The Squatters Residency is a curated program of artists at The Foundations, Portland, between Lithgow and Bathurst in regional NSW.
Established in 2020 the Squatters Artist in Residence (AIR) program has housed over fifty artists, staying for up to four weeks in ‘The Squat’ and working on site. The program has been, to date, via invitation. Arts OutWest looks forward to working with The Foundations and The Portland Collective (Harrie Fasher Studios, the Portland Foundry and The Portland Workshops) to facilitate this unique residency.
The Squat
It has been named ‘The Squat’ or ‘The Squatter’s Cottage’ as it is a largely unrenovated character-full basic cottage. It leans into “art squat” subculture of making art in spaces and places that are vacant and affordable. It is not a purpose-built studio/accommodation residency. One resident has quipped “it is a step up from camping” and T. C. Overson the first AIR program National Art School prize recipient and later AIR program coordinator expressed “It’s a simple old place, yet full of character.” Many have found it to be the perfect space for a self-directed creative retreat.
Originally the building was the first Bank of New South Wales in the town: The studio was the bank and the attached cottage was the manager’s home. Many of the original features are still observable in the layers of time. The Foundations Portland maintains the building structure. Maintenance has included a new roof and electricals. There’s photos of the spaces in the FAQ below to give you a feel for the location and buildings.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF PORTLAND
Portland, “The Town that Built Sydney”, is a small village lost in time, very cold in winter, very charming all year round.
The Squatter’s Cottage sits within The Foundations precinct in Portland, NSW, which was once a huge cement works. The quarries are now lakes, the large estate is lined with informal bushwalks and the gracious industrial buildings are aged. The current owners have several projects underway as they reactivate this heritage industrial site, revitalising the site into a unique regional destination offering a diverse range of cultural, community and recreational experiences for visitors and residents.
Within the Foundations are a number of buildings that can potentially be accessed (depending on other scheduled usage) for additional studio/work spaces including The Powerhouse, The Annexe and The Ambulance building.
Harrie Fasher is a full-time Artist in Residence. Her studio and foundry are on site, with her sculptures gracing the grounds.
RESIDENCIES
Residencies are offered for up to four weeks.
This is an unfunded residency. The 2025-26 fees for the Residency for 3 to 4 week period (generally within each month period) are $726 (= $660 plus GST). This fees helps cover heating including one load of wood in winter, cleaning and some basic maintenance.
See the FAQ below for more information about the space, what to bring, what is provided, how things work and expressing an intertest.
We plan to open a more formal application process in 2027.
Image: Lizzie Buckmaster Dove and Annemaree Dalziel in the Squatter’s Cottage 2025 (credit N Mason, Arts OutWest).
Residency FAQ
Who can apply
The Squatters AIR program is open to self-directed visual artists, writers, musicians, performers and other creatives.
Artists have been welcome to express an interest in the program and in 2025 continues to be curated, offering residencies by invitation including residents selected through the following awards:
- National Art School Masters Graduate Squatter’s Residency Prize (cottage fees covered)
- Sculpture in the Vineyards ($1000 to cover cottage fees with the remainder to the artist)
Please contact Nicola Mason at Arts OutWest to discuss an EOI:
- nimason@csu.edu.au
- 02 6338 4091
We hope to open a more formal application process for 2026 onwards.
Cost
The 2025 fees for the Residency for a 3-to-4-week period (generally within each month period) are $726 (= $660 plus GST). These fees cover heating, cleaning and some basic maintenance.
Use of the foundry/metal working area in Harrie Fasher’s Studio may be possible depending on timing of other activities on site: cost can be advised according to your requirements.
What is provided
The Squatters Cottage has been furnished by Harrie Fasher Studios and consists of:
- Large bedroom/studio with a double bed, fold out single bed/lounge and a table. Within the studio area there is plywood wall for working upon and displaying work
- Small bedroom with a double bed
- Studio room with some tables and a wall for working upon and displaying work. If marked significantly please roller the wall at the end of your stay.
- Lounge room with an old leather sofa and a fireplace
- Sunroom/studio space with a table
- Kitchen with a full-sized fridge, gas cook top, rice cookers, a crock pot, small air oven and utensils. There is NO full-sized oven.
