Joya Residency no. 24 Lluís Sabadell Artiga 10/23.08.2010
"When I begin an installation in (or with) Nature, I above all try to go in without preconceived ideas. I try not to plan it in advance before I have familiarized myself with location. Firstly because it is the location that will show me what I need, and secondly if I have a false sense of security and think what I am going to do, Nature will smash my ideas to pieces.
It is important, when you are introduced into a place and the place is introduced to you, to go empty of ideas, empty of internal chatter, so you can listen to what the place has to tell you. In this way interaction with the location to co-create the piece. The artwork doesn't come from the artist or from Nature, but from both. That is the way I will come to the JOYA residency at Los Gázquez, staying alert, open and empty, that is my only plan."
Bachelor in Fine Arts by the University of Barcelona and Master in Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Philosophy by the University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) works as artist, curator, graphic designer and set designer. In 2005 creates the cultural association Híbrids 2.0 to think about the relationship between nature, art, science and technology. This he has direced since then curating exhibitions as The Transgressed Landscape (Fund. Espais and Dem. Girona COAC 2005 ) etc..
You can see more of Lluís Sabadell Artiga's work here and here.
Joya; aplicado / Residency no.23 Ellie Curtis 04-18/09.2010
'I'd like to create a set of fantastical narrative illustrations based
on the natural surroundings of Cortijada Los Gázquez. These will be informed by nature drawings I make on investigative walks, facts which I've already researched on the formation of the mountains, and a story that I will invent revolving around some very ambiguous characters. I usually use a lot of printmaking in my work but I'd like to use this residency as an opportunity to break free from such a methodical approach to image making, and work in a more spontaneous way, simply drawing and painting. I might try animating some of the characters and and potentially use different media such as quilting to tell parts of the story'.
'I live and work in London and I primarliy use printmaking to create mynarrative illustrations on paper and fabrics, some of which I make up into interior products and sell online. I also teach printmaking, and I've recently been painting comissioned murals on walls with another illustrator friend. I'm fond of making up strange characters (often part-animal, part human) and making up narratives that don't tell a story in a linear conventional way, but often leave odd gaps. I like to make curious images that gently combine melancholy and sometimes darkness, with lightness and humour'.
You can see more of Ellie Curtis' work here. You can also visit her websites here...
www.elliecurtis.com and www.eastlondonprintmakers.co.uk
Joya Residency no.22 Ans Nys 20.05/05.06.2010
In my drawings standing women stare you in the face. The gaze and the annihilation of it runs as an fascination through my work. Colour is scarcely used but in a very considered way, with reminiscences of the (early) renaissance portrait. The painted illusion of the human skin and interplay with the fragility of the paper, the transparency are of a great concern.
My residency at Los Gázquez will be spring, almost summer. What intrigues me, is the roughness and the colouring of the nature during this time of the year. How a human body relates to it. How it breaths in this air and colours. I want to explore the light and the specific colouration of the place and let my drawings be inspired by it. I intend to enlarge the usual scale of my drawings enabled by the studio there and to work horizontally instead of vertically, on the lying figure, drawn from head to too. The body as a landscape, reminiscent of the Los Gázquez landscape.
Drawing, especially during a longer period of time in an isolated environment, can be a haunting obsession the mind can experience: it can become a self-devouring activity, precipitating, and aggravating itself. Yoga and walking through the nature of Los Gázquez are means to reinforce the physical energy the body puts into the drawing process.
Ans Nys is a Belgian artist whose primary medium is drawing. She received an Ma in Fine Arts at Royal Academy of Fine Arts Ghent and in Philosophy at the University Ghent. Since 1999, she is Reader in Drawing at Sint-Lucas Visual Arts Ghent, where she started up the drawing research group.
She organized several symposia on drawing and is editor of the artist magazine on drawing Th Ink. Her research interests are drawing, the phenomenology of drawing, the aesthetic experience and the relation between art and life. In 2006 she was selected for the exhibition Gorge(L), Oppression and relief in art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp (KMSK) together with ao. Frieda Kahlo, Ana Mendieta, Marlene Dumas, Berlinde De Bruycker. She will be in an upcoming group show at Voorkamer BE, including the launch of an artist book.
www.kunstonline.info/levelone/php/events/eventpage.php?id=9563&chapter=about
Joya Residency no.21 Ellie Rees 19/30.09.2010
Through my work I aim to explore the contradictory attractions of emancipated female roles and the romantic dreams proposed by popular and traditional culture. The use of humour and irony as a subtext is an essential part of most of the work as I investigate what it means to be female and an artist.
My work manifests as performance video, most often made in response to my immediate surroundings. I am interested in taking narratives - specific to a place and its culture (particularly romantic stories involving heroines), and creating performances inspired by themes from these narratives. The JOYA artists residency immediately strikes me as a programme where I could continue exploring the personal aspects of performance to highlight the flaws in cultural clichés about women.
