A collaboration between three men created the Tylee Cottage art residency, now in its 36th year and one of New Zealand's oldest.
The men were former director of the Sarjeant Gallery Bill Milbank, documentary photographer Laurence Aberhart and John McCormack, then adviser to the QE11 Arts Council (now known as the Arts Council of New Zealand).
In 1986 Tylee Cottage had recently been restored through the efforts of mayor Ron Russell (1974–1983) and, with the support of the Arts Council, the residency was established. Aberhart was the first artist to live at Tylee Cottage and for a whole year he took photographs of historic buildings around Whanganui.
At that stage, Aberhart was already well recognised by public art galleries as an important documentary photographer, though Aberhart states that the Tylee residency helped establish him further in his photography career, as well as get on his feet financially.
Milbank remembers: "[Aberhart] had done remarkably good work and very shortly after I became director, I acquired one or two works of his for the collection. He used a large format camera that gathers a lot of light, producing a high quality image and so all of his images are basically the same size as the negative in the camera. They are a print from the negative at the negative sizes. This is unusual today."