Launch presentation for ARTIST IN RESIDENCE program @ Binna Burra Lodge, Nov 2021

1. ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
On the Binna Burra Cultural Landscape
Lamington National Park, Queensland, Australia
Official launch
Friday 19th November 2021, 10 am @ Binna Burra
Steve Noakes, Chairperson, Binna Burra Lodge Ltd.

2. Binna Burra Lodge acknowledges and pays
respect to the land and the traditional practices
of the families of the Yugambeh Language
Region of the Scenic Rim and their Elders
past, present and emerging.
Our Mission: To be a meaningful connection to nature and heritage.

3. The ‘Artist-in-Residence on the Binna Burra Cultural Landscape’ honours the legacy of the
eminent Queensland artist, Vida Lahey (1882-1968), painter and sister of Romeo Lahey
(1887-1968), the co-founder of the National Parks Association of Queensland and Binna
Burra Lodge.
It will expand the post-bushfire necessary focus on ‘hard infrastructure’ into the foundations
of our ‘soft infrastructure’ – the stuff that underpins the ‘spirit of Binna Burra’.
It will also bring new creative ideas to surprising spaces and wonderful experiences around
the Binna Burra Cultural Landscape … such as
Why have an Artist-in-Residence?

4. Binna Burra Cultural Landscape.
The Queensland Heritage Register notes:
‘Artists have depicted this region including important Queensland artist Vida Lahey (From Binna Burra, 1934),
international artist Lois Beumer in her watercolour Rainforest Tangle 1986, and nationally acclaimed William
Robinson in his landscape paintings.
The adjacent McPherson Range inspired well-known photographers including Arthur Groom, Doug Spowart and
Charles Ernest Stanley Fryer, while Romeo Lahey took plate glass photographs at the outset of World War I to
campaign for the area’s reservation as a national park. Books written about Binna Burra, include Arthur Groom’s
1949 work One Mountain After Another and Raymond Curtis’ 2003 book, Rainforest Journal. Curtis’ orchestral
work ‘Journey Among Mountains’ (1989) also celebrates the area.
Creative Arts and Photographics Schools (annually to 1984 at least); and Green Fingers Weeks (from 1970). The
schools attracted and inspired well-known tutors and participants such as poet Heather Farmer; clarinettist Don
Burrows AO MBE; photographer Steve Parish; Mervyn Moriarty, founder of the Flying Art School in outback
Queensland; and photographer Nev Male.’
https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=601899

5.  Helps people to reconnect with nature
 Part of the ongoing bushfire recovery & resilience
process @ Binna Burra
 Artistic production and research that combines art,
nature, well-being & science
 A generational opportunity to harness the power of
the indigenous and pre/post colonial era stories
associated with the Binna Burra Cultural Landscape to
connect communities, improve happiness and health
and stimulate creative thinking for the new era of
Binna Burra Lodge
 Honouring the legacy of Vida Lahey and Romeo Lahey
in their respective contributions to Queensland’s
artistic heritage and national parks
Why have an Artist-in-Residence program?

6. Our focus will be on the development of the creative process, facilitating
cultural, environmental and learning exchanges.
 We will be guided by the first Reconciliation Action Plan now underway at Binna Burra.
 We will contribute to the post-bushfire renewal and transformation of the Binna Burra Cultural Landscape
as local places as well as global digital spaces.
 We will drive the celebration of history and heritage at Binna Burra as well as intergenerational social
change.
 We will share the stories of Binna Burra and celebrate the storytellers.
 We will contribute to the Government's ten-year vision which will see Queensland renewed and contribute
to the state's social, cultural, and economic future through arts, culture and creativity.
Since the founding of Binna Burra Lodge in the early 1930’s, artists’ camps were held to take
inspiration from the scenic views of Egg Rock and Turtle Rock and the McPherson Range.

7. Our Artist-in-Residency program will …
 Enable creative people to work in a new environment, often away from the restrictions
and pressures of their everyday lives
 Prove the time and space for people to develop, work and creatively explore new ideas
 Offer local community, individual visitors, and groups a range of workshops, talks,
opportunities for building networks and collaborations, exhibitions, art-science research,
photographic classes, writers’ camps and more.
 Be open to First Nations, local, national, and international creatives from diverse
disciplines including film, literature, music, theatre, visual art, dance.
Binna Burra Cultural Landscape & its surrounding rainforest, waterfalls and views, have
inspired aesthetic responses from artists, photographers, writers and musicians since the
Lamington National Park was officially gazetted by the State Government in 1915.