Cortijada Los Gázquez; an environment with an incredible dramatic aesthetic, will be an inspirational place to work, particularly considering the theatrical nature of the videos I make. The striking backdrop of the mountains and valley presents itself as an already-established mise-en-scene, enabling my continuing investigation into the everyday under the shadow of the romantic ideal.
Some of my films play with ideas about what constitutes performance and the difference between live and recorded spectacle. With a keen regard for formal considerations such as available lighting, landscape and composition, I will rehearse meticulously on site during the residency, and record in situe, working instinctively in response to the stage I am presented with in the Sierra Maria-Los Vélez.
Ellie Rees
You can see more of Ellie's work here. And her website.
Ellie currently lives and works in London where she teaches at Chelsea College of Art and Design. She is also a visiting tutor at various colleges across the UK.
Joya Residency no.20 Cristina Sáez 14/27.06.2010
Cristina Sáez is a Spanish artist working with photography and animation, with an interest in the way in which humans perceive and relate to their environment.
For the Joya residency at Cortijada los Gázquez I am proposing a project provisionally titled Inside-out, upside-down and all around, an investigation into the relationship between the mechanics of vision and optics, between what it means to look at the world through a lens and to experience it from within. My plan is to turn the studio into a giant camera obscura and to photograph the upside-down images of the outside world projected onto the wall. I expect I will split my time between taking photographs of the natural landscape around the Cortijada and photographing in the studio.
This will allow me to observe and experiment with the basic principle behind photography and the physics of human vision, the upside-down image projected onto the wall of the camera obscura in parallel with the image projected onto the back of the eye.
During the residency, I will gather hundreds of sequences of images from both the outside and the inside of the camera obscura, which I will afterwards edit into a short film, allowing me to explore the relationship between physics, technology and the phenomenology of vision.
I am excited about the possibilities that the Joya residency offers, as it combines an astonishing natural environment with the availability of studio space, allowing me to carry out a project that has been in my mind for some time. Having the space and time to concentrate solely on my investigation and production is in my experience a productive and fulfilling way of working, and I have no doubt it will advance my practice into new and unexpected territories.
Christin Sáez
You can see more of Cristina Sáez's work on her website www.cristina-saez.com for examples of past photography projects, and to the following video
http://www.vimeo.com/8172943 as an example of a recent still-frame animation project.
Cristina Sáez was born in Bilbao and lives and works in London. She has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Deusto, Spain, an NCTJ Postgraduate Diploma in Newspaper Journalism from Lambeth College and an M.A. in Photography and Urban Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London.
You can also see more of her work here.
Joya Residency no.19 Angie Lewin 21/30.05.2011
Joya is delighted to announce the residency of Angie Lewin. She studied printmaking at Central St Martin's College and
Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts.
After working in London as an illustrator she studied horticulture and a move to Norfolk prompted a return to printmaking. Inspired by both the clifftops and saltmarshes of the North Norfolk coast and the Scottish Highlands, she depicts these contrasting environments and their native flora in wood engraving, linocut, silkscreen, lithograph and collage. These landscapes are often glimpsed through intricately detailed plantforms.
Attracted to the relationships between plant communities on an intimate level, even the fine lines of insect eggs on a flower bud are observed in her work. Still lives often incorporate seedpods, grasses, flints and dried seaweed collected on walking and sketching trips. A Wedgwood cup designed by Ravilious, may contain feathers and seedheads. A recent anthology of garden writing published by Merrell, 'GardenWisdom', is illustrated throughout by Angie's prints, and author Leslie Geddes-Brown explains:
The whole book was, in its turn, inspired by the art of Angie Lewin, who brings her own vision of the natural world to her work. She sees the beauty in all seasons and all manifestations of plants: the ordered pattern of the blooms, the thrusting energy of the emerging buds, the prolific seedheads and the varieties of shapes, colours and habits to be found in meadow and border.
As well as designing fabrics and stationery for St Jude's, which she runs with husband Simon, she has completed commissions for Penguin, Conran Octopus and Picador. She has also designed fabrics for Liberty's Autumn Winter 2010 collection. Angie is a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and the Society of Wood Engravers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sZwzBcjvtE
http://angielewin.co.uk/work.htm
The Scottish Gallery - Cambridge Contemporary Art - The Castle Gallery
Castor & Pollux - Bankside Gallery - Godfrey & Watt - StJudes Modern British
You can find more information on the work of Angie Lewin by looking here.
