Drawn to a Dream: Eliza Gosse’s Art Residency at Halcyon House

COMBINING her loves of art and architecture has long been a passion for Eliza Gosse, so being invited to Halcyon House for an artist in residence program was a dream project.

The Sydney-based artist spent a week at the boutique hotel at Cabarita Beach working on the upcoming exhibition, Afternoon Hour When Sun Falls Like Honey.

“Usually when you visit a new place you are out seeing the sights, but I was there to be in the hotel and draw it,” she said.

“It’s so rare that you check into an amazing hotel by yourself, but also being there for a purpose was exciting.

“I did one major piece which is the front of Halycon House and I put an old car from the 1980s in it to hark back to its origins as a motel from that time.

“Then I did two other small works that were interiors or details, two small works of houses that I saw in Cabarita Beach, and nine works on paper.”

Gosse, who has twice been a finalist for the Archibald Prize and is represented by the Olsen Gallery in Woollahra, studied architecture for a year before switching to the National Art School, from which she graduated with a Master of Fine Art in 2019.

“With my interest in architecture and art I started drawing lots of buildings and it became a big subject matter for me,” she said.

“I’ve done series on motels before, so it was fun going to a beautifully renovated one and seeing how they kept that original structure.

“I looked up the archive photos of what it used to look like, and it’s very different now.”

The show opens at Halcyon House on October 12 with a special ‘artist in conversation’ event at on-site restaurant Paper Daisy, with drinks by Husk Farm Distillery.

The exhibition will run until November 11.