Residency report: Catherine Polcz

" ... Sharing some reflections on our peaceful and inspired time at Gunyah and Worimi Country. My practice seeks to create connection to environment, climate and nature. I have a multi-platform practice, and create in the mediums of audio, installation and curation of objects. Alongside my art practice, my professional career started in ecology before moving into creative producing at institutions – and I consider the creation of programs that create community around environment, connection to nature, or open up discourse an important part of my creative practice. 


Catherine Polcz's family at Gunyah


I travelled to Gunyah with my partner and our two sons – age 3 years and 8 months. Upon our arrival we were immediately taken by the beauty of the Country and all the love that has gone into the house!

Over the two weeks, we fell into a routine where my partner and sons would explore the beaches of Hawks Nest and the Tea Gardens during the day and I could go work in the studio overlooking the cove. In the afternoon we walked through the fire trails and had dinner together.


Catherine Polcz's family on the Gunyah jetty

  

While at Gunyah I did some planning, research and post-production on my conversation series/podcast Plant Kingdom. Plant Kingdom is a conversation series about the sublime in nature and environment, featuring scientists, artists, researchers and writers. I produce and host the series, and it has been a way to find my voice in my own work again after a decade of producing for institutions and to connect with and learn from people whose work I admire. The project, mostly about plants, also acts as a reminder that we live in their world, the world plants made when they oxygenated our atmosphere, terraformed the planet and provided the basis for all animal life. Everyday we get to live in a Kingdom of Plants. Our archive is at plantkingdom.earth or can be followed on any podcast platform.


Catherine Polcz, Gunyah studio

 

Week 1: Curiously, my Plant Kingdom projects were converging on extinction and rupture. I was editing a conversation with Western Sydney University researcher Dr Josh Wodak on his work Petrified: Life during a rupture on earth and editing our conversation about deep time, and the dramatic swings of life on our planet over millions of years. I recorded a conversation with Alberta based paleontologist Dr Emily Bamforth, whose life work is on understanding the fate and world of a herd of dinosaurs (Pachyrhinosaurus). One day some 65+mya an unknown disaster struck the herd, killing some 10,000 individuals. Their fossilized bones lie alongside Pipestone Creek in Canada, and she imagines how they lived and recreates their world through her work. I was also reading Reverend Barbara Allen’s beautiful new work Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds in preparation for a future conversation. Her work memorialises 31 recently extinct animals. Imagined and written from the animals’ perspective, it builds empathetic ties with the lost St Helena’s Earwig, Quagga, Stellar’s Sea Cow amongst others.


Catherine Polcz, North Arm Cove trees

 

During our second week we did some exploring further out. We spent time in the nearby Myall Lakes National Park, swimming in the lakes and paying homage to Grandis, NSW’s tallest tree. The 400-year-old tree, a member of Eucalyptus grandis, started life as a seedling around 1625. It has survived extensive logging in the area and today stands 70m tall above the rainforest canopy.

Catherine Polcz, NSW’s tallest tree


The second week I had more mental space to revisit a past project and I was leafing through Mary White’s incredible work the Greening of Gondwana. As a Canadian botanist, moving to Australia was incredibly humbling and inspiring. Ten years later, reframing my relationship to Australian flora and building knowledge and understanding is a long-term personal project. Being here has also inspired other questions – using plants as a way to time travel, to understand evolution and the deep rifts in the flora of different parts of our planet. Considering deep evolutionary time has been part of this personal journey of meaning making.

Gunyah gave me space to reconsider a project that looks back into the plants of the Permian period – some 200mya ago. The Permian is the name of a geologic era – a period where earth was swampy, with shallow seas and dominated by a flora of giant club mosses, tree ferns and extinct lineages of plants. The earliest reptile ancestors were cruising the earth yet to diversify into modern reptiles, mammals, dinosaurs, and birds. There were no flowering plants. It is both a familiar and foreign time, still earth, but millions of years before humans shaped it. The decomposition of plants in this era formed the abundant coal reserves around NSW. I am interested in the relationship between these plants, their fossilized carbon and the climate crisis and how to tell this story through objects, documentation, video and writing.