Joya Residency no.18 Heather McReynolds 07.2010
My art practice is about play, discovery, and the fragility of existence. I work mostly with paint on a variety of surfaces, wood, paper, canvas and wall, scraping and sanding and overlaying until an image that is sufficiently perplexing emerges. Perplexity keeps me on my toes, and heightens visual awareness. I think a painting is more interesting if there is some kind of inherent contradiction or unexpected viewpoint. I am interested in unsystematic use of perspective, floating and flattening space, and the visual ambiguities that result. Over painting, erasing, and subtracting are as important to my process as adding. In 2007 I worked on a series of map constructions/alterations that addressed ecological fragility and disappearance. Since then, I have focused on painting and the content has become less literal, although still concerned with impermanence and evolving states.
During my residency at Cortijada Los Gázquez I think a response to the natural environment would be inevitable. I would like to explore incongruous viewpoints through contrasting detail (botanical) with the immensity present in the landscape. I would work directly from nature with drawing and water based media, and then translate and integrate these studies into a large scale painting, if time allows, or upon my return to London.
http://www.re-title.com/artists/heather-mcreynolds.asp
http://byamshawma09.blogspot.com/search/label/Heather%20McReynolds
http://www.teknemedia.net/archivi/2006/11/10/mostra/18788.html
Joya Residency no.17 Peter Morrens 13/30.04.2010
Peter Morrens is one who dedicates himself to a sort of Italian combinazione, a complex manoeuvre made of arrangements that serve facts, fiction and lies. The artist fuses ideas and reacts to all stimuli shapes a visual production that explodes in all directions. He uses a variety of techniques: drawing, printing, painting and photograph, and also writes and constructs installations, interfering with the space itself.
He produces performances, or better, the settings in which the performance takes place. He edits sounds, his own voice and texts taking into account their modulation. He then crosses the visual procedures in such a way that they all clash, and in the end trouble the spectator. He rocks and overthrows the ordinary perception we have of an event.
He uses different names and labels (PM, Herman Smit, WAARnemer and Point Blank Press): these are not really heteronyms or pseudonyms, but in fact they represent different artistic techniques connected to certain worries that the artist dissects and then uses to produce a combined oeuvre.
Since 1996 Peter Morrens has been the curator of the artist-run space Voorkamer in Lier, Belgium and since 2003 lectures in St Lucas Art School Gent.
You can see more of Peter Morrens here.
www.voorkamer.com www.petermorrens.com
Joya Residency no.16 University of the Arts London / Camberwell / MA Fine Art 23/30.03.2010
The new MA Fine Ar
t at Camberwell College, University of the Arts London welcomed its first cohort of students in September 2009. This cross-disciplinary course is interested in working across a range of practices to examine how art-works relate to audience and find ways to reflect upon the processes of making. The Joya residency programme at Cortijada Los Gázquez has provided a remarkable opportunity for nine students to collaborate. They write:
We propose using our time at Joya to develop a sustainable model for artistic collaboration. As students on a new MA programme specifically designed to challenge existing working practices and look at the social context of cultural production, Joya will provide us with an intensive opportunity to test out some of these ideas and create work through collaboration, dialogue and exchange. In limiting the materials we bring with us, as well as being removed geographically and conceptually from our normal studio environment, our aim is to make work relying solely on each other and the natural resources we encounter at Cortijada Los Gázquez. We hope to arrive at a model of self-sufficient production, both in social and environmental terms. Whilst our process will be one of experimentation and reflection (largely developed on site) in order to ensure the project remains focused and structured we will work within the overarching theme of sensory We propose using our time at Joya to develop a sustainable model for artistic experience. We are interested in exploring the 5 senses (sight, sound, taste, smell, touch) in relation to the environment around Cortijada Los Gázquez, and will break down our residency, so that each day is focused on a different sense.
More from the individual artists can be found here
Joya Residency no.15 Melissa Marks 01/15.07.2010
ADVENTURES OF VOLITIA
In a radical moment made of ambition and luck, Volitia, a detachable drip/mutable blob/Pollock-leftover caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror and became self-aware. She began with a declaration of freedom, an attempt to live the idea of a self in a constant state of remaking. Volitia (as in volition) became a hybrid hero, part Superman, part Eve creation come to life. The master narrative, the growing sum of Volitia's adventures is an abstract serial myth, a visual story able to sustain itself precisely because CHANGE demands that it continues...
"Adventures of Volitia" is a project I began in 1993. The work has taken the form of paintings, drawings and large-scale wall-painting installations. The painted blob or line has been given superhero status and attributes, and yet, remains a basic anchor and building block with the power to elaborate fantasy. The abstract drip or blob is an icon, and at the same time, is inextricably tied to the interior life of creation, a connection to something essentially human. It is both Volitia's point of origin and her fundamental core.
The drawn mark as Volitia has multiple powers. She stands as both metaphor and object capable of superspeed, super-leaping, super- self-reflection, and multiple iterations in a single drawing. As metaphor, she represents an open soul, ready to turn herself inside-out in order to see the world, the future. As object, she represents our body, concrete and attached, utterly dependent on her ability to be seen. She is blossom and ice, temporary, alive and melting.
