills to create and brainstorm artistic projects. Originally from Italy, she has been living in Australia since 2013. She is influenced by surrealism, symbols and metaphors, she is passionate about making meaningful artwork and collaborates with other artists. She works commercially in branding, wedding, events, products and fashion photography. Out of Site art residency is her very first art residency and a unique one in that, as she took it from her own home, due to the pandemic COVID19 happening. The residency gave her the inspiration to go back to take photos again and she met some incredible inspirational artists coming from different backgrounds. She found the workshops very useful to give tips and motivation in creating new art and collaborate with other people.

info@photosbyroberta.com www.photosbyroberta.com @photosbyroberta

Do not think (2020)

Take a blank A4 paper.

Take out all your coloured pen and pencils and put what fits in a cup.

Close your eyes and pick a colour.

Research on your Internet browser 'relaxing music' and click on the third from the top.

Make sure it’s at least 20 minutes long.

Start listening to the music and start drawing with the colour you picked, without thinking.

After 10 minutes, pick another colour from your cup

Keep drawing for another 10 minutes. Do it every day for a month

Share your drawings on Instagram with no caption.

Anna Hechtman

Certificate IV in Textile Design and Development

Anna is textile artist whose practice includes weaving, crochet, embroidery and natural dyeing. Whilst her creative practice is very much about the process of creating and often involves detailed work it is also about elevating the everyday through design and ruminating on the discussions that dominate her daily life. The Out of Site residency served as an opportunity for Anna to explore weaving at this moment in time during lockdown. Using the warp already on her loom, she drew on the materials available to her to just weave now without extensive planning, without waiting for the perfect opportunity, she just weaved and let the process of moving and creating dominate.

Sit. Breath. Begin. Write on your page, thread your needle, make a stitch, pick up your shuttle and weave. Make a start, don’t wait until you have all the information, don’t wait until you have the perfect idea, just begin. Begin. Continue. Start again.

Jenny Hickinbotham

Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art), Honours

Jenny lives in Gisborne with doggies, chickens, ducks and bees, she escaped this ‘place’ for ten days of the residency with Puck and Trinky her Tenterfield Terriers, to Johanna River Farm & Cottages. This lush and peaceful setting supported mental health rejuvenation, which had taken an Honours Assessment Pressure Stress challenge, igniting old habits and wounds. Jenny’s practise focusses on her recovery journey through mental health issues: Early Childhood Developmental Trauma if untreated (no treatments available in 1950s) leads to more challenging ‘diagnoses’ or survival strategies. Further, Jenny’s work tackles community fear, stigma and discrimination associated with mental health distress. Out of Site residency was just the tonic Jenny needed to shift focus, connections via the Internet were wonderfully supportive and the ‘lectures’ stimulating and informative. Jenny’s health improved from sensory stimulations, dance, dream, unconscious, sound. Speakers challenged participants to think about Airmail Dancing, Jenny got right into this fantastic notion, Dancing on a Mushroom with a Fairy, Dancing with the Cow as she Jumped Over the Moon. Such stories, notions, fantasies in Jenny’s Carry Bag are what sustain her, imparting pride, sense of achievement and more importantly sense of belonging, acceptance by a respectful artistic community.

Wrongness is Joyful

If you’re struggling

Hearing voices, feeling sad, Not sure who you really areFeelings awry

Take up your pencil

Take up your brush

Take up your pen

Any bit of newspaper, shopping docket, something blank

With gay abandon With your ‘wrong’ hand

Looking only at a joyful object

Luscious fruit, steaming cuppa, loving pet, axolotyl fish

Keep pen on paper

Allow your perceptions of the object

To flow through your drawing implement

Leave such implement scrawling

Scrawling

Until ends meet Your image complete Have a look Have a laugh Have some joy!

jennyhickinbotham@gmail.com www.jennyhickinbotham.com @jennyhickinbotham/

Iona Julian-Walters

Bachelor

of Arts (Fine Art), (Drawing), 2nd year

Dance for making a better world:

Think of your body as a stone, dropping through the skin of still water. This is your life.

As you pass through this membrane, let the ripples you make spread our in a way that creates good, not harm.

