The Riding Mountain Artists’ Residency gives Manitoban artists time to focus on their work in the beautiful natural setting of Riding Mountain National Park.
The final artist-in-residence for the 2025 season is Ashley Au. Ahead of her time in the historic Deep Bay Cabin, Ashley answered a few of our questions about herwork and how she’ll be spending her residency.
MAC: Tell us a little about yourself as an artist and your practice.
Ashley: I’ve been working as a cross-genre bassist for the last 15 or so years, performing, recording and touring across the country and beyond with ensembles such as John K. Samson, Super Duty Tough Work, Chuck Copenace, Christine Fellows, Sierra Noble and more. About 7 years ago, I started to experiment with composition and audio production and began to compose pieces for contemporary dance productions. From there, I became interested in more experimental and non-conventional forms of music making and started to focus on developing my skills in the studio and finding new ways to create and manipulate sound.
During that period, developed an interest in field recording and began to tour with recording equipment so that I could capture unique sounds while on the road with bands—regional birdsong, machinery, streetscapes, and ambiences. These recordings became a great archive to draw from for unique textures and inspiration, especially as I began to explore the world of sound design and composition for theatre.
Tell us about your project — what will you be working on in the Deep Bay Cabin?
At the cabin, I will be researching recording techniques and capturing field recordings in the beautiful park that will be used to develop a sound palette for a new composition I am working on. I will also be setting up a mobile studio in the cabin to begin sketching out different sections and experimenting with instrumentation and multi-channel speaker configurations to experiment with spatial audio playback.
What is your relationship with the park?
When I was a young music student at Brandon University, this park was one I would visit semi-regularly in the summers. It has also been a place I’ve performed at over the years for various seasonal celebrations, one of the most memorable was a ceremony celebrating new citizens of the country.
How do you hope the park will influence or inspire your project or practice?
I am hoping the time in the park will be a quiet time to unplug and hyperfocus on the sounds of the natural world on a very granular level. I’ve always found nature inspiring, even in urban settings, and time away from the city is such a treat.
Anything else you’d like to share with readers and the Riding Mountain National Park community?
The piece I am working on is a kind of companion piece to a work that was commissioned by the Senate of Canada to acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a piece of discriminatory legislation that banned Chinese immigration to Canada for a period of time, which deeply affected my family on my paternal side among many others. That work was commissioned as a choral work, where I set the text of a 100 year old protest poem found in a Vancouver archive. The process was arduous and felt a bit like a pressure cooker, as there were a lot of strong sentiments and heartbreak carried through the generations of people affected by that moment of history—familial separation and isolation is profoundly destabilizing.
This new work that I will be developing in the park explores a different kind of migration story, one where a family is able to stick together and find support in each other while navigating a new environment. This piece will have musical elements in dialogue with sounds of the natural world from both Manitoba and Guangdong, the province my family originates from, exploring themes of ecology, place and intergenerational inheritances.
The Riding Mountain Artists’ Residency is offered in partnership by the Manitoba Arts Council and Riding Mountain National Park.
Interested in the staying in the Deep Bay cabin? Find out how to apply to the Riding Mountain Artists Residency through the Learn – Residencies grant stream. Apply by January 15, 2026 for a residency in the summer of 2026.