Volitia finds herself in the shifting forms of the Landscape, molds herself from malleable matter. Nature functions as background, context and co-conspirator. Nature provokes momentum, demands reaction, and like Volitia, has the ability to remake itself in the midst of a familiar continuum.The Joya residency provides an opportunity for a NEW landscape, new shapes to be discovered, new color and light, new territory for adventure.
Melissa Marks received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Wesleyan University in 1987 and her Masters of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Art in 1992.
Solo exhibitions include Bloomberg SPACE, London, England, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York and The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut. Other exhibitions include Art In General, NY, The Drawing Center, NY, The P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, NY, University Galleries, Florida Atlantic University, FL, Douglass College Gallery at Rutgers University, NJ, Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, Künst Werke Berlin, Germany, University Gallery, University of Florida, FL, Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.
You can see more work by Melissa Marks here.
Joya Residency no.14 Tamsin Pender 01/08.03.2010
I would respond to the fantastic opportunity of a Joya residency by exploring how the unique location informs an activity I have pursued for some time, and how it might be changed and developed by it. For the past ten years I have been making low-fi forays into the great outdoors. These hit and run interventions at found sites have a short shelf life and a low environmental impact. Visually dramatic, they aim to change a view, and the perception of the viewer. For a brief time they become a source of contemplation, a screen to look at and through. Once they have disappeared, only photographs remain to record them. I would use the indoor and outdoor spaces at Los Gázquez, to make work in an exciting yet unfamiliar environment (the mountains!) and to find new ways to document the work that celebrates the making of it.
I have often been asked by curious onlookers, while making these interventions, what was the purpose of the structure, was it for catching insects or deterring gulls? While they may not be as practical as swales for catching precious rainwater, I have been fantasising that these forms may have a playful relationship with the existing and ongoing constructions at Los Gázquez.
Tamsin Pender (born Cornwall) lives and works in London. Tamsin completed post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 1990 and has since exhibited widely, including at the Tate Gallery St Ives, Walsall New Art Gallery and Beaconsfield, London. Recent projects include participatory art and design pieces, exhibited at the V&A Museum of Childhood, The Saison Poetry Library and the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre.
You can see more work by Tamsin Pender here.
Joya residency / Escribir También / no.13 Daam Nillan 31.01/15.02.2010
Daam is an open form poetic voice, a pen name bent on misdirecting the idea of the received idea. I want to be a constructive medium, where comment and criticism may target issues regardless of race or faith or nationality. Topics in the past have challenged the English language and its forms, the business of environmental devastation, substance and alcohol use, rape and sexism, poverty and the distribution of wealth, war, and, of course, religion as a scapegoat for war and other human rights violations. I've also written about bad open mic night performances, Waffle Day in Sweden, and an almond tree. I kind of update the blog pope urban, served.
At Los Gázquez, I want to challenge my style and subject matter, and take advantage of my surroundings in full. The conflict of having all the time of day, yet still a time frame, is an experiment I'm looking forward to; one that will be both beneficial and, like, totally awesome.
Aaris King grew up in Trabuco Canyon, a tease of a border town between other Orange County communities and the Cleveland National Forest. It's a place that forces body quickly through the front door, but with fingers crossed for soul to find the back. He's now a part-time nomad, or a migrant/worker, or just not anymore a dependable bookstore manager, who is dedicated to the belief of shoestring travel as a method of cultural immersion. Aaris is currently completing some kind of degree in Humanities or Languages or English with a writing emphasis, while still working and sleeping in sunny Southern California.
Joya residency no.12 Lee Maelzer 8/22.03.2010
My paintings for a long time been in reference to the impact humans have on their surroundings and topography.It has described the sinister aspects of safe suburban living. Then industry, demolitions, urban development, natural and man-made disasters.Presently I am painting isolated trees, as though presented in an archive for human scrutiny. It seems to be turning into a kind of personified artificial forest.
The main body of my work is painting but I work with photographs too, that I alter through chemical processes.I also have made two short films, one of streets and houses in Vancouver, Canada where I grew up and one of the ruined industry in the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where I did a residency two years ago.
It is hard to predict what work would come out of the Joya, since each context seems, to some degree, to dictate the outcome of a residency. Cortijada Los Gázquez looks like somewhere that will have huge vistas, both picturesque and bleak, where the changing sky and stars will be spectacular.
I am thinking that I will photograph and film to work with upon my return and paint in a more immediate way while I am there.
Lee Maelzer's work can be seen best on her website: www.leemaelzer.com, on www.carterpresents.com and the artists members page of the Contemporary Art Society website.