Catherine Polcz, studio experiment at Gunyah

 

I am so incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have spent time at beautiful Gunyah and to have been able to bring my partner and sons. Participating in residencies is a huge challenge for artist parents and carers, where it is common for children to not be allowed on-site. We felt so welcomed at Gunyah.


Catherine Polcz, studio experiment at Gunyah

 

Having had the chance to spend two weeks in such proximity with nature and to focus on practice was both nourishing and productive! I have come back to Sydney with such renewed focus and energy and new questions to pursue. ..."


Catherine Polcz and son, Gunyah residency


Gunyah residency report, November 2025

Catherine Polcz @cpolcz @plantkingdom.earth

catherinepolcz.com plantkingdom.earth

 

Residency report: Ren Gregorčič

" ... During this residency I concentrated on the narrow zone where asphalt shifts into gravel and soil. I drove the same country roads on many occasions and mounted a camera to the passenger-side mirror, tilted downward so the frame held the surface at the road’s edge. This repeated route became a kind of moving studio. Each day the strip at the edge of the seal shifted under different light, temperature, and traffic, and began to appear less as a margin and more as a seam where several material processes met. The area drew my attention because it combined pressure and fragility, order and erosion, in a single continuous line. The edge felt like a question laid into the road. Alongside this work I read Jonathan Crary’s Techniques of the Observer. His description of the observer as something formed within arrangements of surfaces, instruments, and habits gave structure to what I was doing on these drives. Each excursion placed me inside a constellation that included the car, the mirror, the road surface, the position of the camera, and the established protocols of movement along those roads. The edge of the asphalt became a point in this constellation where attention intensified. There, the relation between perception and its technical and institutional supports moved from background to foreground. I began to treat each drive as a small inquiry into how vision emerges from a field of constraints and affordances rather than from an isolated act of will.

Ren Gregorčič, still from filming session, Gunyah residency

The filming sessions produced a close study of how the edge accumulates marks of contact and change. Heat opened fissures in the seal, water carved small channels, tyres drew out feathered rims of loose aggregate, plant growth pressed into cracks and joins. The line read less as a simple crossing from “road” to “not-road” and more as an event that carries the history of many small encounters. Boundaries in this context appeared as formations that depend on work, decision, and repair. This raised a philosophical question that informed my thinking throughout the residency: when a limit depends on continuous labour to hold its form, how should we understand its claim to permanence, and what kind of responsibility accompanies that claim?

Ren Gregorčič, still from filming session, Gunyah residency

Crary’s account of modern visuality, in which seeing is redistributed across devices, surfaces, and institutional logics, resonated with the experience of watching the edge through the mirror while the car moved. The act of looking emerged from the relation between bodily sensation, mechanical vibration, the weight of the vehicle, the curvature of the road, and the small adjustments needed to keep the line within the frame. The observer in this project appeared as a set of movements and judgements that shifted with terrain, speed, light, and weather. Perception felt less like a fixed capacity and more like an effect of cooperation between body and apparatus. The residency created time to register this cooperation, and to consider what it means for any philosophical account of experience. The edge began to function as an instrument for thought. Each drive produced feedback about the stability of the arrangement I was working within. The rumble of tyres on the outer strip, the narrowing of the sealed surface, the fading of paint, and the patchwork of repairs all signalled changes in how the road met the ground that supported it. These signals pointed to a larger theme: structures reveal their principles most clearly where they approach their limits. The road’s edge condensed questions about form, contact, and endurance. How long can a given order hold under the pressures that meet it. What kinds of adjustment are considered acceptable, and which fractures signal a need for new decisions.

Ren Gregorčič, still from filming session, Gunyah residency

Over the course of the residency, this project evolved into an exploration of perception as something shaped through ongoing interaction with specific material and technical ensembles. Thought arose through movement and repetition rather than withdrawal. The mirror, the camera, the car, and the edge formed a configuration that generated questions about orientation and the formation of the observer.  How do available paths shape what becomes visible?  What forms of understanding emerge when attention turns toward zones where systems thin and loosen?  How might philosophy proceed when it begins not from an abstract subject but from a strip of asphalt that records the meeting of structure and world? ..."


