Writing Residencies

It's a gift to have time and space dediciated to contemplation and creativity - these are some of the places that have inspired my writing over the years.

2019 spring residency | feminism | labour | Australia

Spoling Illusions Jacky Winter Gardens, BELGRAVE, Victoria

My co-author Elvis Richardson and I arrived at Jacky Winter Gardens creative retreat, hidden amidst a half-acre of secluded bushland within the high hills of Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges, with a multitude of laptops and ipads, coloured files and post-it-notes. After creek walking, bath immersions, open fires, and uninterrupted work days and work nights we reluctantly left clutching the structure of our co-authored project on gender inequity in the Australian artworld! The resulting book, CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions since 2008, drops in July 2023.

C14th manuscript, Photo: Melinda Rackham

2017 residency | interspecies | environment | poetry | UK

art+earth - In Other Tongues, Dartington, UK

Some wonderful experiences exploring relationships between our human selves and the other species and organisms with which we share the planet through story, poetics, dance, and philosophy. This interdisciplinary international gathering in early June at Dartington Hall, Devon, UK brought unexpected realisation and inspiration.
Thankyou Arts South Australia for funding my participation in this event and to also view manuscripts at Exeter Cathedral with Prof Emma Cayley of Exeter University. The Exeter Book is of incalculable value being the largest, the best preserved and the oldest book of English literature in the world.

2016 residency | environment | settler | adoption | poetry

white wash - Sauerbier House, Nurlungga/Port Noaralunga, South Australia

Over the winter months I responded to the architecture and environment of Sauerbier House situated on the magnificent Ngangkiparringga/ Onkaparinga estuary at Nurlungga/Port Noaralunga with fragmented texts from a young C19 resettled Irish domestic servant. These poetic fragments journaling her dislocation, loss of identity, uncertaintly and curious wondement of a strange new antipodean home, were inscribed dierctly into the the C19th walls and documented online.

Anna Macleod, Broken Flow – One Water Laughing in a thousand fields, 2015, Photo: Melinda Rackham

2015 writing residency | environment | performance

a big dry - Writers Residency Broken Hill Art Exchange

Crisscrossed by streets named Uranium, Mercury and Slag, with water resevoirs at a dangerous low, this emblematic post-mining town of Broken Hill is indeed a community in climate crisis. Continuing my dialogue with Scottish/Irish artist Anna Macleod on her global series of environmental interventions Water Conversations, and the plight of our planet with a continued impact of water scarcity, I documented performative actions at a dried up Lake Menindee in the Darling River Basin and interviews with Dr Beryl Carmichael, Elder of the Ngiyeempaa people.

2014 writers residency | adoption | truncation | Australia

attachment Bundanon Residency, Illaro, NSW

Researching intimateissues of identity, loss and grief resulting from the traumatic separation at birth from my mother and my subsequent adoption; compounded by the removal of my only child at 15, also through forced adoption. This work continues to grow through many phases and forms, restitching and reiterating itself, and untill I have the luxery of a long residency to feel, search and weave it into a coherent tale with the strength to stand alone in the world.

Eric Siu, Made in China #3 - Magna Doodle, 2011

2011 residency | immersion | virtuality | Hong Kong

Asialink Residency Hong Kong, SAR, China

I've dropped out of the sky into the intensity of Yau Ma Tei, historically a beach and bay before the British colonisation and land reclaimation of Hong Kong, now the most densely populated area of the planet. Consciously contracting, I slipstream amongst a sidewalk schoal; possibilities expanding as stalls turn into streets and streets become districts, all vending variations on an endless theme. Time shifts, animating this city creature. Read time shift: Hong Kong, RealTime Issue #106, Sydney, p 21, 2012

Sarah Cook with Sarah, rock and thread, 2009

2009 augmented reality | relational journeys | networks | Aotearoa/New Zealand

SCANZ: Raranga Tangata - The Weaving Together of People Intercreate, New Plymouth, Aotearoa/New Zealand

I went to this residency intending to weave a tale via networked proximity and discovered an issue with my tech with no possible work around, so began helping out with other's projects. My great joy was in spending time getting to know everyone there, from Aotearoa and around the globe and making an objects, a body ornament for each of the otehr residents, that relayed soem of their story. Everyone wore their objects to the opening event at the Govett Brewester Gallery and, I like to think, the poetic spirits of thier individual tales mingled and merged.

2000 residency | virtual reality | interactive | immersive | poetry | UK

Virtual Reality Hemispherium Virtual Reality Innovation Centre, University of Teesside, UK

15 September 2000 - 5 weeks into another petrol strike.Swinging my single use plastic bag of soon to be devoured 3 kinds or curry and rice, dodging drunken crop topped girls in drizzly shivery weather. Oil and dirty water glisten on streets otherwise dusted by the despair of closed power stations and steel mills. Thatcher had really smashed the north – nowhere more so than Teeside - Ridley Scott’s home town. Drawn by the flicker of an alien figure on multiple TV screens behind smash proof glass in an electronics shop, I see Cathy Freeman wrapped in silver lurex, stepping up to light the Olympic flame. At home, in Sydney... I feel Australian for the first time ever, salty tears in my mouth.

Melinda Rackham Empyrean, screen shot, 2000

2000 residency | poetry | virual reality | soft-skinned_space | Canada

Discovery Residency Banff Center for the Arts, BANFF, Canada

Banff Library and swimming pool have the most magnificant views of snowy peaks, icy rivers, wandering elk and bears, endless firs and moody clouds. Wonderful to be there and make a video documentary in my virtual reality world empyrean. This soft skinned space is punctuated by floating poetic fragments within its seven different realms - chaos, void, truth, charm, order, beauty, and strangeness. Avatars interact with eachother, via movement and sound, and play with transcluscent objects which appear as you move into thier virtual proximity, dissapearing as you leave. SP Betacam - Hardly watchable these days!!

Melinda Rackham, aland, screen shot, 1998

1998 residency | story telling in new technologies | Finland

Polar Circuit Conference and Residency, Tornio, Finland

My web site a.land is a voyage amongst uncharted islands haunted by ghosts and sirens, poetic verses viewed through a port hole, animated by data across strata that connect us. Inspired and developed from research undertaken at E-Polar Circuit Residency under the midnight sun in Tornio, Finland. Funded by a Development Grant from the New Media Arts Fund of the Australia Council, and a Conference and Workshop Grant from the Australian Network for Art and Technology, this residency changed my life as there I found my tribe - media artists from around the globe. Also read Finnish Shortcuts, Realtime Issue #28, 1898 Sydney, Australia , p 19