Joya residency no.11 Lizzie Finn 6/20.05.2010
Lizzie Finn will work on a series of relief collages directed by the shapes, textures and colours of natural forms at Cortijada Los Gázquez. Simple ways to affect, transform and decorate fabric will be explored; including printing with found objects and drawing with earth dyes. The resulting swatches will then be used to create appliqué collages with hand embroidery.
Lizzie Finns unique and stylistically sophisticated artwork encapsulates a love of materials and visual colloquialisms within a language of contemporary design. Her three dimensional assemblage gives a vibrancy to the two dimensional design work that she creates. Lizzie Finn enjoys pushing the limits of context. Bringing visual eloquence to concepts through attention to detail, Lizzie Finn directs every step of the process guiding the artwork to a subtle and meaningful conclusion. Lizzie Finn studied graphic design at Central St Martins and since then has achieved international acclaim for her distinctive and influential body of work.Her wide range of clients is a testament to her versatility: The V&A, Vitra, Channel 4, Dazed & Confused, Vogue, and Volvo.
Joya residency no.10 Ayers-Gelin 29.03/12.04.2010
Alain Ayers and Cecilia Gelin
Our proposal for Joya is connected to a longer term approach to working in international residency programmes that will create a significant enhancement of our practice based research with 'serendipity-coproduction', as a methodology. We aim to continue the preparation and receptivity for this through mobility (in and through the location), observation and awareness. Through dialogue, by drawing, making and recording, we will explore our time at Joya through phases of panoramic and focused points of view (expansive sense of space, immediate environment, designated hectares and studio). The ground itself may become the main source of artworks-archaeological-and connected to the transition culture and ecology of Joya. Through this close observation of 'ground' in the artistic process we would create connections for a local ecology to a wider cultural environment.
Alain Ayers is based in London and Göteborg and has been working in the European Higher Education Area for twenty years as a teacher/researcher and in a management capacity, innovating and developing undergraduate and postgraduate areas, notably at Nottingham Trent University and University of the Arts London. Ayres has also been exhibiting work consistently and undertaking professional and sector roles in a range of organisations and on elected boards such as NAFAE National Association of Fine Art Education and ELIA European League of Institutes for the Arts.
Cecilia Gelin is based in London and Göteborg and is deeply interested in peoples driving forces and passions, contemporary knowledge production and group processes. Gelin currently works as Project Manager of The Saloon, a curated seminar programme in artistic processes and the artist role for the Göteborg Biennial for Contemporary Art for which she was also the editor of the catalogue - www.goteborg.biennal.org. Recently appointed Research Secretary at the Valand School of Fine Arts at Göteborg University, her commission is to build up research structures and market the school to international partners and events in relation to these research contexts.
You can see and read more about Ayers-Gelin here.
Joya residency no.9 Jessica Hargreaves 15.02/01.03.2010
In my paintings I use the figure in space to represent certain emotional states. By employing allegory I shift the focus beyond any one particular person and towards a more universal situation.
I am not really concerned with painting an observed reality. The cinema and its narrative devices are more significant to me. Sometimes I paint a similar image or scene over and over, changing colors, angles and gestures. Formal issues and how they too affect the perception and emotional resonance of an image are also important in my work.
While at Los G&aaute;zquez I intend to use its particular atmosphere and remoteness in my painting to create a visual drama that could only happen there. I want to explore the residence and its surroundings as much as possible initially, then allow something to happen in my work that is organic to where I am, what I see and how that makes me think and feel.
Jessica Hargreaves currently lives and works as an artist in New York City.
She completed her MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006.
While there she taught a multi level undergraduate figure drawing class. Since graduating she has been a visiting artist for the Teacher Institute in Contemporary Art, as well as for the Multi Level Painting and Drawing Class. Most recently she has shown in the 3rd National Juried Exhibition at the Prince Street Gallery in New York, Contemporary Baroque at Gallery X in Chicago and will be in an upcoming group show at Liz Heskin Contemporary in spring 2010.
Prior to returning to school to take her MFA, Jessica worked as a fashion designer and illustrator.
Joya residency no.8 Mick Finch 04/10.09.2010
Mick Finch's practice is centred around questions of painting. He exhibits internationally most recently in a solo exhibition at Galerie Aubert, Paris and a forthcoming exhibition in 2010, with Guillaume Paris, at the Galerie Thermale in Nancy, France. He has published regularly since 1994, mainly for Contemporary magazine. A book in the How Art Thinks series, on his work, will be co-published in 2010 by ICFAR, London and IFCAR, ZHdK, Zurich.
Between 2000 - 2007 he was the professeur de l'atelier de peinture at the Ecole des Beaux-arts de Valenciennes and since January 2008 is the 2D Pathway leader of the Fine Art course at Central Saint Martins. In 2005 he was a Senior Scholar at the Terra Foundation in France.
See www.mickfinch.com for further information.
You can see a little more about this artist here.