Gunyah residency report, October 2025

Ren Gregorčič @ren.gregorcic www.rengregorcic.com

Upcoming artist-in-residence: Catherine Polcz

Catherine Polcz

Catherine Polcz is a curator, artist and creative producer, living on Gadigal Land in Sydney. Her work creates connection to plants, nature and climate. She curated Powerhouse Museum’s 100 Climate Conversations, a winner of the 2023 Australian Museums and Galleries Award for Interpretation, learning and audience engagement. Her career started in ecology and she holds degrees in Environmental Science and a Masters in Plant Science. She is the host and producer of the podcast Plant Kingdom, which features conversations about the living world - plantkingdom.earth. She has worked professionally in the cultural sector at Powerhouse Museum, Botanic Gardens of Sydney, Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto) and Redpath Museum (Montreal). She was a founding member of the peer network Sydney Cultural Institutions for Climate Action, which brings together professionals across institutions to share projects and leverage knowledge in the area of climate action.

Catherine Polcz, cover art for conversation series Plant Kingdom

"During my residency at Gunyah, I plan to explore and experience the plants of the area, to draw inspiration for my environmentally engaged practice. I will also research and develop my new short environmental film series, and continue work on my audio project Plant Kingdom, a series of conversations about plants and people who love them, which is released as a podcast."

Catherine Polcz, Weed Herbarium, 2018, 
Human/Nature exhibition, Airspace Projects


You can follow Catherine Polcz on Instagram @cpolcz and @plantkingdom.earth, listen to her podcast plantkingdom.earth and go to catherinepolcz.com to find out more about her practice.

100 Climate Conversations, curated by Catherine Polcz, 
The Powerhouse Museum, 2022-2024

2026 Gunyah Residency Applications

Applications are now open for the 2026 Gunyah Artists-in-Residence Program!

The Gunyah AiR program has been running since 2011, providing low cost accommodation for short term self-directed residencies for solo, collaborative, family and group projects. 

Gunyah AiR program takes place on Gathang Country, the ancestral lands of the Worimi people. We acknowledge them as the traditional custodians for this place, land, sky, and waters. When artists come here to develop and share their creativity, learning, skills and cultural practices, we respect the knowledge and wisdom embedded forever within the First Nations Custodianship of Country.

'Gunyah' means resting place, or place of shelter, in the Gathang language of the Worimi people.

Gunyah is located in the small coastal village of North Arm Cove, on the northern side of Port Stephens NSW. The house was designed and built in the early 1980s, by a group of friends as a weekend project and holiday home. This group still own, manage and maintain this waterfront property; they continue to enjoy holidays here and invite artists to spend time in this special place via the Gunyah AiR program.


Applications are now open for visual artists, writers, First Nations artists and cultural knowledge keepers, composers, musicians, performers, and other creators, to apply for a 2026 Gunyah residency. There will be seven residencies in 2026, each running for twelve days.

The selection panel for the 2026 Gunyah artists-in-residence program includes previous Gunyah artist-in-residence, Nadia Odlum, and the director of the Gunyah artists-in-residence program, Kath Fries.

Please read ABOUT Gunyah and then go to the APPLY page for specific dates, fees and links to the online application forms.  
 
Applications close Monday 1 December, 5pm. 

Visiting Rainbow Lorikeets on the Gunyah deck
Photo: Kath Fries


Upcoming artist-in-residence: Ren Gregorčič

Ren Gregorčič

Ren Gregorčič is an Australian conceptual artist of Slovenian heritage, living on Ngunnawal Ngambri Country, in Canberra ACT. His practice is critically engaged with the politics of materiality, human-centric narratives of place, interdependence, and enviro-social systems. Examining the entangled relationships between materials, perception, and environmental systems (particularly in relation to concrete), Ren works with site-based approaches, experimental fieldwork, and site-responsive sculptural practices. His practice critiques anthropocentric materialist frameworks, advocating for interdependence and reciprocity while navigating the complexities of ecological and social justice.

