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Bundanon

Penny Gillespie and Donna McDonald

Penny Gillespie and Donna McDonald

Art Forms: Visual Art, Writing

Residency Year: 2025

Lives / Works: North Stradbroke Island, Minjerribah and Brisbane, Meanjin

Penny Gillespie, a UK trained artist, has been documenting her dual experiences of brain tumour: the trauma arising from the first diagnosis in 2012 and subsequent surgery, grief, rehabilitation, recovery, and the hope of remission, and then the shock of having to confront it all again now, more than ten years later. Penny’s documentation is multi-modal i.e. writing, painting, drawing and metalsmithing.

Donna McDonald PhD is an Australian writer, memoirist and visual artist who works with ceramics. Her long-standing daily writing routine informs her art.  Her recent paintings and sculptures of women and children signal her transformative shift from enduring sorrow to sorrow-informed joy. They met 30 years ago. Penny was a young mother, Donna a bereaved mother.  Fast forward to 2023 when their friendship deepened while sharing their personal stories of trauma, loss and sorrow together with their creative responses to their experiences.

In Residence at Bundanon

Both artists are interested in digging down into the way intensely traumatic experiences intersect with dominant conventions of what is acceptable to say and show emotion about, and what is frowned upon or glossed over because the subject matter is raw or deemed to be taboo. Their collaboration around trauma, grief and renewal using a phenomenology-based approach will take advantage of the beauty of Bundanon’s environment and the presence of other artists on site. Using a narrative-art framework, they will consolidate the next stage of their creative partnership leading to the production of a work such as a mixed media narrative with a working title, `Brain Surgery for Beginners’

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Bundanon acknowledges the people of the Dharawal and Dhurga language groups as the traditional owners of the land within our boundaries, and recognises their continuous connection to culture, community and Country.

In Dharawal the word Bundanon means deep valley.

This website contains names, images and voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

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