Joya residency no.7 Beata Kozlowska 28.11/12.12.2009
My practice is rooted in drawing as a process of articulating bodily gesture. I am interested in exploring the destabilised, deconstructed and symbolic in order to create my own visual language.
The work is highly influenced by linguistics, feminist discourses and disparate aesthetics, and a broad set of creative influences enable me to reflect upon my experimentation with form, material and colour.
I work within a variety of disciplines, from photography to site-specific installation, using an intuitive choice of material and location. I am also experimenting with a wide range of objet truve, such as plastic, cement, latex, wood and papier mache, which will be a significant element in the development of the work during and after the residency at Joya.
I am excited about the coming encounter with the Andalucian landscape and my hosts at Cortijada Los Gázquez. I am convinced it will be an important step in my artistic practice.
Beata Kozlowska (born Poland) lives and works in London, studied Drawing at Camberwell College of Art, Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London and also Polish Literature and Linguistics at University of Warsaw. She has been exhibiting in many group exhibitions in London, Manchester, Warsaw and Bielefeld. In addition she has been curating several shows and projects in London. Recent group shows include 'Invisible means of support' in Rochelle School, collaborative project 'Ponglish for beginners' in Victoria Baths Manchester. Recently was awarded for contemporary sculpture by UH Galleries in 'Eastern Approaches' in Hatfield.
www.redgategallerylondon.co.uk
www.southlondonwomenartists.co.uk
You can find out more about this artist here.
Joya residency no.6 Richard Elliott 6/12.08.2009
The Joya residency happened at a crucial juncture during the making of the moon buggy sculpture for the exhibition Complement, curated by Field (www.fieldonline.eu) in Peckham multi-storey car park in London this summer. I had already decided that the sculpture I was to make should be based around the original lunar rover that was used on NASAs Apollo moon missions, but I was debating how much the vehicle I made should be a replica of the original. Having obtained the necessary chassis and mechanics to build the sculpture before coming to Cortijada Los Gázquez, I had the time to contemplate how I should approach the sculpture's fabrication. The studio window looks out onto a landscape that is not dissimilar to that in which the astronauts did there early geological field trips and so seemed the perfect backdrop to my early drawings based upon archive images of the original Lunar Rover. Of the many people I have talked to about this project they have particular memories of what the vehicle looked like from either childhood toys or from the black and white images that appeared on television and in the press. The most important signifier were the camera and satellite dish on the front of the buggy, these did not appear on some of the plans as they were added later to the design. Early test versions driven around the Cinder Lake crater field in Arizona had mock ups of some of the equipment attached to the vehicle which had car tyres at the time. I hoped to create a vehicle which not only reflected the spirit of the original but which would allow passengers to experience the thrill of riding something close to these test vehicles and perhaps think about the nature of this holy grail to the American car industry.
Richard Elliott completed a BA Fine Art (painting) at Manchester University followed by postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 1990. He has exhibited his photographs at the Diaboll Gallery in Loyola University, New Orleans, USA, and at Gasworks Gallery, London. In 2002 he was selected for the Pizza Express Prospects at the Essor Gallery Project Space, London. In 1999 Elliott was one of only three UK photographers chosen for the BP European Artists exhibition in Paris. In 2005 he presented new photographic and video works in By Way of Amusement with Martyn Evans at Gallery IOTA, Ramsgate and, in 2006, Silent Film with Cian Quayle at the New Gallery, Camberwell College of Arts, London. Most recently he has exhibited drawings in The Walls in Three Places at White Nave, Dover www.whitenave.com and will exhibit a kinetic work with Field of Sets www.fieldonline.eu/ at Peckham Multistorey Carpark this September to accompany Hannah Barry Gallerys Bold Tendenecies III.
You can learn more about this artists work here and see a video of the exhibition piece here.
Joya residency no.5 Alice Forward 13/27.11.2009
The ambivalences around the relationship between human beings and the natural world strongly informs my practice, which often culminates in site-specific work after long periods of close observational research and studio-based experimentation. I work within a variety of disciplines, from video to bronze-casting, utilizing whatever material seems most appropriate to the moment.
I have recently been engaged in a number of clayworks, as well as large Sellotape constructions about floors, floods and oceans, some of which were shown at BAYART gallery in Cardiff earlier this year. I concurrently made a series of small bronze sculptures, photographs and drawings concerned with plant behaviour, which may form part of work towards a solo show in Stroud Valley Artspace early next year. I am currently experimenting with wax as a modelling material for work concerning certain parasites.
Drawing has become increasingly important to me in recent years and I envisage this being a crucial element in the development of the work during and after the residency at Joya, which will be very much a response to the environment of the place. I expect I might also use materials that I find there, whether it be garbage, sand, clay, plants, bones, insects in some reconfigured form. I am quite sure the coming dialogues with the Andalucian landscape and the people I meet at Cortijada Los Gázquez will be an important informant of my work for some time to come.
