Getting to know Grief: The first residency
A reflection by Tilley
From July 7th, I was granted seven days access to the studio of Second Echo Ensemble, to work on the Living Grief Project.
I approached the week nervously, excitedly, having never done a creative development residency before, having never worked on a project like this before.
My primary intention was to get to know Grief.
Through multifaceted conversations, ten wonderful people opened their hearts and let me in to their experiences of different kinds of grief.
I invited fellow artists & members of the community to book in a time to have a conversation with me about their relationship to grief. Each conversation was so unique, and so generous.
Image courtesy of Bec Tilley.
I set up a beautiful cosy space for the conversations, a little altar with flowers and candles next to a beautiful instrument made from a tree (which turned out to be more relevant to the project than I had expected), pens and paper, my guitars for songwriting, a pile of books I didn't have time to read, and my drumkit for its ability to provide a much needed rhythmic somatic mental re-set in between intense conversations.
I asked questions about what people found supportive during their grieving journey, and what was unsupportive. They shared about the layered experience of grief, how one kind of grief can unearth earlier & older griefs. Where their families, community, and culture let them down and did not care for them adequately in their experiences... and where they were beautifully held, often by nature, and by art.
Artists shared about how grief has informed their creative practice, told me about some of the beautiful and unusual projects they have created while processing their experience of death of a parent, death of a sibling, moral injury, childhood trauma, loss of relationship, the desire to have a child, complex relationships to family, grief in the face of ecological destruction. And how these creative practices have provided healing for their grief in turn.
Sara Wright blew my mind when she told me the story of the beautiful tree-instrument that lives in the studio; a fire-bombed tree brought back from the Styx Lament, a performance ritual of environmental grief that took place in clear-felled and old-growth forest in the Styx Valley, in November 2019.
Image courtesy of Bec Tilley.
I walked the rivulet track listening to a conversation about the sixth gate - "The harms we've caused". I sat on a stone in the water. I leaned on trees.
I microwaved my heat pack over and over. I drank herbal teas and ate dark chocolate and mandarins and potato pie. I rode my bike home along the bike track at night under the full moon. I listened to Stephen Jenkinson read his book "Die Wise".
I wrote one song - it's called "Spiral, Not A Line".
I felt the melancholy beauty and gravitas, weightiness, of this work that life has asked me to be custodian of for now. I felt so much gratitude to have something so meaningful to devote myself to. I felt grateful for the physical space, for Second Echo's support and encouragement, for the generous spirit of everyone who keeps saying "yes" to this project as it begins its journey from seed to sprout to something that will provide nourishment for many.
Image courtesy of Bec Tilley.
Since the first residency, I have continued to study & integrate the material I've been gathering, attended two events at Beaker Street Science Festival about death, and prepared for the next phase: the second creative development residency, coming up on September 22-26th at Moonah Arts Centre. I applied for and was successful in receiving a quick response grant to fund this second residency, supported by the Australian Government Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia.
I'll share more details soon about this project, why it's important, why me, what the Gates of Grief are, and about the upcoming residency at MAC.
This artist residency reflection by Tilley was originally published on 12 September 2025 on her Substack.