8.  And yes, there is a commercial benefit for the Binna Burra social enterprise in the form of
accommodation bookings, food & beverage, event space, retail sales etc ...
 BUT, it’s a two-way process that is commercially viable and contributing to the ‘spirit of
Binna Burra’ built by past generations, enjoyed by the current generation and will last for
future generations!

9. Recent recognition of Romeo Lahey and the links between the formation of
Lamington National Park, the NPAQ and Binna Burra Lodge

10. Artist Vida Lahey, Ca. 1924. State Library of Queensland
Source: https://mappingbrisbanehistory.com.au/history-location/062-vida-lahey/
Now it’s an opportunity to celebrate
the legacy of Vida Lahey on the
Binna Burra Cultural Landscape.
Older sister of co-founder of Binna Burra Lodge
A key figure in the development of the Queensland Art Gallery
One of the most interesting and influential figures in Queensland
artistic development
Produced over 2,000 paintings

11. While people closely associated with the NPAQ
and the University of Queensland attended the
first camps at Binna Burra in 1933, one year
later, in 1934 the original company (Queensland
Holiday Resorts) was incorporated at the same
time Vida Lahey was being recognised as one of
the ‘Women who are prominent in Brisbane’s
Art World’.
Vida Lahey profiled (centre front) in ‘Women who are
Prominent in Brisbane’s Art World’, published in ‘The
Telegraph’ 8 June 1934 also included Daphne Mayo, Enid
Dickson, Caroline Barker, Gwendolyn Grant, Jeanette
Sheldon, Mrs Charles Arthur Powell (Gladys Henrietta
Dudley née Hobday), and Mrs. D. F. Cowell-Ham / 114526 /
Source: https://blog.qagoma.qld.gov.au/vida-lahey-known-for-her-distinctive-flower-studies-australia/

12. ‘Vida's relationship to her family sheds light on
the way in which this particular single woman
continued to have and enjoy her emotional
investment in family.
That investment was equivalent to a married
woman's duty of care to family (as opposed to a
woman's sexual duties to a husband).
I also argue, however, that it was partly through
her investment in family that Vida was able to
develop her artistic identity beyond the family. ‘
Susan Lovell (2008) ‘Wanted, a strong girl, able to milk and make herself agreeable’:
A Eudaimonistic Model for Femininity in the Art of Vida Lahey (1882-1968 )
Vida, Noel, and Romeo Lahey, 1916.
(Beatrice “Bee” Belton, AWM P04598.001)
Binna Burra Lodge honours the legacy of Vida Lahey and Romeo Lahey in their respective contributions to
Queensland’s artistic heritage and national parks.

13. To use Vida's life …
• To examine the idea that early twentieth century middle-class single women did not
necessarily marginalise family. They could, indeed, happily function in ways equivalent to
those of married women; that is, as domestic workers and agreeable identities, though
not necessarily eroticised.
• Use her art to try to visualise the complexities of femininity and single life that this
recognition demands.
• Consider whether my analysis opens up a eudaimonistic model through which the past
lives of single women may be brought into the cultural imaginary.
Susan Lovell (2008) ‘Wanted, a strong girl, able to milk and make herself agreeable’:
A Eudaimonistic Model for Femininity in the Art of Vida Lahey (1882-1968 )

14. To use Vida's life …
1. To present the Lahey family history & heritage with Binna Burra Lodge and the formation
of this Lamington National Park
2. Re-ignite the past decades of artistic creativity undertaken by generations on the Binna
Burra Cultural Landscape
3. Strengthen Binna Burra’s relationship with the various forms of the arts represented in
programs at Griffith University and other Universities
4. Explore possible new relationships with institutions such as the Heritage section of the
Queensland Department of Environment & Science, the
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and other like-minded institutions
5. Advance the Science Matters @ Binna Burra messaging – Art. Science. Research.
6. Expand the post bushfire necessary focus on ‘hard infrastructure’ into the foundations
of our ‘soft infrastructure’ – the stuff that underpins the ‘spirit of Binna Burra’
Noakes, S. (2021)

15. Dr Renata Buziak
Biochrome artist, researcher & educator
Binna
Burra
Artist
in
Residence
2022