Tasman Cottage at night
This year Otomys artist Sophia Szilagyi took up two art residencies on opposite sides of the world: the Tasman Cottage Artist Retreat at Eaglehawk Neck, followed by a 400-year-old thatched house in Tandslet which is situated in the southern half of the island. It sits roughly 16 kilometers east of the main city center of Sønderborg. In her own words, she reflects on slowing down, looking for light and how the two landscapes have come to feel like extensions of each other.
Tasmania
After my application for the Tasman Cottage Artist Retreat was accepted earlier this year, I travelled to Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsula in late July. I was only there for three days, but I walked, took a lot of photos and slowed right down. I went looking for light and I tried not to overthink what was around me.
When you’re focused on getting somewhere, you miss everything in between. Having time to just wander was a gift. I started noticing small things I would normally drive straight past, like the white and green light coming through the forest with the sea right beside it. Eaglehawk Neck is tiny and isolated, so you can walk for miles without seeing anyone. I was completely in it.
My favourite spot was the cliffs. You feel a warmth standing there, like you’re on the edge of the earth somewhere untouched. One afternoon after light rain I saw the end of a rainbow for the first time. It landed right on the cliff’s edge and lit up the dense forest against all that open space. The birds were calling the whole time.
Tasmania made me think about co-existing without needing anything else. Before the residency I wanted to go back to making work from a set idea. Now I’m drawn to something stiller, a bit like a wax seal on the in-between that spreads the light. This trip and the one that followed in Denmark have joined up and now feel like extensions of each other. At first they seemed completely different, because the landscapes and ways of life sit on opposite sides of the world.
When I got home I saw some of my earlier prints differently. There’s depth and space in my work, and an abstract quality in It Feels Difficult. It has a darkness that reaches deep into colour and mood. In Golden Hour, the scale is central to how the archival pigment print works.
Denmark
The house was 400 years old, with a thatched roof and ceilings so low I learned to duck without thinking. The ocean sat right outside the window, grey and wide, and the freshly harvested fields beyond were bare and quiet. It was the kind of quiet where you start to hear yourself think. That was my home for two and a half weeks in Denmark, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
I started in Copenhagen with grand plans to see three galleries a day. My body had other ideas, so I did it properly instead. I’d be at the door at ten, wander for two hours, have a coffee, go back in, break for lunch, then return for more. Travelling alone meant nobody was watching the clock. I had no Wi-Fi, got lost more than once and walked far more than I’d planned. It was exactly what a holiday should be.
I went hoping to see Hammershøi, but the David Collection had another show on. Its Islamic art was astounding, something I’d never have chosen and won’t forget. I fell in love with Louisiana, an hour out of the city and looking across to Sweden’s coastline. I saw Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore in one sitting and was buzzing for days. At Copenhagen Contemporary, in a former welding factory by the water, there’s a permanent installation of James Turrell’s Aftershock. You step into a room of slowly shifting colour with no edges or corners, nothing to hold on to. Photographs aren’t allowed, which feels right. You just stand there, inside light.
That room stayed with me. Before the trip I’d been working on an unresolved series about light and colour. How do you express something spatial, or emotional, in two dimensions? I still don’t know, but I’m happy to be on the way to finding out.
Back at the house, the days slowed down. I carried a second camera, a little Fuji with no zoom, and its limits changed how I saw the land. The Danish light is low, soft and easy on the mind. I photographed from the window, on dog walks with friends, and from the car, a habit of mine. The trees grew so thick that locals had carved doorways through them, and I drove through green tunnels straight out of a fairy tale.
I was sure I’d photograph the ocean. Instead I came home with hundreds of photographs of trees, their silhouettes in front of the sea and sky. They lean toward the water as if standing guard, just in case. Denmark felt different from other wild places I’ve been. The land carries the marks of human hands, with fields farmed for generations, and I felt a calm there that I don’t always feel in the Australian bush.
Written by Sophia Szilagyi
You can view Sophia Szilagyi’s work at Otomys from 10am to 5pm, Tuesday to Friday, or by appointment on Saturdays and Mondays.