Ren Gregorčič, Under the Foot of Neptune, 2024,
Monochrome single-channel projection, 8:20, Video Still


"During my residency at Gunyah, I plan to create a new video work that responds to the surrounding environment. I will explore the area’s natural and cultural landscape, drawing on its ecology and history as part of my creative process. The residency offers a quiet and reflective space to deepen my exploration of environmental and social systems."

Ren Gregorčič, Motion In Division, 2024,
Monochrome single-channel projection, 10:30, Video Still

You can follow Ren Gregorčič on Instagram @ren.gregorcic and go to www.rengregorcic.com to find out more about his practice.

Ren Gregorčič, The Limit of a Greater Distance Part 1, 2024,
Monochrome single-channel projection, 5:00, Video Still



Residency report: The Happy Mondays - Josepha Dietrich, Cath Johnstone, Betty O’Neill and Jodi Vial

The Happy Mondays: Betty O'Neill, Jodi Vial, Cath Johnstone and Josepha Dietrich 

"... The Happy Mondays are a collective of four women writers who met in 2024 while studying memoir with Kris Kneen through an online Varuna course. We travelled from Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle and had never been in the same room together until arrival at The Gunyah, which added something special to the already wonderful experience of seeing the property for the first time. 

Sunset from the Gunyah jetty

Our mission at Gunyah was multi-dimensional. We wanted to have time and space for our individual writing projects, as well as coming together at the end of each day to share any breakthroughs or blocks we might have encountered. We had learned, through the nine-month Varuna course, that the support of other writers is incredibly valuable to the writing process. We also had knowledge of each other’s work – emotional, vulnerable, sometimes difficult, as is the nature of memoir writing. It gave us a great foundation and understanding on which to build.

Writing by the window

We settled into our respective bedrooms and writing spaces, amazed at the serenity of the Gunyah site, and before long had something of a routine going. Most days we would cross paths at breakfast before going our separate ways, then inevitably meet up for lunch and a longer conversation about the weather, or the writing ‘weather’, and occasionally the sun would come out and allow us to bask on the deck for a while, serenaded by butcher birds and honeyeaters in the high gum trees. The water was a constant source of inspiration, with its multitude of colours and moods, and continual movement. Many walks were made to the property’s private jetty, but a highlight was experiencing the brilliant light of a full moon while standing over the water. Each night, we would come together for a shared meal to report on our day – the writing, the walks, the swims, the chance encounter with a friendly neighbour and their dog. 

On the Gunyah jetty

There were a few days of rain – very conducive to writing! – but that only made the sunshine more welcome when it did appear. Whatever the skies threw at us, the view from the windows of Gunyah was always magnificent. We made day trips to Karuah for supplies, and to Hawks Nest and Tea Gardens for beach walks, coffee, a seafood dinner, and the Saturday farmers’ market. It was always comforting to return to our home away from home. 

Beach walk 

We all made great progress with our individual writing projects, and quickly developed a support network that valued and understood our respective writing process on any given day. We were able to allow one another time and space to write, while also being on hand for support and encouragement when needed. In return, the Gunyah Residency and the beautiful Gunyah property gave us time, space and encouragement too. On our final night, we sat in front of the fire and took turns sharing some of the work we had produced during our time at Gunyah, marvelling quietly at our good fortune. We are so grateful for the opportunity of the Gunyah residency and all it has provided, and hope that our individual and collective labour will soon bear fruit that would not have been possible without its support and sanctuary. Thank you for making this beautiful place available. ..."

Gunyah residency report, August 2025
The Happy Mondays - Josepha Dietrich, Cath Johnstone,
Betty O’Neill and Jodi Vial 


Mangrove growing in the sand, near Gunyah

Upcoming artists-in-residence: The Happy Mondays - Jodi Vial, Josepha Dietrich, Betty O'Neill and Catherine Johnstone

The Happy Mondays: Josepha Dietrich, Catherine Johnstone, Jodi Vial and Betty O'Neill 

The Happy Mondays are a group of writers, Josepha Dietrich, Catherine Johnstone, Jodi Vial, and Betty O'Neill, who met last year through an online Varuna course titled Finish Your Memoir in 2024. Despite the geographical distance of being from three different states, they have continued to develop support and friendship following the nine-month online course. Now they will meet for the first time in-person for their group residency at Gunyah. 

