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The mountains have long been a source of creative inspiration for artists, writers, photographers and creatives of all disciplines, but it’s not often one gets the opportunity to live in the midst of these breathtaking peaks and delve into the dynamic scenery of the Southern Alps.
Whare Kea Chalet is a remote haven of creativity, sitting 1750m high in the Albert Burn Saddle. A temporary home to winners of the Kenneth Myer Artist in Residence Retreat, she has seen many esteemed creators at work and the spectacular results of their stay here. This year, the 2024 recipient Sarah Tomasetti spent two weeks weaving the awe-inspiring scapes of the Mount Aspiring National Park into her creative practice.
“In our first three days at the Whare Kea Chalet, we had a fabulous guide from Wānaka Mountain Guides staying with us who taught us how to navigate our way through the surrounding landscape without paths. Wandering out was exciting, while finding our way back was far more complex than we anticipated.
After our guide left, I began making wayfinding arrows from the fresco skins I had brought as a way of navigating the strangeness of a new landscape through a material connection to the ground. Out walking, I placed them in patches of snow, along frozen tarns and gullies, a small visual intervention to grow familiarity with the topography through slow looking.
We carefully collected them all again which altered our ways of moving through the landscape, especially at dusk around the frozen tarns. We became closer to subtle changes in the light and reflections. Each arrow is stained with pigment drawn from the colour of the sky, stone, or vegetation recorded at different times of the day and night. The various sizes recede, echoing the elastic nature of distance in the mountains or the movement of wind barbs on a meteorological chart.
The rhythmic making of the arrows created a relationship between the present, my childhood visiting Switzerland, and a deeper ancestral past, in which my forebears created frescoed wayfaring shrines along high-altitude paths, where offerings could be made to ensure safe passage.
On our last night at the chalet, I laid them out on the outside table under gently falling snow and in the morning they were frozen stiff and could be laid into grooves made with an egg slice in the snow. We dug them out from below and had great fun arranging them into a colourful topography – these images became emblematic of the time at Whare Kea Chalet and the sense of renewal brought by the rapidly transforming landscape.”
– Sarah Tomasetti
Sarah brings a wealth of experience in pre-modern techniques, such as fresco, encaustic, stucco lucido and sgraffito. Grounded in the slow sensing of moisture and temperature over time, her work has a unique material connection to the landscape through the use of slaked lime, sands, pigments and wax. Over the last decade, Sarah has researched diverse mountain imaginaries, examining how cultural narratives affect the way humans imagine, traverse, worship and destroy mountainous regions.
“I’ve been working with mountains in my practice for over 20 years,” says Sarah. “But I’ve never been able to spend an extended time in one place just looking at a range. Usually, I’m passing through on a trek or staying nearby and trying to capture changing light with a camera in a short space of time.”
Sarah’s most recent series, Breathing Stone, involved a residency in a village at the foot of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand. There, local belief holds that the gods and goddesses live above the snowline, and religious rituals are directed towards the living deity of Mt Kailash.
Established in 2012 by Martyn and Louise Myer, the residency honours the legacy of Martyn’s father, Kenneth Myer, a visionary with a deep appreciation for the arts and a profound connection to the mountains. This retreat offers a unique opportunity for a talented writer, poet, visual artist, photographer or composer to step away from their everyday life and immerse themself in the remoteness of the Whare Kea Chalet.
Past recipients of the Kenneth Myer residency, such as Martin Hill and Phillipa Jones, have left an indelible mark on the artistic landscape of Wānaka. Their project, Watershed, delved deep into the relationship between human systems and the water cycle, echoing the global issues that resonate within our local community.
The Whare Kea Chalet sits on the edge of the Mount Aspiring National Park with astounding views of Mt. Cook and Mt. Aspiring with its tumbling glaciers. It’s warm, partly due to the clever positioning of double-glazed windows in relation to the sun, and there’s space to work – something very rare for a high-altitude shelter.
“All this means I’m able to dip into a much deeper state of observation and paint on-site rather than relying on photographs,” says Sarah. “I tried to depict what happens at night, which is another wonderful aspect of the site. There is no light pollution due to the remoteness, so the mountains were lit by the stars and, later in the residency, the moon.”
Beyond the realm of art, Whare Kea remains a steadfast supporter of local initiatives that celebrate our unique mountain culture. From the New Zealand Mountain Film Festival to Love Wānaka, an impact initiative supporting climate, conservation, and biodiversity action, Whare Kea’s values reach far into our community.
Whare Kea Chalet and The Kenneth Myer’s Residency are prime examples of the growing arts and culture scene here in Wānaka, encouraging creativity as a way of exploring the material history of our mountains. And there’s much more where that came from.
There are galleries of contemporary and traditional pieces by both local and international artists throughout town, including Gallery Thirty Three, Wānaka Fine Art Gallery, and The Picture Lounge. It’s in these works that we find our roots, acknowledging those who came before us and the landscapes that hold us.
Book your stay at Whare Kea Chalet, explore our collection of art galleries or head to Love Wānaka to learn more about our region’s conservation efforts. Here’s to the mountains that inspire us, and the artists who bring them to life.