- Blankets, a radiator, two heaters, and an electric blanket are provided.
- Hallway
- Bathroom with a shower and toilet
- Shelf of art books
- Several artworks gifted from previous Artists in Residence
Expected outcomes
There is no residency outcomes required. This AIR program is to allow artists time and space to develop their practice.
Where residents are willing and able to contribute to the community, this is appreciated but not expected. Any generosity that suits AIR is welcome. Previous AIR have:
-
- donated an artwork for the cottage
- exhibited work in The Annexe on site (with planning in the mix for an Artists in Residence exhibition to be held in 2025 in the Annexe)
- opened their studio / held a workshop and/or
- added to the veggie and herb garden that supplies the Squatters Cottage.
Accessibility
The Squatter’s Cottage is currently NOT fully accessible. There is one step into the front and back of the property, several steps into the side door of the studio and a step inside of the property between the hallway and the bathroom/toilet. Certain features of the site also present challenges to accessibility including uneven terrain. Arts OutWest recognises the importance of individualised support and is willing to collaborate with residents to develop an access plan where needed. Assistance and companion animals are welcome.
What to bring
- Art materials/ equipment for your practice.
- Bed linen including sheets, pillows and towels.
- A second electric blanket if you think you’ll need it.
- Books.
- Rain gear.
- Woolens/thermals – Portland is a high-altitude town and thick socks, jumpers, gloves and coats will keep you cozy
- Boots – the walks can get muddy
- Special dietary needs – The IGA is basically stocked; however you will need to travel to Lithgow or Bathurst to get most vegan or wholefood supplies.
- Cool cuttings/seeds to add to the veggie garden and planted beds (if you wish).
- Dogs are welcome, so long as they do not chase kangaroos / other animals.
There is NO Wifi in The Squatters Cottage, however there is mobile reception in the Cottage so the ability to hot spot from a phone is possible. There is Wifi in The Annexe building in The Foundations which is next door to the Cottage.
There is an art supplies store, Signature Framing in Portland (please support Cheryl, she’s great – 0413 525 527).
Portland has a range of village shops including IGA, bottle shop, Vinnies, butcher, Chinese restaurant, RSL, Bowling Club, take away, cafe, bakery, newsagent, chemist, library, doctor, gym and personal trainer, and the historic Crystal Cinema (open once a month). There are major shops and supermarkets in Lithgow (20 min drive) and Bathurst (40 min drive).
Other information / considerations:
- Artists are welcome to bring other artists / their families and invite friends to stay with them. Maximum overnight capacity is 4. Please let us know if other people are staying overnight (required for emergency planning).
- Collaborations are welcome however limited by the number of accommodation rooms/beds available inside The Squat.
- Dogs are welcome, so long as they do not chase kangaroos / other animals
- Artists are responsible for their own insurance including insuring their property (personal and art practice related) whilst at The Squat.
- Parking is currently street parking in front of The Squatter’s Cottage.
- Cleaners are organised to clean The Squat between residents. It is appreciated where Artists in Residence can tidy/clean prior to vacating with the basic cleaning equipment provided, so that this end of residency professional cleaning job is manageable.
Support during your stay
Arts OutWest will coordinate your stay on site.
An information pack is also provided with local intel, directions, access and other on-site info.
This is an independent, self directed stay.
Artists are encouraged to share their stay on social media and have the opportunity to be recorded as Artist Profiles on this site and in other media by Arts OutWest (where artists are open to this).
Cleaners are organised to clean The Squat between residents. It is appreciated where Artists in Residence can tidy/clean prior to vacating with the basic cleaning equipment provided, so that this end of residency professional cleaning job is manageable.
Getting to Portland
Portland is in Wiradjuri Country in the Central West of NSW located between Lithgow, Oberon, Mudgee and Bathurst. It is part of the eastern part of the Central Tablelands abutting the western slopes of the Blue Mountains.
Portland is 2 hours and 40 minutes’ drive from Sydney.
Lithgow to the southeast is 20 minutes’ drive (the train line goes to Lithgow, a bus connects a few times a day).
