Local

Dave Carswell is a photographer with an interest in long form storytelling through methods of portraiture, landscape and still life. Dave spent his early years in Queenstown and is now based in Launceston, Tasmania. While engaging with the Q-Bank artists residency in October, Dave and Emmalie recorded a conversation together. Dave discusses being a Dave, not a David, McDonalds possibly being the most notable mark of entry to the metropolitan world, how and why we assign value to particular memories, engaging in a slow practice, editing his photographs before the work exists, the tension experienced between man and nature, shifting from the external world to the internal and revisiting the past.

David Fitzpatrick is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Queenstown, Tasmania. Emmalie and David had tried recording earlier in the year and ended up with almost three hours of audio, so they attempted to streamline the conversation again in November. This is the second conversation they recorded. David talks about finding his path, his spiritual practice, having experiences that simply require a person to bear witness, seeing something from multiple points of view, being pulled in two opposing directions, enjoying the process of making more than the outcome and deliberately moving slowly.

Carl Ross is a painter loosely based in Hobart, Tasmania. While engaging with the Q-Bank artists residency in September 2020, Carl, despite his cat allergy, agreed to chat with Emmalie in her home. Carl discusses having a tumultuous childhood and an incredibly supportive mother and father, learning how to direct his focus, admiring the particular way the hand of man impacts both landscapes and structures, buildings as sacred relics, baptising himself in Leo Kelly’s makeshift fountain and crying in his car while listening to Alice in Chains.

Nat Phillips and Oliver Moir are multidisciplinary artists and life-long friends that visited Queenstown in February 2020 through the Q-Bank Gallery’s artist-in-residence program to launch their project, SNIFF (Southern Nomads Independent Film Festival). SNIFF is a travelling, independent film festival showcasing short films, documentaries and video art that is produced by and/or focuses on artists from the Southern region of Australia. Nat is an installation artist, painter, illustrator and woodworker based in regional Victoria and Oliver is a performance maker, sound and video producer and installation artist based in Melbourne. The boys speak on working with fatigue creatively, dancing until you're exhausted, creating an event fueled by the desire to understand and reflect small communities, why all homes should have a hole in the floor for secret debris storage, reclamation of space despite perceived redundancy, the elusive nature of truth and authenticity and question what hashtags are even for.

Mary Louise Burns is a textile artist and educator based in Queenstown, Tasmania, who places great emphasis on recycled materials and sustainable fashion. Emmalie and Mary met at her pop-up shop filled with vintage and antique goods and Mary’s own sustainable, wearable art, on Orr Street in 2018. Ever since their meeting they became incredibly close friends and worked together on a number of projects. When recording first began for the podcast, Mary visited Emmalie at her home on a rainy summer afternoon and was the first local artist Emmalie interviewed. Mary discusses finding her home in an old blacksmith’s cottage, the origins of her craft, her love of colour and whimsy, fashion as wearable art, hunting and eating witchetty grubs and the need for a good battle helmet.

Chris T. Wilson is a landscape painter based in Queenstown, Tasmania, who now works exclusively using raw materials collected from the hills and mountains surrounding the West Coast. Although Chris and Emmalie had bumped into each other a few times around town, there was no way of knowing, prior to sitting down together, what a truly fascinating person Chris is. Chris visited Emmalie on a cold and rainy day in August to sip tea and talk. Chris explores what it was like for so many growing up on the West and North-West Coast of Tasmania, the unparalleled uniqueness of the geography and geology of the West Coat, carving a life for oneself, the rich abundance the land provides, going bush and life living in her delightful caravan.

OH WOW. A chilling tribute to the hundreds of times Emmalie has already said "oh wow"/"oh really" in the span of three episodes.

Joshua Santospirito is a graphic novelist, multimedia artist, writer and musician based in Hobart, Tasmania. Emmalie met Josh, his partner Jo and their lovely pup Luna at Q-Bar, where Josh played a set to a rumbly, intimate crowd in 2019. When Josh returned in July 2020 for the Q-Bank residency, Emmalie immediately called him to say “have we met?”. After successfully placing each other and being introduced to a new family member, another rescue pup named Bobbin, Josh and Emmalie sat down to talk. Josh wonders aloud on generational storytelling, the brief moment he became a Jungian chauffeur, where stories might live and whether or not they’d live at all without the innate human desire to create them, how we recognise connections, the ever-present question, “who am I?” and what might happen if or when it all burns down.

Aviva Endean is a composer and performance maker based in Melbourne, Victoria. After finishing The Unconformity’s Artist in Residence program in February 2020, Aviva stopped by Emmalie’s home to talk. Sitting at an oversized dining table in front of the fireplace Aviva discusses the role physical space plays as both subject and passive collaborator, moving beyond the studio and into the ever unpredictable outside world, her deep desire to explore sound as a different way of knowing, losing her recorder teacher, finding the clarinet and sound as an experience so much larger than can be perceived by merely noticing it.

Lou Conboy is a photographic artist based in Hobart, Tasmania. While in residency at the Q Bank Gallery during the month of January 2020, Lou and Emmalie huddled together in the very full bedroom behind the studio and took the opportunity to chat.

Lou speaks on her long standing relationship with The Myth of Sisyphus, the complexities of identity, the wild and untamable, the trepidation and thrill of experimenting with rare and unusual material, her childhood connections to the Tasmanian West Coast and standing her ground in Berlin.