Regenerate: Artists in Residence Exhibition
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10 April - 31 May 2025
Exhibition | Regenerate: 2024 Artists-in-Residence Exhibition
Artists | Michele England | Lynne Flemons | Emma Rani Hodges
The 2024 Artist-in-Residence exhibition showcases the work of Michele England, Lynne Flemons and Emma Rani Hodges completed as part of the annual Craft + Design Canberra Artist-in-Residence program at Gudgenby Ready-Cut Cottage in the Namadgi National Park, following a research component with ACT Historic Places.
The Craft + Design Canberra Artist-in-Residence Program is presented in partnership with ACT Parks and Conservation Service and support provided by the ACT Historic Places in 2024.
Artist | Michele England
Exhibition Statement
‘Regenerate’, is an intimate investigation of ACT’s Historic Places as part of Michele England’s participation in C&D’s 2024 Residency Program. England has made handwork pieces (embroideries and crochet) using textiles dyed with plant materials from Lanyon Homestead, Mugga Mugga Cottage, Calthorpes House, and Gudgenby Valley (Namadgi National Park) where the residency was based. Materials for these pieces have been reclaimed and made anew in work that captures the culture, architecture, design elements, personal lives and homelife in these historic places and Valley. England has focussed on present-day conservation activities, and the make-do attitude of yesteryear.
Artist Bio
Michele England has a hybrid arts practice that mixes painting, textiles, printing and small objects. England studied at the ANU School of Art, completing a Batchelor of Arts in Visual Art, attaining First Class Honours and in 2022 a Master of Philosophy in Visual Art. England has been shortlisted for several Art prizes including: Ravenswood Art Prize, Bruny Island Prize, Petite Miniatures Textiles, Calleen Art Award and Fishers Ghost Prize. England has been the recipient of ACT Arts grants, CAPO grants and awarded residencies. Her work is held in private collections across Australia.
Artist | Lynne Flemons
Exhibition Statement
Lynne Flemons’ current practice is inspired by natural and cultural landscapes of the past and present, with a specific interest in trees and water as habitats for memories and revelation. Her works celebrate a sense-of-place over time. A process driven practice of walking and drawing in the Gudgenby Valley, (Namadgi NP) and research at Historic Places, ACT, developed into wall based ‘open book’ drawings and an installation of found objects that explore land-use practices. Flemons has explored the relationships between the river and trees of the Lanyon Homestead property, through watercolours, drawings and mix media works on paper and the relationship between Namadgi NP habitat trees and the human presence in the landscape of this area in watercolour pencil. An installation of found objects draws upon themes of reuse and recycling, as evidenced at Mugga Mugga Cottage, exposing past practices of dumping refuse in the unnamed creek in the Gudgenby Valley that is now in a process of regeneration through land care practices. Dried arrangements observed at Calthorpe’s House led to the use of plants, both native and introduced into the installation. The installation of drawings and found objects explores the theme of regenerate as it relates to land use practices and what it might mean in the contemporary context in relation to historic places.
Artist Bio
Lynne Flemons is an Australian artist currently based in Canberra, ACT. She has a BA (Visual) from the Australian National University (ANU), a Postgrad Bachelor of Teaching, Western Sydney University, and a Master of Philosophy (Visual Art) ANU. She currently works in her studio at M16 Artspace. She has exhibited her work widely through her involvement in residencies, solo and group exhibitions at both regional and commercial galleries in Australia and abroad. Her work is held in public and private collections in Australia and internationally including the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, Ballinglen Art Foundation, Ireland and many others. Lynne has been awarded numerous art residencies in Australia and Europe, including the Cradle Mountain Wilderness Gallery residency in Tasmania, Ballinglen Art Foundation, Ireland and Serlachius Museum, Finland. She has been a finalist in many art prizes including, most recently, the Paddington Art Prize, The ACT Historic Places Art Prize for which she was awarded the painting prize, and the Calleen Art Award.
Artist | Emma Rani Hodges
Exhibition Statement
During the residency period at Namadgi National park and ACT Historic Places Emma Rani Hodges researched introduced plant species that were brought into the region by the early settlers. Hodges has incorporated that research into the broader theme of their practice which is cross cultural aesthetics and migration. During the time Hodges spent in Namadgi National Park they came across communities of weeds such as St John's Wort and the Sweet Briar Rose. Hodges spent their days on residency collecting plant material and reconciling that with the folk lore from Thailand and Laos that their family brought here with them.
Artist Bio
Emma Rani Hodges is an artist who lives and works on the unceded lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. Their practice explores intergenerational trauma, community building, migration and multiethnic identity. They do this through mixed media textile installations and acts of storytelling. Fluctuating between image, text and object Hodges’s work resists easy categorisation. They use ambiguous materiality to examine social boundaries, and to explore feelings of ‘otherness’. Hodges’s work utilises their feelings of otherness to create new self-knowledge, while acknowledging that the existence of the ‘other’ depends on specific political conditions that influence relationships between marginalised bodies and society.