Jules Konda

Master of Arts (Art in Public Space)

Jules Konda studied BA Visual Arts at Charles Sturt University Albury NSW, graduating with distinction and winning the Drysdale Award for Visual Art and the University Medal in 1996 before completing a BA Visual Arts with Honours at Southern Cross University Lismore in 1997. Jules went on to spend the next 16 years in the Film and Television Industry working on feature films, Hollywood features, telemovies, television dramas, sitcoms and commercials in costuming and art departments before returning to her roots in installation art. Jules' practice has emerged from convergent interests in community engagement, public art, festivals, working with children and concepts of play. She creates intergenerational participatory experiences for public spaces, festivals and events. Jules is currently completing a Master of Arts (Art in Public Space) at RMIT Melbourne. She lives and works in the Dandenong Ranges.

julie@festivetribe.com.au www.festivetribe.com.au @festive_tribe

Get a blank piece of paper and a pencil. Draw a fish. It can be any kind of fish, one you have seen, or one you imagine (or one you imagine you have seen!) Isn't it wondrous?!

Lucy Maddox

Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts

Looking for connection in a time of isolation, Lucy began creating a window gallery in her 1st-floor apartment window in March. It was a driving force that kept her motivated to create work during lockdown and allowed her to reach out to others around her. Her recent works have focused on where our attention is drawn when we are forced to stay in one place: our windows, our bodies, and the objects that we reach for again and again. Hands in particular serve as a powerful stand-in for the human figure itself. Through this residency, Lucy has pursued methods of printmaking within and inspired by the domestic space, and the work she created during this time captured images of everyday objects that have reached almost totemic status in the pandemic. This time has allowed her to reflect on the impact of isolation on a practice that centres around connection, and to consider new avenues for investigation.

lucy.am@gmail.com www.lucymaddox.com @look_see_

Look at your hand. What’s in it? What’s missing? Count the lines in your knuckles, add them together and send a nice text to that number.

Audrey Ng

Bachelor of Interior Design (Honours), 3rd year

Audrey is a Chinese-Australian student with a background in Interior and Graphic Design. Driven by nostalgia and playful pastimes, she is always exploring her curiosities through writing, drawing, and making objects. More recently, she completed a semester exchange in Toronto where she majored in Interior Design. During the residency, Audrey played with architectural techniques of drawing and construction, as a way to address its typical conventions of perfection and order. She enjoys learning from others working in different creative fields, and is keen to bring their knowledge back into her own practice.

Alaka Padinjattayil Shaji

Master of Arts Management, Final Semester

Movement Artist and an Artpreneur of Indian Ethnicity, currently pursuing her passion and exploring the idea of curation and participatory artmaking as a way to build communities of care and belonging. Through the residency, she explored the idea of experiencing dance by interrogating the domestic space and exploring the dancing body in the absence of the gaze of the audience. During the course of the residency, she used several different tools of improvisational techniques to move and embody a distorted reality. The creative output of her movement research touches upon concepts of 'resilience' and 'adaptability'.

Play the track 'Waajeed -Shango' Shake/ Jump/ move/ dance. Move for 6 mins. Let go.

Jake Parker

Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing), 2nd year

Jake Parker is a writer, thinker, and worrier. His practice approaches modes of life writing, autofiction, and short fiction, though is never limited to genre of any kind. Through this residency he has explored transitory mental sites in isolation and how these are performed in writing.

Write the following sentence: 'I know who I am.' Then cross, scratch, scribble it out. Write your own sentence.

Lily Simatupang

Bachelor of Design (Animation), 1st year

Lily Simatupang is currently in her first year of studying a Bachelor of Design, Animation. She works with illustration, animation, video game, projection, sculpture and has a strong interest in conceptual art. Her work often explores the nature of the digital online world and its relationship to our physical reality. Lily enjoys making art that is interactive and asks the viewer to participate in the piece to complete it. Through the residency she has been making a surreal video game called Overgrown that she is continuing to develop. The residency workshops have helped her in giving thought to begin the creation of an unrealised project.

lilsima21@gmail.com http://lilysimatupang.carrd.co/#conceptual @lylisimaa

Draw a face on the index finger of your left hand.

Draw a different face on the index finger of your right hand.

Voice a conversation between the two fingers.

What are their personalities?

What is their past?

What is their relationship to each other?

