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Creatives selected for inaugural Caroline Simpson Library Creative Residency

Museums of History NSW is excited to welcome Jane Burton Taylor and Vita Cochran as the first creatives to be selected for the Caroline Simpson Library Creative Residency program, commencing in February 2026.

During their residency, the artists will be given dedicated time, space and special access to the Caroline Simpson Library Collection – a unique resource that holds a vast array of objects and stories related to the history of houses, interiors, gardens and domestic life. The aim of the residency is to inspire the creation of new work, collaboration and creative exchange. 

2026 Creatives

Jane Burton Taylor

Creative practice: Visual art

Objects chosen for museums are there for all sorts of reasons. They often reinforce our national stories, but not always. In a sense they have their own suggestive narrative. Artists are not historians; they construct a different kind of connection between the past and the future. For me, the residency invites reinterpretation of historical objects in relation to the contemporary. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend slow time engaged with the collection, and the experts who curate and care for it.

Jane Burton Taylor is a Sydney-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice incorporates textile art, digital media, sculpture and immersive installation. Jane has an ongoing interest in place and how we perceive it, personally, collectively, and in terms of its historical, cultural and ecological context. Jane’s concern for social justice often leads her to make works that she hopes will support reparation. Her practice involves research of historical collections, and in particular the study of documents and objects chosen for their potential to elaborate on contemporary issues.

Vita Cochran

Creative practice: Textiles

 

The Caroline Simpson Library is a joyous resource for makers. Every time I visit I find new things to stimulate hand, eye and imagination – from dazzlingly sophisticated century-old wallpaper patterns to fabrics and rug designs that demonstrate the ceaseless human desire to enrich, embellish and decorate. It’s a place that values material knowledge that can only be passed from hand to hand through time. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to consult this amazing archive in person, in depth, and spin some of my own work from it, all within the studio space of the historic Mint.

Vita Cochran is an artist working in textiles. Her speculative embroideries, quilts, rugs and functional objects have been widely collected and exhibited in Aotearoa / New Zealand and Australia. She has a deep interest in the patterns and objects that populate domestic interiors, and their social, emotional and artistic histories. Recent work has included a series of hand-hooked rag rugs called After Paintings, which were made after rugs seen in paintings of modernist interiors by, for example, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse; and a series of Rorschach-like textile banners, called Exploded Coats, which revealed the delirious array of shapes contained within unpicked second-hand garments.

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Stories from the Caroline Simpson Library

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Thornton's Temple of flora : with plates faithfully reproduced from the original engravings and the work described by Geoffrey Grigson with bibliographical notes by Handasyde Buchanan.

‘A creature of incredible taste’: Winnafreda, Countess of Portarlington

Australian by birth, Winnafreda Portarlington was one of the most glamorous and well-connected women in British society in the first half of the 20th century. Find out more about this fascinating woman, her social connections, and her collections

Wallpaper roller undergoing 3D capture using photogrammetry
Wallpaper

Wallpaper printing rollers: from machine printing to 3D capture

In December 2022, Phyllis Murphy AM generously donated to the Caroline Simpson Library more than 3,000 wallpaper samples. While the bulk of the donation consists of wallpaper rolls, lengths and sample books, it also includes two printing rollers

Alexander Mackintosh Archive : architectural plans and specifications, 1901-ca.1921: Waterhouse & Lake : architectural plans and specifications, 1909-1924 / B.J. Waterhouse & J.W. Lake [architectural drawing]

The Alexander Mackintosh Archive: revealing records of a master builder

Forgotten for decades, the archive of building contractor Alexander Mackintosh was rediscovered in a roof space in the 1990s. It includes more than 270 architectural drawings and reveals information about the work of many of Sydney’s leading architects of the early 20th century

[Sydney from the north shore], Joseph Lycett, 1827.

Hearing the music of early New South Wales

A new website documents an exciting partnership between Museums of History NSW and the University of Sydney in an exploration of Indigenous song and European settler vocal and instrumental music in early colonial NSW