Alice Forward was born and brought up in Johannesburg, South Africa, and studied fine art at Hornsey School of Art (Middlesex) in London in the late seventies. She then trained in documentary film-making and freelanced for BBC Television for many years before returning to her independent practise. She studied at the Centre for Ceramic Studies in Wales 2001-2004, and co-organized Site-ations International, an EU and Arts Council funded international art event staged in and around Cardiff in 2005. In 2006 she was invited to Bogota, Colombia for a three month residency funded by Wales Arts International, and became a director of the international artists initiative Artists Project, in Cardiff later that year. She completed an MA in Fine Art at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, in 2007, before co-founding Jackdaw studios at Paintworks (now subsumed by BV Studios Bristol, under current construction). She was awarded the Darbyshire Award for gilding her urine on-site at The Museum in the Park in Gloucestershire in 2009.
You can find more information about this artist here.
Joya residency no.4 Clare Price 04/13.11.2009
During the residency Clare will make abstract studies from the landscape of Cortijada Los Gázquez using an outmoded computer drawing programme. These pixelated drawings will form a basis for abstracted landscape paintings. Colours will be gleaned from the natural environment, which will be heightened using coloured and fluorescent acrylic gouache, spray paint and gloss and metallic household paints.
Clare Price is a painter living and working in London. She studied painting at Central St. Martins before going into the world of moving image and directing. She has returned to painting in the last five years and has shown in numerous group shows in London and also as part of the Liverpool Biennial. In 2008 Clare curated a group show of 20 artists called Blitzkrieg Bop and she and her work were featured in the Saatchi Gallerys magazine Art and Music. Clare has a forthcoming two man show at Crimestown Gallery in London in September this year.
Clares paintings explore the intersection of something that is very visceral and painterly with something that is much more controlled and designed.
The initial images that create the basis for the paintings are created on an antiquated computer-drawing programme. These are carefully edited, projected and meticulously drawn onto the canvas. The clean computer pixels become hand drawn pencil marks. The intuitive mark making of the computer drawing becomes a grid or skeleton for the paintings. This is either rigidly adhered to, or rebelled against using expressive brush strokes and aerosol sprayed marks. The paintings are created using acrylic, spray paint and household lacquers.
There is an energy and tension in the paintings between fast and slow, meticulous line drawing and action painting; creating unsetting visions and fractured abstracted landscapes. The paintings have a sense of natural chaos and drama and revel in notions of rebellion and performance mirrored in their titles gleaned from pop songs.
You can see more of this artists work here.
Joya residency no.3 Kathryn Lynch 19.10/2.11.2009
The everyday becomes evocative through the hands of this New York artist
"Though her large, moody canvases show the beach outside her Long Island summer house on Shelter Island and the skyline viewed from her SoHo studio, Lynch regards her images as abstract rather than realistic. In a process she calls a combination of remembering and forgetting, she collects visual data from her daily surroundings, then transforms it into dreamlike depictions".
EDUCATION
1983 William Smith College, Geneva, NY
1991 Skowhegan, Skowhegan, ME
1990 MFA University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2008 Sears Peyton Gallery, New York, NY
2007 Nina Freudenheim, Inc. Buffalo, NY
2005 Alycia Duckler, Porland Oregon
2004 Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston, MA
2002 Alycia Duckler Portland, Oregon
1996 Charles Cowles, project room, New York, NY
You can read more about this artist here.
Joya residency no.2 Gordon Senior 06/20.10.2009
Gordon Senior is concerned with the issues to be found within nature. His work focuses on images of creatures-animals and birds as well as hand tools, vessels, journeys and mountains and clouds. Often the work engages the viewer in the processes of change and regeneration: hares become fired earth, a snail becomes a bronze beast of burden, clouds become rainwater and carts become concreted earth. Reference is made to the journey of life, and we consider the rites of passage for a tribe of hares on their sea journey through fire to touch new earth.
Since moving to California in August 2002 Gordon Senior has been constructing a substantial collection of tools. These hand tools however are not tools we recognize. They are inventions, tools with no apparent function that leave the spectator perplexed, puzzling over what one might accomplish with these carefully made objects. Some tools appear to belong to a different world, some appear contemporary or domestic in nature. All tools have handles with the tool section made from various materials including metals, colored plastics, wire, string, ready made parts and cast bronze. The tools suggest unknown tasks to be completed in a land yet to be discovered. These are the tools to help us on that journey of discovery.
Teaching
2002-Present California State University, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA, USA-Chair of Art Department
1997-2002 Norwich School of Art and Design, UK-Course Leader MA
1990-2002 Norwich School of Art and Design, UK-Course Leader BA (Honors Fine Art)
1998-1990 Newcastle Polytechnic, Newcastle, UK-Head of Art
1986-1990 Newcastle Polytechnic, Newcastle, UK-Head of Painting
You can read more about the artist here.