Ritika Skand Vohra

PhD Fashion & Textiles, 2nd year

Ritika is pursuing her creative practice-based research in Fashion & Textiles from RMIT University. She has worked in the fashion industry as a designer for couture ensembles and embroideries. She has shifted from a design to a maker-artist space, blurring fine lines between craft and art. Ritika’s practice is transformational, and explores performative and participatory aspects in making. She is drawn to touch for collecting sensations, emotions, memories, and movement as materials. And from here, her intuitive movements guide her free-flowing thoughts and the process of making. She imagines different ways the work might connect with the perceiver. Her work has surreal, transient, and poetic elements. In the Residency, Ritika revisits and recollects lived experiences of places visited prior to the current scenario, while being situated at home. Being part of the Residency, allowed her to grow these built-memories with the site and connect to the deepest states which were earlier hidden.

ritika.s.vohra@gmail.com

Soul Soup (2020)

Before going to sleep, take a moment and sit comfortably on your bed. Close your eyes. Get in touch with the feelings in your body, heart and your thoughts.

Now, bring your focus to your hands. Bring them together and imagine that you are holding an empty soup bowl. Feel the form and weight of the bowl in your hands. Think of three energies that you felt low on today, energies you wanted to be strengthened. (these could be love, patience, creativity, enthusiasm, etc.)

These are the ingredients for your soup. Take your time to imagine their colours, textures and consistencies. Now bring your attention back to the soup bowl in your hands. Add all the ingredients one by one. Now begin to stir your soup with one hand. Pay attention to how the soup is changing as everything blends together. While stirring, add more if you desire. When you feel the soup is ready, bring it closer and inhale the fragrances. Drink it slowly and feel it nourish you.

[Document this soup-making experience, the movements or emotions in any medium you are comfortable in.]

Grace Evangeline Stuart

Bachelor of Arts, (Fine Art), Honours

Grace is an interdisciplinary artist, with a background in printmaking. Their works explore themes of home, heritage and the natural world through mixed media or representational image prints and have an utmost regard for environmental impacts. Grace's previous works include innovative interactive prints and explorations of organic material agency. Through the Out of Site winter residency, Grace strengthened their resolve around making work during isolation and formed a strong community of practice. Their upcoming work has a stronger consideration of site and space thanks to the workshops featured in the residency.

https://graceevangeline.com.au/ @gr.i.eve

locate your pulse. beat. beat. feel the blood thud through your veins. beat. beat. release the rhythm from your skin. beat. beat. create a visual representation of the drum beat that powers you. beat. beat.

Nathan Tilghman

Bachelor of Interior Design, 1st year

Nathan is an integrated Designer/Maker currently based in Fremantle, Western Australia. Nathan runs a transdisciplinary practice that explores the various intersections between people & place. On lockdown in a state the size of Europe, Nathan chose to spend their residency on the road: exploring, documenting, and ultimately questioning their relationship to their home state - Western Australia.

Go to your local farmers market. Take a stroll at all the local fruit stands. Choose one that calls out to you. Politely approach the farmer/ person/clerk running the stand, and:

• Ask for their name

• Ask them what fruit is new this week.

• Ask them what their favorite jam is. Buy about a kilos worth of the fruit-jam that this person says is their favorite. Return home and prepare to make some jam (recipe follows). Once prepared, put your jam in a jar, and label the jar with that person’s name. Return next Sunday to the farmers market and gift this person the jam that you prepared. Congratulations, you have now made a friend.

Recipe: Ingredients: 1kg of chosen, ripe fruit. 1.3 kilos of organic cane sugar 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.

Method: Wash, clean, and dice your chosen fruit. If using citrus, peel the citrus, remove as much pith as possible. Add the sugar and the lemon juice to your fruit, and let macerate for 30 minutes, or overnight. Put a flat, clean plate in the freezer and leave overnight as well. Put your fruit in a deep wide-rimmed pot (copper works great). Bring to a rapid boil and stir constantly. Allow to continue at a rapid, bubbling boil until desired consistency is reached. To test if done, take out your frozen plate put a small amount of jam onto it. Place in the freezer for 30 seconds, then remove and wipe your finger down the middle. If it parts like the sea, its finished. If it comes back together, keep cooking. Once your jam is done, put it into cleaned, prepared jars while hot. Seal with lid and allow it to cool. Keep in the fridge until ready to use. Ready to give to new friends!

Cristina Ulloa

Bachelor of Communications (Media), 2nd year

Cristina has a keen interest in documentary filmmaking and (over-) analysing all sorts of films. She is interested in docu-fictional approaches in recording the world around her. Throughout the Outof-Site residency she has explored her feelings of isolation; of long hours sitting inside, looking out her bedroom window, and diving into a hole of nostalgia, looking at old family photos of people known, lost, or never know at all. Her videos stitch together found footage to explore the notion of nostalgia – and its potential dangers of luring one in to a romanticised view of the past, while also exploring how humans have adapted to the COVID-19 crisis, implementing daily changes in attitudes and behaviours to become what is now the usual.

cristina.mariau@gmail.com

Take a walk around your neighbourhood. Choose someone you cross paths with. What colour is their mask?

