Postcard From...
Ella Sutherland, Sydney, Australia
Photo: Ella Sutherland
I moved to Sydney from Christchurch in 2016. Arriving to a job teaching in the Visual Communication program at UTS and an existing network, it was a relatively soft-landing. This role, along with a studio practice composed of exhibition making and the production of publications was my main focus until earlier this year when I decided to take time from teaching to participate in a series of residencies here and overseas. These plans were, of course, reconfigured by the pandemic, but the flipside of making this space has been finding a focused stretch of time in the studio, something which is not easy to find in Sydney.
I live in the eastern suburbs, Potts Point, adjacent to the dwindling red-light area of Kings Cross. A long-running yet rapidly creeping gentrification has whittled this to a minor bubble around the station. Being part of the gentrification process myself it might seem a little hollow to lament such grittiness, but the sweatered boomers and dewy young professionals come with their own challenges. The area is one of the most densely populated in Australia, comprised predominantly of Art Deco apartments originally built for single women working in the city. A gentle walk around the wharf, and a cut through the Botanics will have you in the CBD without an inkling of traffic or transport. There is a certain boutique arrogance that permeates streets so close to water, foliage, and European-styled delicatessens. Both irritating and charming, Sydney’s near year-round beauty does well to balance a scepticism imported with me from New Zealand.
For the past six weeks I temporarily relocated my studio to Blacktown in Sydney’s west. Needing more space to produce work for an upcoming show, I traded two hours of travel for the opportunity to spread out. Given that travel is off the cards, I found the commute did well to bookend the day with that meandering tier of thought only prompted by states such as train travel. Yet to fall into the grasp of the developer, Blacktown’s owner-operated grocers, $2.50 flat whites and diverse community has a dynamism that seems a distant memory in the inner-city. I have been working in an ex-council building, ordinarily used for theatre rehearsals. Three walls of windows and elevated one storey from the ground, this leftover from the seventies has offered an unexpected air of performativity to making work. It wasn’t until my last week in the space that I realised once the sun set, with the lights left on, I was offering a very visible broadcast of making a show.
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Postcard From...
Postcard From...
Dear Christchurch,
I write to you from Hong Kong. It’s 2.15pm, 30 degrees, and pouring with rain. Thunder cracks loudly above from thick grey cloud, flashes of lightning fill the sky. These thunderstorms happen most days, the current month of September is the last of the rainy season.
Postcard From...
Postcard From...
Dear Christchurch,
I’ll pretend I’m writing this from Rome. I’ll pretend that I am still in my studio at the British school, the grey dusty floors that are never clean, my collected pebbles from the tennis court all over the floor. Small offcuts of marble; pastel greens, pinks and glittery whites collected near the Basilica di San Lorenzo leaning against the walls and in the sink.
Postcard From...
Postcard From...
We experience cities in a complex and multifaceted way. This layered experience of urban space was described succinctly by French theorist Michel de Certeau, who explained that when an individual takes a walk through a city the route taken is shaped not only by the layout and design of the city, and collective and hegemonic conceptions of how that space can or should be used, but also by personal memories, stories and dreams. He described cities as deeply personal spaces, experienced in myriad different ways, with each individual having a unique relationship with the same urban space.
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Lisa Densem, Berlin, Germany
When I came to Berlin in 1999 to work with the dance company Sasha Waltz and Guests, I never imagined I would still be here twenty years later. Originally I thought one or two years at the most, but here I am. These days I work as a freelancer and breathwork teacher, and continue to tour, occasionally, with the piece I created with Sasha in 1999. Körper, or Bodies in English, became a well-known piece within the contemporary dance world and has never stopped touring (mostly with its original cast). It’s a strange experience, but also a privilege, to continue inhabiting a role twenty years after it was made.
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Jenny Harper, Riga, Latvia
I’ve been conscious of Riga since the 1980s when I organised an exhibition of the work of Australian artist Imants Tillers for the former National Art Gallery in Wellington. Although born in Sydney, Latvian was spoken at Tillers’s home and the city’s name features from time-to-time in his work, including the large multiple-canvas board painting bought for the NAG collection – Diaspora (1992). But my awareness of Latvia’s politics and past history was minimal until my visit.
Postcard From...
Postcard from...
I live in Montreal. Before this, I lived in Malta, in Copenhagen, in Ottawa and in Wellington. Such is the reality of establishing roots as an expat scholar with a PhD: we move around a lot, unless we have a damn good reason not to.
Postcard From...
Postcard From...
Bonjour from Montréal! As I write this, we’re sliding into summer like a squirt of Palmolive down a Slip’n’Slide. The sun is blazing down, the vines are snaking around the lacy iron staircases outside, and everyone and their grandma seems to be sitting out on a terrasse with a cold beer. It’s a relief after almost six months of snow and -20°C temperatures.