Bathurst to the west is 40 minutes’ drive (a bus connects a couple of times a day).
Oberon to the south is 45 minutes’ drive. Kandos to the north is 1 hour drive and is home to Cementa Festival and WAYOUT Artspace. Mudgee is 1 hour 20 minutes’ drive from Portland.
Use the Culture Maps Central NSW site to explore the galleries, museums, cultural attractions, art shops, public art and upcoming arts events in the region.
Photos
The Squatters Cottage, back garden and outdoor working space
The Studio room with working wall site
The combined studio with large working wall space / bedroom with a double bed and single sofa bed
The single bedroom with a double bed
The lounge with open fireplace
The back sunroom studio space to the hallway and backyard
The kitchen
The bathroom
The Foundations site including the Powerhouse and The Ambulance building
project news
That Sarah Randall found time to lap up plein air site offerings during weekends at The Squatter’s Residency in 2025 and 2026 is testament to her focused work ethic.
The year 11 and 12 art students of Kelso High School don’t skip a beat in their engagement and questioning of Harrie Fasher’s process, logistics, themes and more during their excursion to The Foundations, Portland in June 2026.
Jane Alexander has spent May 2026 immersed in experimentation at The Squatter’s Cottage, The Foundations, Portland. Working across painting, drawing, and sculpture during her Squatter’s Residency, Jane has embraced having the time and space to trial some cold wax in her paintings for the first time.
Closes Friday 5 June 2026.
Arts OutWest and South East Arts are calling for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander visual artists to apply for a cross‑regional artist residency program, Tidal Exchange.
Below is a photographic essay by Lizzie Buckmaster Dove of Harrie Fasher’s studio activity in the lead up to Harrie Fasher’s solo exhibition Before Dawn at Orange Regional Gallery 2025/26.
Brad Hammond Director of Orange Regional Gallery said at the opening of Before Dawn a solo exhibition by Harrie Fasher at Orange Regional Gallery, that her work is “ambitious, extraordinary and personal”. She “takes risks and brings people along” in a “process where everything is about to completely and radically change”. Her work “is about transformation”.
With heartfelt responsibility to country, Annemaree Dalziel and Lizzie Buckmaster Dove walked gently on The Foundations site in November 2025 as part of their shared residency at The Squatter’s Cottage.
3D cardboard sculptures were kid-handled into shape with nuts and bolts, paper fasteners, cloth tape and scissors by students at Portland Central School in workshops led by Em Ingram Shute this February 2026.
A lemon is on the wall, in all its glory. It could not be more in-place on the floral wallpaper of The Squatter’s studio whilst Jaq Davies is the Artist in Residence. During her February 2026 residency, Jaq has orchestrated an eclectic amalgamation of bits and bobs to extend from and converse with her paintings and drawings on paper pinned here, there and everywhere.
Fran O’Neill activated The Administration Building studio at The Foundations during her Squatter’s Residency, returning in January 2026 with Inga Dalrymple and Cat Mills.
Cat Mills activated The Powerhouse at The Foundations during her Squatter’s Residency, returning in January 2026 with Fran O’Neill and Inga Dalrymple.
Inga Dalrymple activated The Bathhouse studio at The Foundations during her Squatter’s Residency, returning in January 2026 with Fran O’Neill and Cat Mills.
This week the year 7s and Year 8s at Portland Central School were totally engaged making bangles with raffia whilst yarning away with each other and Ronda Sharpe, Wiradjuri environmental artist.
Ellen Ferrier has been the recipient of The Foundations Mentorship coupled with an Artist-in-Residence at The Bathhouse. The Foundations, Portland supported by Harrie Fasher Studios from May – November 2025.
The Foundations – Portland, Harrie Fasher Studio and Arts OutWest teamed up at the National Art School (NAS) Master of Fine Art (MFA) preview event of The Postgrad Show 2025. Martin and Monica O’Connell, Rich and Kellie Evans, Martin John Oldfield and Nic Mason experienced the work curated across the campus and talked with MFA Alumni at this celebratory exhibition. It is clear; in selecting a 2025 recipient of The Foundations Squatter’s Residency Award, the team cannot go wrong as the work of this cohort is of an exceptional standard. This task will not be easy.
