Artist Greer Honeywill's latest exhibition offers chance for special reunion

Greer Honeywill is an 80-year-old conceptual artist from Melbourne. Although we only met for 30 minutes a decade ago, she has had a lasting impact on my life. Honeywill has spent forty years exploring the importance of "home" as a place for creating memories.

For Honeywill, "home" is a framework through which to observe the infinite possibilities the world offers. But for me, the concept of "home" has always been complex, as a Korean adoptee raised in Tasmania, I have struggled to understand my identity. Immersing myself in Honeywill's art feels like discovering another piece of the puzzle, helping me understand myself. Through connecting with her recent project, I realized how profound our brief meeting ten years ago was.

In 2015, I was working at a newspaper and was assigned to photograph Greer for the "Forever Present Eyes" exhibition in Hobart. I told Greer that I was deeply drawn to her photograph of a solitary fox gazing at the Derwent River at night. I was telling the truth, but telling Greer this was also to make her feel more comfortable while I took her picture. She told me that her father was a portrait painter who often captured her face on canvas and later in photographs, but "never like me."

She later told me: "I just wanted an honest photograph, not a flattering one, one that I felt was me." "God, you got it. You got a photograph where the person in the photograph feels like that's them." Her gratitude for the photo manifested in the most unexpected way. The Monday after the newspaper article I was assigned to write was published, I received a call from Greer, who generously gifted me an artist's proof of the solitary fox photograph that had caught my eye.

I framed it and have kept it prominently displayed in the different homes I've lived in. When guests visit for the first time, they always comment on the fox in such a familiar Tasmanian landscape, and the work and the artist's provenance always become a topic of conversation. Thus, I have felt Greer's presence for the past decade. In 2010, Honeywill and her husband Ross came to Tasmania from Melbourne during the highly controversial "Fox Eradication Program." In her words, "the wily fox, in the space of two centuries, hadn't established itself in Tasmania as it had on the mainland," which piqued her curiosity and she wanted to explore it.

This is precisely what she did in her 2015 photography series "Forever Present Eyes." "The fox, as its history suggests, polarizes the Tasmanian population. More than the possible presence of a predator itself, it seems that spending a reported $40 to $50 million in public funds on an eradication program that has not confirmed the killing of a fox is difficult for many to accept – a situation worthy of Shakespeare himself," she said. Honeywill's earlier work explored architecture as art, particularly modernist architecture such as Bauhaus, and the relationship between society and home.

House design sparked Honeywill's interest from a young age; she said her three-bedroom red brick family home in Adelaide "seemed to suck all the air out of my lungs." "I was always trying to escape it because it didn't provide me with space to exist." Greer hated that the house had no prospects and only a view of the suburban street. Nearby, the west-facing waterfront homes at Henley Beach, overlooking the sea, fascinated her. She recalled telling her parents at the age of five: "I like those houses." What followed were decades of artistic practice exploring the intersection of art, architecture, and life.

In December 2024, the curator of the "Lost in Palm Springs" exhibition at the Devonport Regional Gallery in Tasmania invited me to the opening. That curator was Honeywill. It had been almost a decade since our last conversation. Her enthusiasm impressed me, the same enthusiasm I encountered many years ago. "I can't tell you how much I wish you were here, watching the exhibition and talking to me," she texted. The exhibition is about the connection between the Californian city of Palm Springs and Australia, and the modernist design in the homes and landscapes of the two places. Bauhaus style – with its geometric features and minimal ornamentation – plays an important role in the exhibition.

"People kept saying, 'If you're interested in affordable contemporary housing architectural design, then you have to go to Palm Springs'," Honeywill said. The city concentrates many mid-century homes, including those designed by influential architects Donald Wexler, Richard Harrison, and William Krisel, to name a few. When Honeywill visited, it left an indelible impression. "I was conquered by everything, the number of houses, the incredible mountains, the blue sky, the palm trees, everything. When I focused on Palm Springs, the themes of two PhDs and forty years of visual art practice all came together. So, of course, at that moment, I had to figure out how to make it the next project."

After overcoming a battle with cancer, three residencies in Palm Springs, and a significant amount of work, Honeywill's "Lost in Palm Springs" project came to fruition in 2023, in the form of a book and a three-year Australian regional touring exhibition, which kicked off at the Home of the Arts (HOTA) in Queensland. It brings together 14 artists, architects, and thinkers from the United States and Australia, including artists Tom Blachford, Kate Ballis, and Rosie Griffin. The inclusion of works by Australian artist Robyn Sweeney highlights the importance of documenting these iconic homes, especially given their vulnerability to disappearing; many of these iconic homes are being replaced by new housing developments.

"The exhibition launched in Queensland, where there are many mid-century modern homes on the Sunshine Coast that are rapidly disappearing," Honeywill said. "There's a painting [by Sweeney] where she photographed and very carefully documented a house because she wanted to paint it, and when she came back some time later to paint it, she found it was gone." Devonport, a coastal town on Tasmania's northwest coast, is the seventh of 11 regional galleries to host "Lost in Palm Springs."

A decade later, Honeywill and I are in the same space again. She told me that she was wearing the same gold vest she designed herself that she wore when we met in 2015. "I'm an archivist, so I keep things as long as possible because they're full of memories," she told me. I was deeply impressed by the exhibition. Turning 80 has not slowed down Honeywill's artistic creation. "I want to be alive, and to be alive is to be fully immersed, and to be fully immersed is to work hard," she said.

I told Honeywill that I often tell the story of our first meeting, and the beauty of briefly interacting with someone and then meeting again, as we are now. "Luke, it wasn't brief," she replied. "For me, it never went away. I think you're a very special person... I've always regretted that I met you at the end of our Tasmanian trip rather than the beginning." I recalled a quote from T.S. Eliot that Honeywill cited in the concluding chapter of the "Lost in Palm Springs" book.

"What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning." "Lost in Palm Springs" will be on display at the Devonport Regional Gallery until March 22 and will tour to four more regional galleries in New South Wales and Queensland until July 2026.