Draw it, or write about it.

What do you think they look like underneath?

Draw it, or write about it.

Send the drawing or short description to a friend and ask them to do the same.

Yuchen Xin

Bachelor of Arts, (Fine Art), Honours

Yuchen Xin was born in Shanghai and now she works and lives in Melbourne. Her artistic practice explores the ideas relating to selfawareness, human conditions, and unconscious self-expression through various mediums including mixed media hand-formed objects, painting, video, ceramics, and digital work. The unique anthropomorphic characters she creates engage both her personal universe and the common moments in human conditions. She considers her characters to have aspects of absurdity, strangeness, and craziness like all human beings but meanwhile, still retain a lovable quality. During her residency, she aimed to collect local everyday materials to continue making her series of characters and to reflect her own existence.

cherry135790117@gmail.com https://yuchenxinart.com @alison_xiiii

Mentors

Amy Bartholomeusz

First Site Gallery Committee -Administrator

Amy is an Arts Management student and holds the role of Administrator on the First Site Gallery 2020 Committee. She also has an Art History degree and loves to talk about Digital art. Amy is passionate about working in the arts to promote community, culture and expression through the arts. She is also interested in using the arts as a form of education to teach younger minds about different histories and art practices.

bartholomeusz.amy@gmail.com

(Nostalgia)

Find a magazine or book, Cut out images or text that speak to you, Find ones that spark your nostalgia, Think about how far you’ve come and where you’ve been, And let those words or pictures speak to your past. Now look forward to where you will go and how you will continually grow.

Monica Do

First Site Gallery Committee - Chair

Monica Do is a Vietnamese-Australian curator and student of Art Management focused on exploring the intricacies and liminal spaces of Asian Australian diasporic experience with personal narratives. Through discursive avenues, her works seeks to create new and engaging platforms for Asian diasporic practitioners to reimagine their identities. Monica currently lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia and is undergoing her Masters in Art Management at RMIT University. Monica has also completed a Bachelors in Art History and Curation at Monash University. She is the current Chair of RMIT’s First Site Gallery and has previously worked at BLINDSIDE ARI and Monash University Museum of Art.

step into your softest shoes bring with you a small jar play "I'll be around" by the spinners outside onto some grass let out a scream collect it in your jar close the lid name the jar after the date you last felt hopeless

Fiz Eustance

First Site Gallery Committee - Treasurer

Fiz is a Fine Arts student and the Treasurer of the First Site Gallery Committee this year. She is currently in her final year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Fiz works spatially, arranging found and hand-made objects to create new environments. She is drawn to bright colours, secondhand fabric, stuffed objects and capital letters. Fiz is also a musician and hopes to use her knowledge of the creative arts and music industries to bring these communities together in interdisciplinary events and projects. Fiz loves to chat about the joy of creating art and be inspired by practices different to her own.

fizeustance@gmail.com https://fizeustance.cargo.site/ @fiz_eustance

Blower's Chorus

Blow like it's your birthday and a cake is in front of you, Blow a silent whistle, Blow like it's mid afternoon and your lover has a day off, You're a whale now, come up for air Come home from work, quick now, speed up the hill

Karima Sulaiman

First Site Gallery Committee - Public Programs Officer

Karima is part of the way through her Master of Art in Public Space and a member of the Public Programming team within the First Site Gallery Committee. She has a background in Fashion Design and a commitment to dabbling in as many making techniques as she can. From concrete pouring to resin casting to hand embroidery; hands on is her preferred mode of practice. Her recent activities involve olfactory (scent) installations and finishing up a semester exchange in Chicago where she majored in Industrial Design.

karimasulaiman@gmail.com https://karimasulaiman.com/

from where you are sitting right now, choose: 3 points > within the boundaries of your home we’re going to map a triangle next: go to each point and describe aloud that very specific space in a few words, by what it smells like there after: approximate your path through your house or garden, and draw the triangle you walked on a piece of paper write or draw the smell of each place at its respective point on your triangle stick the paper to the wall, orient it in the same directions as your house stay where you are, close your eyes , recall each scent and imagine yourself back at each point now, if you like you can do this again, next time leaving the boundaries of your house making the triangle as big as you want

Special Thanks To

Kristina Li Alice Mathieu Amy Bartholomeusz Monica Do

F