Alice Boardman
Artist in Residence 2023
“It was a very introspective time and was nice to be able to slow right down and let place and art completely take over. I became obsessed with the tidal patterns and the way you could almost see the landscape breathe. This inspired my body of work I created during the residency.”
A look back at my time as Artist in Residence
I would like to acknowledge the Ngarluma people that are the Traditional Custodians of the land I worked on. I would also like to pay my respects to the Elders both past and present. The area is an important cultural site for the Ngarluma people, who have inhabited the area for over 30,000 years. I learnt a lot about the marred dark history of the pearling harbour occupation and tragic exploitation of the aboriginal people. As the AIR I wanted to tread lightly across the incredible landscape, knowing that the land remembers the suffering of its people.
Cossack town is located in one of the oldest geological regions in Australia. Before moving to Broome I lived in the East Pilbara for 4 years and was continually in awe of its character. Such an arid environment that embraces duality and contrast through its very existence. A place where time both stands still and accelerates so fast.
I felt very fortunate to be the 2023 Cossack Artist in Residence. A program run alongside of the Cossack Art Awards. For four weeks I relocated to Cosssack. Each day was different but always started in the studio. During the day the town was a bustle with tourists, flocks of grey nomads exploring the few remaining buildings including my art studio in the Customs House and Bond Store. I slept in a room in the old Police Barracks, from around 3pm the town would clear. No one lived there except the ground’s keepers. It was a very introspective time and was nice to be able to slow right down and let place and art completely take over. I became obsessed with the tidal patterns and the way you could almost see the landscape breathe. This inspired my body of work I created during the residency.
Cossack Art Awards are an amazing program of events for artists living regional and remote. Opportunities like these are few and far between. The community comes alive in this time with so much creative goodness to get involved in over the month. As the Artist in Residence I ran numerous workshops and talked to the visiting general public and even judged the Children’s Art Awards (some very talented and thoughtful kids in Karratha!)
My advice to future Artists in Residence…
Bring all your art making materials and tools so you can have them at hand (Cossack is remote!)
Be playful with this chance to be immersed in your practice.
Enter yourself into the Cossack Art Awards (why not!)
Do yourself a favour and do a Ngurrangga cultural tour - www.ngurrangga.com.au
Use the time to not only do lots of work but to write and come up with plans.
Make sure you come prepared and with intention and purpose, but also with a softness and openness to allow for any change in direction if that is where the energy pushes you.
Titled: Tidal Teacher. The work responds to living in tidal areas. The swell of the tides recreating the landscape over and over again, it acts as a metaphor; change is the only constant we can count on. I wrote a little poem to accompany the works:
Tidal teacher edges pushed and pulled
happiness stored in daydreams
these ancient rhythms, the familiar tidal clock ticks
arid salty breeze blanket pulled over head
the deja vu of yesterday's mistakes fade in lonesome hours
drawing me into the deep
About Alice Boardman
Alice Boardman is an artist currently living in Rubibi / Broome on Yawuru Country in the West Kimberley of Australia. Born in Naarm on the lands of the Boon Wurrung and Woiwurrung (Wurundjeri) people of the Kulin Nation, Alice holds a Diploma of Arts from Swinburne University of Technology and an Advanced Diploma of Art Therapy. She has worked with people to utilise art as an avenue for self-expression and improved wellbeing within education, community, youth justice and health service contexts.
a multidisciplinary Artist with her recent works focusing on glass. She begins her creative process with tuning into relational elements of her everyday life; to other humans, her surroundings, and the landscape. Her art acts as an avenue of coming back to herself. A remembering, and an invitation to curiosity. Curiosity is an important element of how she generates new work - experieantial rather than methodical. She writes and thinks through symbols and metaphors.
Drawn to the alchemy of found glass pieces, questions arise- what is their story? How did it come to change form by chance? What about its surroundings made it come to this particular lustre? They represent the metaphor for our own experience in life - how have we been passively shaped by our relationships and our surroundings? How did we come to be the shape we are? To have our own unique form and our own story? When something breaks, it is changed forever. Shape, structure, form and function may all be affected. But the way it is put back together - the bonds forged to fix it - become as important and a part of its new incarnation, as its older parts. This is the fitting together part of her process, the amalgamation and reforming of separate pieces of glass, of adjoining panels, the soldering together.
Follow Alice on instagram @_Stain_ed or visit her website at aliceboardman.com.au