TCPAiR - Artist-In-Residence - 2021-2025

About Sammy Hawker

Website HERE

Sammy Hawker is an Australian based visual artist working predominantly on Ngunawal, Ngunnawal, Ngambri country [Canberra Region, ACT]. Sammy’s work is multi-disciplinary and driven by an interest in the immaterial and material presences within sites, spaces and the body. This Artist-in-residency program was self directed through sustained engagement with site, process, and practice. Hawker’s work contributes to an evolving critical discourse around landscape, temporality, and cultural stewardship.

NEWS!! The Corridor Project is delighted to acknowledge the recent awarding of the prestigious Ian Potter Cultural Trust Emerging Artist Grant to interdisciplinary artist Sammy Hawker. This significant opportunity will contribute in supporting Hawker’s upcoming International Artists-In-Residence program with Messums | ORG that includes a solo international exhibition Ghosts [& Monsters] opening at Messums West in October-November 2025.

Established by The Ian Potter Foundation in 1993, the Cultural Trust supports exceptional early-career Australian artists to undertake professional development opportunities abroad. This grant positions Hawker within a long tradition of cultural practitioners whose work speaks meaningfully to both regional and global contexts.

The forthcoming Messums exhibition forms part of The Corridor Project’s ongoing International Exchange Partnership with Messums | ORG, and exemplifies our organisation’s commitment to supporting early to mid career artists with research-led cultural dialogue across borders. Read further about past recipients including UK artists Tyga Helme 2024 and Jelly Green 2025. Find out more HERE

About Jack Ziesing

Instagram HERE

Jack Ziesing is an Australian based Independent dancer/choreographer he has been impassioned by the use of dance and the body as a communication medium and a tool for change. ‘It’s important to me that I use this platform to speak about the things that I am passionate about and believe in. I enjoy being able to reflect on the world around me through art, through my own practice. To be able comment on the world through the scope of art can inspire change and positive thought.’ The residence was self directed - supported by The Corridor Project]

Residence notes

The banner image is a still taken from a collaborative new video work based on a pied butcherbird recording taken early one morning in November 2021 at The Corridor Project (Wiradjuri Country). There are eight consistent notes in the melody. Using a pitch detector Sammy deciphered the frequencies of each of these notes. Two of the notes are repeated so there are 6 frequencies altogether. These frequencies were each played into the Chladni plate. When the Chladni plate is oscillating to a frequency, the salt on top forms distinct patterns & shapes. Sammy and Jack created photo-stills of the salt shapes made on the Chladni plate then Jack sketched graphic shapes as a result from this process. They took one of the shapes (D#6 - 1268.9hz) and using landscape chalk sketched it onto the paddock ground close by to where the pied butcherbird was originally recorded. With this image Jack was able to choreograph and perform a dance within the shape that was filmed in-situ and produced into a video work. Description and words: Sammy Hawker 2023

Testimonials

“The opportunity to stay and work at the CORRIDOR project was a deeply reflective and spacious experience that empowered a rich, fulfilling creative residency. Everyday I was captivated by the properties beauty and gentle power and was made to feel completely at ease with TCP support. Over the week, it was this soft relationship with the land and its inhabitants that fed a genuinely unique creative practice that I feel delivered a compelling body of work that speaks true to the ideas that Sammy and I had set out to explore and achieve. I said several times throughout the week that it was the residency I had always dreamed of going on! I couldn’t be more grateful to The Corridor Project team.”

— Jack Ziesing - September 2023

“During my most recent residency at the CORRIDOR project I travelled with choreographer Jack Zeising to collaborate on some new work together. In our individual practices both Jack and I explore what we term ‘the deeper frequency’ - an inexplicable but potent energy that emerges through eerie encounters, quantum flirts and little things that echo loudly.

The Corridor Project both inspires new work as well as creates space for reflection. Looking back on the week I am almost astounded at how much work we created, and how resolved that work feels, but the week simultaneously felt spacious, calm and deeply restorative. We went into the week with an idea of working with a pied butcherbird song that I had recorded TCP early one morning during the November 2021 floods. Using a frequency detector I worked out the notes/frequencies of the 7 notes in the pied butcherbird melody and played those frequencies into my chladni plate. Jack re-drew the shapes from the chladni plate and we chose one of the shapes (D#6 - 1268.9hz) to map out onto the ground behind the shearing shed using landscape chalk. Reflecting on the concept of the deeper frequency and permeable energy fields, Jack choreographed a dance piece within the structure of this shape which I filmed from above with a drone.

Apart from wanting to work with the frequencies of the pied butcherbird recording we entered the week without too much planning as we were interested to see how the site might guide us in what was made. Continuing on the idea of ecological embodiment we were inspired by the still visible story of the recent large floods to create a photo-series where Jack emulated the disembodied detritus left by the rush of water. I can’t thank The Corridor Project team enough for facilitating weeks such as these. During our time there Jack and I met echidnas, red-belly black snakes, the elusive platypus and of course many pied butcherbirds. Having visited TCP multiple times now, I feel as if the site reveals itself more to me on every visit. ”

— Sammy Hawker - September 2023

Artist-in-residency supported by The Corridor Project, Sammy Hawker and Jack Ziesing [self directed]

Images: 1. Banner Sammy Hawker and Jack Ziesing video still - D#6 - 1268.9hz) 2. Sammy Hawker and Jack Ziesing chromatogram workshop in The Corridor Project Studio 3. Sammy Hawker - photography located at The Corridor Project