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Artist in Residence – Sarah Thibault

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Sarah Thibault is an artist and writer based in San Francisco. She has been traveling since the summer of 2018, living as a nomad and attending artist residencies. Her paintings and creative non-fiction essays are inspired by her travels and the people she meets on the road.

Her paintings and drawings investigates the feminine inconography through self-portraiture, portraits of other female artists and representations of the female in historical painting traditions. Her work can be found on her website: sarahthibault.com and her Instagram at @sarah_thibault.

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Writer in Residence – Richard Read

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Richard Read is an Emeritus Professor and Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia where he has taught art history for 30 years.  He has published in major journals on the relationship between literature and the visual arts, the history of art theory, nineteenth and twentieth-century European and Australian art history, American and Australian landscape painting, contemporary film, and complex images in global contexts. He wrote the first book on the art critic Adrian Stokes and his latest book is an anthology of essays on intimations of the Anthropocene in nineteenth-century Australian and North American landscape painting. A long-term book project is The Reversed Painting in Western Art. At NES he is drafting a short book on the interpretative energy that travelling between countries brings to their respective art works in an era of tension between ‘home’ and ‘away’ in nationalist politics.

University webpage: https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/persons/richard-read
Academia page: https://uwa.academia.edu/RichardRead
History of the Emotions webpage: http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/about-the-centre/researchers/richard-read/

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Artist in Residence – Jaq Grantford

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Jaq Grantford is an award-winning Australian artist, specialising in fine art and portraiture who plans to spend her month in Skagaströnd working on projects for upcoming exhibitions.  You can find out more about Jaq at http://www.jaqgrantford.com/

“I’m thrilled to be at Skagaströnd and to learn more about your beautiful town. I will be painting a few pieces that are part of an exhibition that I’m developing with musician, Andrew Batterham. And in addition I’m hoping to do one or two small portraits of some local people. I look forward to meeting you at some stage during my stay in November!”

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Writer in Residence – Alan Olejniczak

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Alan Olejniczak is an artist who knows there are many ways to tell compelling stories. Alan writes for theatre, opera, audio dramas, and collaborate with photographers on visual narratives. His hope is to create work that invite questions, rather than answers, and to create art that opens dialogue, resists cynicism, and is a catalyst for positive change. His work can be found at www.alanolejniczak.com and https://www.instagram.com/olejniczak.alan/

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Writer in Residence – Kelley McKenna

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While at NES, I’ll be working on a collection of poetry and photographic images that address the shifting dynamics in the female body when hormonal fluctuations begin to alter a once known entity–one’s own self–into something unrecognizable. Transformations in the natural world that happen on a daily basis in extreme climates and geographies like Iceland, and transformations happening because of what we’re doing to our beautiful planet, mirror what I’m experiencing in my own aging process: a transmutation of the body and a cataclysm of heat creating a violent expulsion of a former self. It feels like devastation.

Kelley McKenna, 2015 Fulbright Grant recipient in poetry and literature
(accompanied by Beesly)
Instagram: @thepostmommyblog
 https://thepostmommyblog.com/
https://makingnewthings.org/
https://slovenialit.com/

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Artist in Residence – Gabriela Concha

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My name is Gabriela Concha. I grew up in a mining camp in Southern Peru and afterwards moved to Lima to study and work. Lima’s sky is called “panza de burro”, which translates as “the donkey’s belly” because of its light gray color. Lima is also called wonderland, as you can find your way regardless of our political makeup.

I’m interested in exploring the rational order we give to our surroundings as a refugee towards our own disorientation. My work questions space organization and its influence on our optical boundaries. Using photography as a measuring instrument, I look for the limits of its representation and of the human eye as its extension.

 

My current work explores experimental video and creative writing. I’m soon publishing my first hybrid book which integrates photography and dreams structured as a novel. In NES I’m finishing a movie of the mining camp where I grew up. The film explores new narratives in subjective documentary and video performance. Both the book and the film’s topics are about motherhood and emotional distance.

You can see my work here → www.gabrielaconcha.com

Featured

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE – JULI SNYDER

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Juli Snyder is a Philadelphia based abstract artist who has been compelled to create as long as she can remember. Her dynamic, distinctive paintings are vibrant and atmospheric, mainly inspired by emotion and the subconscious. Duality is a prominent theme.

Here in Iceland, inspiration is found everywhere and often in unexpected places. The elements, history, vastness of nature, being with wild horses and living so close to the water has had a profound impact. Icelandic water and experimentation with texture are utilized in her art here to create a deeper connection between the viewer, this experience and the location.

Being at NES residency and out of the country for the first time has given her the opportunity to look more closely at what is actually important and what’s not. Life is about connection. The natural world and remoteness of Skagaströnd can remind us of who we really are, if we’re open to seeing it.
instagram: @black.arrow.arts
Facebook: Black Arrow Arts

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Artist in Residence – Heather Matthew

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“Hi my name is Heather Matthew and I am an Australian paper maker and paper artist. My project for the NES artist residency is to explore water as an element with body, soul and voice. I believe strongly in the interconnectedness of all things in the physical and metaphysical world; people, places, cosmologies. 

I have used paper pulp I made from bedsheets donated to flood affected families in Australia to create paper icebergs and strange white continents adrift but interconnected.

The tangled fishing nets and seaweed I have sourced here in Skagaströnd have formed their own island ‘nests’ embedded into paper.”
https://www.heathermatthew.com
Instagram @bboxproductions
fb https://www.facebook.com/creativepapercollage

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Artist in Residence – Ehrlich Ocampo

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Ehrlich Ocampo, also known as “Firechill”, is a Filipino circus performer and movement artist who dances with various props such as poi, hoop, and the leviwand. He has been developing his own movement style, and has also been exploring producing visuals with his movement. He has also delved into using words in his expression, incorporating spoken word into his performances, as well as writing a short book.

Recently, he worked for Cirque du Soleil at Sea as part of the creation team and original cast of two shows. He believes that Iceland whispered to him through her heralds that he fly to the land of ice and lights, and so he came to Nes Artist Residency and has been exploring fusing images of his body movements with the sublimity of his surroundings.

 

ARTIST LINKS
https://ehrlich.ocampo.ph
IG: @ehrlichmarz

CIRCUS PERFORMER LINKS
http://firechill.ph/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/firechill.ph/
IG: @firechill.ph

Photo Credits:
JB Estrada
Yann Le Metayer Photographie for Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain

Skagaströnd, Iceland