Joya residency no.1 Rebecca Fortnum 06/12.08.2009
"The studio at Los Gázquez is beautiful. The atmosphere changes with the weather. Sitting in the space, viewing the low clouds floating through the mountains, or birds of prey circling high over-head, is an absorbing experience. Without wishing to be too existential about it, it is a time to re-order priorities.
The residency mission - to make work that responds to this unique setting - can be interpreted in many different ways, from working 'en plein air', or directly with the land, to (as in my case) choosing materials and ways of working that chime with the sense of scale that the studio provokes. As it is wind and solar powered, the whole of Los Gázquez energises itself through the environment, and this provides a metaphor for the creative endeavour of the studio.
I know that my time at Loz Gázquez will stay with me long after I have returned to London it has shifted my thinking and making".
Rebecca Fortnum 2009
Rebecca Fortnum is currently Reader in Fine Art at University of the Arts, London (www.camberwell.arts.ac.uk/31670.htm) where she runs the MA Fine Art programme. Rebecca has been a visiting fellow in painting at Plymouth University and at Winchester School of Art, a visiting artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a senior lecturer at Norwich and Wimbledon Schools of Art. From 2004-9 she was Research Fellow at Lancaster University where she led the Visual Intelligences Research Project, that explored how artists think and make (www.visualintelligences.com).
Read more about the artist here.
Joya
a residency for artists working within transition culture
Joya is an artists' residency based at Cortijada Los Gázquez, a 'creative retreat/eco-guest house' in the 'Parque Natural Sierra Maria-Los Vélez' in Eastern Andalucía. Cortijada Los Gázquez, is an 'off-grid' location built around entirely ecological principles. We are thus particularly interested in hearing from artists whose work engages with issues of ecological sustainability. However applications are sought from artists working in a wide range of media who could respond to the unique environment of Los Gázquez.
The Cortijada Los Gázquez is now inviting artists to submit applications for the residency commencing in the autumn of 2010 through to autumn 2011.
Artists will have sole use of a thirty square meter studio and 20 hectares of land for a one to two week period. Accommodation and meals are included as is collection and return to the nearest public transport system. Resident artists will be featured on the Joya web page, which will include biographical information and images. The work undertaken during the residency will also be documented and entered into our archive.
In return resident artists will be required to open their studio to Cortijada Los Gázquez's 'creative guests' and talk with them about the issues that concern their work and their experiences as professional artists.
On completion of the residency artists will be asked to donate a small piece of the work they have created during the residency to the Joya project.
Applicants should send an email/letter of application, saying briefly why they would like to come and what work they might make. The letter should include up to 3 links, where images etc of the artist's work can be found as well as the name and contact of someone who can act as a referee.
The residency at Cortijada Los Gázquez also applies to writers and operates by the same terms.
The Joya artists' residency offers three ways in which applicants can realise a position at Cortijada Los Gázquez.
Joya Applicant
Applicants should send an email/letter of application, saying briefly why they would like to come and what work they might make. The letter should include up to 3 links, where images etc of the artist's work can be found as well as the name and contact of someone who can act as a referee.
Applicants are reviewed by a rolling committee of local, national and international artists and writers.
Joya Associate Applicant
The Associate Applicant should apply on the same principles as a Joya Applicant but they pay a contributing fee. The fee goes directly back into supporting Joya applications. Associate Applicants have additional benefits of day long cultural tours of the region, guided walking or mountain biking, restaurants (outside of the Los Gázquez catering), introductions to ecology systems and much more. The weekly fee for Associate Applicants is 925 euros.
Joya Associate Applicants, as contributers to the Joya residency, are free from the scrutiny of the Joya Committee.
Joya Volunteer Applicant
The Volunteer Applicant should apply on the same principles as the Joya Applicant but can trade 6 hours a day voluntary work at Cortijada Los Gázquez. Accommodation is more basic but more than comfortable. Board is the same as everyones. Outside of the hours you have volunteered the external space and dedicated internal space at the retreat is at your disposal.
Joya Volunteer Applicants, as volunteers, are free of the scrutiny of the Joya committee.
General Notes
Joya residencies are normally 7 days to 2 weeks but can be extended depending on the circumstances. For artist applicants who would like to bring a partner please note that it is revenue from the Eco-Guest House, Cortijada Los Gázquez, which funds the Joya residency. Therefore we ask the artist's partners to pay the single person occupancy fee. Details can be found here.
SUPPORT
The JOYA residency currently depends on the financial support of Cortijada Los Gázquez Creative Retreat and Eco-Guest House. The JOYA residency would like to offer generous patrons a wide range of opportunities to make gifts to artists and writers, either from their own community or directly to support the JOYA residency.
For more information please contact info@losgazquez.com