Sketch after sketch of figurative contemplations line the walls at The Squatter’s Cottage this August 2025. Tilly Lees has been utilising drawing as a process to think about what she might create next and why. She has been reading stacks and scrawling pages of notes in her visual art diaries.
Our visual artists networking day went on an excursion to Portland to visit an exhibition and artist studios.
Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 November 2025.
Featuring 18 locations, artists, opening their studios just once a year.
Part rock animator, part philosopher, part blacksmith, and fully joyful, Will Maguire is a wholesome treasure to be around. And around he was found in the depths of Harrie Fasher’s studio with the likes of artists Martin John Oldfield, Ellen Ferrier and Koichi Ishino during his July 2025 Squatter’s Cottage residency.
It’s Makers Month at the Foundations, Portland, throughout October 2025 and Arts OutWest is involved in all kinds of ways.
We then start November participating in the popular Lithgow Arts Trail.
October 2025. This exhibition features 13 artists who are all associated with The Squatter’s Artist in Residence program held at The Foundations at Portland in the NSW Central West. It’s part of the new Makers Month at The Foundations.
The work of a talented cohort of The Foundations, Portland regulars is on show in their current exhibition ‘Creative Foundations’ which opened 15 August at Blue Mountains Cultural Centre in Katoomba.
The fire crackles, the tea flows, and the treats are plentiful. On this frosty June Tuesday, Quan Zhu Ma’s hospitality is second-to-none at his Squatter’s Cottage residency.
Returning to the Squat in May 2025, this time Penelope McKeown has been spending time painting and drawing inside with watercolour, gouache and oils. She has been activating the studio room, the studio/bed large room and the sunroom. Her paintings and drawings being created at The Squat are extending from her recent plein air works created in her south coast Lilli Pilli studio.
In early May 2025 about 40, year 9 and 10 Visual Arts students from Scots All Saint’s College found themselves in Harrie Fasher’s Foundry at The Foundations, Portland. They came on a bus with their art diaries and three teachers all prepped for a big day out.
Experimental photographic chemistry is in the making. Simone Darcy, the Squatter’s Artist in Residence in April through to early May, has dived deep into the Phytogram process. She has been using her own non-toxic plant-based developer and working directly onto 120mm and 4×5 film.
Activating the outside room of The Squatter’s Cottage, Ken Hutchinson has been sculpting Chillagoe marble from Queensland during his residency at The Foundations, Portland in March 2025. On seeing the fines peppered all over him from this marble action adventure, Ken commented that he’s actually never been cleaner with the “killer shower” at The Squat. We too can attest that it is a good one.
Paints and painting materials are clustered in piles at The Squatter’s Cottage, whilst Brenda Stace Chat is going back and forth talking about her large and small works spread across the walls and floor of the Studio Room. Bits of discarded thick fishing net rope picked up in Normandy, France and her works in progress from her recent residency at Lighthouse Arts in Newcastle are clearly ingredients for what is being created by her in her March 2025 at The Squat.
Huge paintings have been created at The Squatter’s Residency cottage in February 2025. Robbie Flowers with enthusiastic four-legged art friend Dondi by her side (named after renowned 1970’s NY Subway artist … who conversely was named after the comic strip of the same name) has been abstracting away using watery references of her earlier paintings.
Cate McCarthy’s 2025 artist residency at The Squatter’s Residency, The Foundations, Portland has seen her focusing on her arts practice creating drawings, paintings and sculptures.
From 2025 Arts OutWest will coordinate The Squatter’s Residency, The Foundations, Portland. January’s artists were Fran O’Neil, Inga Dalrymple and Cat Mills.
The Squatters Residency is an initiative of The Foundations, Portland.
From 2025 Arts OutWest will work with The Foundations and The Portland Collective (Harrie Fasher Studios, the Portland Foundry and The Portland Workshops) to facilitate this Artist in Residence program.
Location: The Foundations, Willwa St, Portland NSW
When: since 2020, coordinated by Arts OutWest since 2025
Coordinator: Nicola Mason, Arts OutWest