"... During our residency at Gunyah, we plan to continue our process of working together, which began with the Varuna course. Being part of a writing collective has been transformative for each of us. This Gunyah residency is a rare chance to write together in the same place. Alongside our individual projects that we will each be working on, we will develop our collaborative 'project' of building a writers' collective, expanding on the many benefits of support, feedback, workshopping and company in the writing process. We’re looking forward to spending part of each day of the residency coming together to explore this. ..."

Jodi Vial, with her microfiction The Span (published in the Landmarks anthology) at Newcastle Writers Festival 2016


Jodi Vial lives and writes on unceded Awabakal Land, Newcastle NSW. She recently graduated with a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle, with a focus on the intersection of literature, landscape and history. Her work has appeared in poetry anthologies by Spineless Wonders, Papatanuaku Press and Recent Work Press, and her short story cycle Lives of Girls and Women was acquired for UON’s permanent art collection in 2018. Her prose poetry has been shortlisted three times in the Joanne Burns Prize as part of Newcastle Writers Festival, most recently in the 2025 prize.

"... During my residency at Gunyah, I’ll be working on the creative manuscript that formed part of my PhD thesis, 'All the Water a Body Can Hold', to reframe it for potential commercial publication. I will also be working on a book of prose poetry, refining my technique and approach to the form. ..."

Josepha Dietrich, In Danger: A Memoir of Family and Hope, UQP, book cover


Josepha Dietrich lives on Turrbal Land, Brisbane QLD. Her recent book, In Danger, was published by the University of Queensland Press (UQP). She works in Intelligence and Engagement at UQ, and is also a freelance editor. She previously worked as a university research assistant on improving psychiatric discharge planning and women’s wellness after cancer. Her prior long-term work was in assessing children’s and adolescents’ risk of harm alongside the Sexual Offences Child Abuse Unit of Victoria Police. To remain sane during this period, she flitted off overseas for months at a time to climb cliff faces while sleeping on beaches or in abandoned shepherds’ huts.

"... During my residency at Gunyah, I hope to leverage the support and knowledge I’ve gained in 2024 as part of a professionally guided writing group to further develop my speculative memoir manuscript. The writing group provides critical feedback on one another’s memoir development as well as the incidental support of working alongside one another. ..."
Stories of Place, book cover, 2025,
Anthology of short fiction, with stories by Catherine Johnstone 

Catherine Johnstone is a queer writer from Wurundjeri Country, Melbourne VIC. She has a long association with the writing industry, having taught screenwriting and professional writing and editing. She has written and directed award-winning short films and received the Fiona Myer International Travel Award to work on her art in Venice, Italy. She has returned to writing fiction and creative non-fiction and in the last two years has been awarded writing fellowships at Varuna and KSP in Perth. She has been published in literary journals Meniscus and Westerly, and is shortlisted in the 2024 City of Melbourne Narrative Non-Fiction Prize.

"... During my residency at Gunyah, I plan to write the final essay for my memoir collection about the environment, climate change and loss, while I am in this beautiful location on Worimi Country. This essay will complete the collection, so I will also do second drafts of those essays not already published in literary journals. ..."

Betty O'Neill, The Other Side of Absence, 2020, book cover


Betty O'Neill is a writer and teacher, living on Gadigal Land, Sydney NSW. She has a Doctorate in Creative Arts from UTS, where she lectures in Creative Intelligence and Innovation. She wrote her doctoral thesis on her quest to understand her father, a World War II Polish resistance fighter who survived Auschwitz and Gusen. Betty has published academically and facilitated workshops in Australia and overseas on creativity, writing family history, the Cold War, migration and the domestic space as an archive. The Other Side of Absence: Discovering my father's secrets, 2020, was her debut memoir.

"... During my residency at Gunyah, I plan to review the first draft and complete a structural edit, of my current memoir project, which explores intergenerational homelessness with my own lived experience and tracing back five generations in my family. ..."



You can follow The Happy Monday's residency at Gunyah on Instagram @gunyahartists

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