Bundanon

Dobell Foundation Artist in Residence Award

Each year the Dobell Foundation provides funding for an award that supports one visual artist to take up a residential studio as part of Bundanon’s Artist In Residence program.

The award is made based on the artist’s work, their proposed project, and what they aim to achieve both during and as an outcome of the residency. The award provides a stipend for the participating artist and a financial contribution to Bundanon.

This is a competitive program. Artists’ applications are short listed by an independent assessment panel at Bundanon and the Foundation decides which of the selected candidates will receive the award.

Recent Artists in Residence have been:

  • Sarah Rayner and Sophie Carnell 2022
  • Helen Pynor 2023
  • Seth Burchill 2024

2023

The 2023 scholarship was awarded to artist Helen Pynor.

Residency Notes by Helen Pynor
While in residence at Bundanon I developed my project exploring the interspecies ‘companionship’ between animals and minerals, and more specifically the animal-calcium ‘kinship’ that has led to the evolution of bones. I spent time studying animal bones on-site at Bundanon, especially wombat and kangaroo bones, marsupials who are resident in magnificent abundance. I am using native fauna bones to make bone china objects, bringing into dialogue two seemingly incongruent ideas: the ‘animality’ of bone china, and the ‘minerality’ of animals. I’m interested in the metaphoric and deconstructive gesture this offers, revealing underlying structures of material connectivity between animal and mineral, living and non-living, not immediately available to our senary perception. My project also explores forms of listening (human, marsupial, bird) and forms of paying homage.

The 2 weeks I was in residence at Bundanon offered me an intensive, immersive, uninterrupted time to sink into the imaginative and material spaces of the project, and forms of nourishment that are unique to this place. I’m beyond grateful for the opportunity and wish to thank the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation and the Bundanon Trust for their generous, timely and thoroughly ‘on-topic’ support. I feel myself part of a long line of artists, stretching into the past and future, who have been and will be nourished by this place, which in itself was comforting, generative and inspiring.

Habitation

2021

Unglazed bone china (made from the artist’s bone removed during surgery, supplemented by animal bone), unglazed earthenware, felt, coral, metal, acrylic, archival pigment prints, lightboxes.
Dimensions variable
Photo: Helen Pynor

2022

The 2022 Dobell Artist in Residence Award went to a collaborative duo of ceramicists, Sarah Rayner and Sophie Carnell. 

“Thank you so much to the Dobell Art Foundation. It is humbling to know that our work is seen as worthy of this generous scholarship.”