Catriona Pollard is a contemporary artist working with fibres and natural forms. Her abstract sculptures merge foraged and discarded plant material with traditional basketry techniques.

What has this residency enabled you to achieve in your professional art practice?

The Residency created time and space for me to be able to create a body of work that I would never been able to do without it.

I will never forget the first day of my residency. I felt like it’s a ‘room of one’s own’ moment. Through six solo exhibitions, countless group and selected exhibitions … I used my kitchen floor, balcony, lounge room floor, dining table, garage, my desk in the office. At the end of that first day, I closed the door knowing I could come back to my work in progress and I didn’t have to step over it or eat dinner next to it!

It was not only the space; it was the inspirational bushland environment that was critical to be able to experiment and express my artistic vision. 

How did the opportunity to connect with the community of artists at Eramboo benefit your residency experience?

During my Residency it was great to build connections with a few artists at Eramboo. This has led to collaboration and a future group show.

How did the environment and dedicated studio space at the Eramboo influence the direction of your new work?

A critical part of my work is spending dedicated time in solitude in the bush, building a spiritual language with the landscape. Through sitting in meditation, in observation, walking through the landscape and making friends with trees and rocks.

This provides deep insight into so many elements beyond the human narrative of the landscape.

By sharing dialogue with natural materials and allowing them to inform the narrative of my artwork, it meant that the stories were formed and shared from the landscape in transformational ways – in a language that provided new meanings and relationships with nature, humans and the landscape.

I was easily able to achieve this at Eramboo, and I believe it showed in the body of work that I completed during my residency.

What do you think your new work contributes to the dialogue between art and environment?

Through my sculptural reinterpretation of nature, my work offers up the concept that we should actively see nature as part of us rather than simply an object that has no meaning or spirit. To no longer simply be an observer.

During the pandemic, I’ve been interested in how people used nature/the outdoors/their immediate landscape to feel better – to access hope. Tapping into the energy of nature, my most recent sculptures completed during the Residency are a meditation on how the natural world generates hope.

Many of my artworks address our relationship with nature and its tangible impact on hope, with the ultimate aim of moving people closer to hope for the wellbeing of all – both human and the more than human world.

Encountering nature – listening to the wind in the trees, smelling the earth, tasting the rain, watching an ant walk across a rock – increases hope directly as it intrinsically demonstrates the interconnectedness of all things.

How has the local Northern Beaches’ environment (/and culture) influenced your practice/work?

The Northern Beaches environment, particularly around the Ku-ring-gai National Park helped me understand that the sense of connectedness and appreciation of the landscape around us is an essential source of hope. It links us to future possibilities and to the greater living world and the sense of wonder and joy that only nature can provide.

It also inspires all of us on the Northern Beaches to conserve the more than human world and recognise the interdependence between the welfare of humans and the natural world.

View the body of work completed at Eramboo