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.
Being introspective at this Residency, Tilly has diverged from her previous protest installation works. There is, however, no doubt that the conceptual and figurative nature of Tilly’s mark making at The Squat links to her past installation works employing tule fabric. Two examples include:
- ‘Homebound’ of ghostly figures haunting the Coal Loader in North Sydney flickering with 55 women, referencing the extraordinary number of those who lost their lives to domestic violence in 2021; and
- ‘Lost possibilities’ installed outside The Great Hall, The University of Sydney manifesting the students who did not exist in 2017 at Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) with the university ceasing all new student intake that year. This was her Master’s graduation work initially installed at Callan Park, SCA’s former Rozelle campus.
One of the beauties of the Squatter’s Residency is that no standard residency outcomes are required. This allows Artists-in-Residence to be experimental and contemplative and to use this place and time to follow their own enquiry and develop their practice. Tilly has taken this time to be exploratory, dig deep and keep on drawing.
Tilly has described her Squatter’s Residency as an “art meditation retreat”. Along with her focus creating inside the Cottage, Tilly has also headed to Portland’s very own YIRI Wellbeing & Gifts. Located on the main street, Zenta Zebergs, an oncology massage therapist offers gentle touch relaxation massage and relaxation meditation classes. Along with typical shops and services like the supermarket, library, post office, RSL, pub and bowling club, Portland, a town of only around 2000 people punches above its weight and has attracted specialist gems too like Zenta’s business. Thanks go to Tilly for her local engagements. It has been a joy to have Tilly on residency, as exemplified by the work she created whilst on a previous residency:
- ‘Share a moment of simple joy’ of joyful text-based work where she shared snippets of light and joy from the hundreds of conversations she had with people at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, the cancer treatment centre at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, despite many being in the thick of their worst days.
Thanks too to Tilly for her practical contributions towards lighting and heating for the Squatter’s Cottage.
We look forward to seeing and hearing where Tilly’s work takes her next. Will it be figurative, text based or possibly even sculptural? Winding up at the Residency, we wish Tilly all the best as she continues on her regional journey, taking on new life adventures in Dorrigo.
Story and images N Mason
