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Musicians in Residence – Mercedes Krapovickas & Jukka-Pekka Lilja

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Mercedes Krapovickas and Jukka-Pekka have spent their time at NES working on the project Ecdysis and El circo.  Ecdysis is a series of electroacoustic pieces for live electronics and bandoneon. It is an internal and external search where Mercedes explore beliefs, limits and the possibilities of the unknown.

El circo is a collaborative project between Mercedes and Finnish musician and luthier Jukka-Pekka.  The work is meant to be electroacoustic, combining acoustically played bandoneon music, electroacoustic collages and electronically created pieces, creating the impression of a circus environment in Buenos Aires in the early 1900s. At the same time, the work is a symbolic account of the mixing and diversity of people.

You can see/hear more of their work https://www.mekrapov.com/ ,  and https://soundcloud.com/jukka-pekka-lilja

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ARTIST IN RESIDENCY – DANIELA GOBETTI

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Image1 from the project A Life. A path of remembrance?
My name is Daniela Gobetti, I am a photographer and a bilingual poet in Italian and in English. I try explore the boundary between the visible and the non-visible, and between the unspoken and what poetry invites me to write onto the infinite white page. 
Image 2 from the project A Life. A path of remembrance?
 
Some projects bring poems and images together, but I neither take photographs thinking of a specific poem, nor write a poem to illustrate an image.
 
 
A philosopher by training (and long-lasting practice!), I am drawn to structures and abstract shapes in my attempt to ‘see’ what lies below the surface of our daily, habitual experience. 
 
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ARTIST IN RESIDENCE – RICHARD BARLOW

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“Over the past several years I have produced a number of large, site-specific, temporary wall drawings. The drawings feature landscape imagery, and are drawn directly on gallery walls with chalk.

Their fragile and ephemeral nature maps onto both environmental and existential concerns; they will all eventually disappear, and are threatened by the presence of the viewer.

In a couple of recent works I included the erasing process in the exhibition, slowly destroying the images over the run of the show.

At NES I decided to experiment with taking this process further. I started with a drawing of Spákonufell, the mountain overlooking Skagaströnd, and each day I have made alterations to the drawing — adding in new elements, smearing them, erasing, wiping with a wet sponge, and then building the drawing back up.

These continual shifts echo the continually shifting skies and weather here. The drawing is alive and never finished.”

http://www.rbarlow.net

https://www.instagram.com/richardbarlowartist/

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ARTIST IN RESIDENCE – ELAINE MCMURRAY

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Artist in residence Elaine McMurray is from Flower Mound, TX and is currently based in Austin, TX. She is pursuing a BFA in studio art at the University of Texas at Austin. Her practice is primarily rooted in painting and she experiments in using painting as a method for creating manifestations of human anxiety.

At NES she has been exploring local folklore and creating paintings that are reflective of these tales. Her recent work at NES is inspired by different methods of fortune telling and prophecy reading. The best places to keep up with her work are her Instagram @indecisivefroggg and her website https://elainemcmurray973.wixsite.com/artist. 

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ARTIST IN RESIDENCE – SARAH MCCORMICK

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Sarah McCormick’s research considers the role of colonial agendas at play in the narrative of our global, ecological crisis. Through methods of social practice, digital transmission, and sculpture, she looks for possible solutions to an objectifying model of approaching ecology—a patriarchal holdover in phenomenological thought.



 Her work wrestles with the complex and paternalistic relationship between humans and nonhumans, specifically within the context of land preservation. She examines the act of protection when applied to an entity that may have never given consent and the battles waged over land’s extractive potential.

You can see more of Sarah’s work at http://www.smccormickstudios.com and https://www.instagram.com/smccormicksculpture/?hl=en

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ARTIST IN RESIDENCE – JUDY SANCHEZ

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Judy Sánchez (Alaska, United States) is here at NES for the months of May and June and is using Skagaströnd as a home-base from which to wander and explore Iceland.



Primarily a photographer, she strives to make ethereal and evocative abstract images from nature. She explains, “Photography is but a meditation, the conduit through which I can attempt to reveal unique surroundings and intricate fabrications created by the merging of nature’s spirit with my own imagination and its mysterious imperatives.”





She has been invited to exhibit in the Biennial of Fine Art and Documentary Photography to be held this September in Barcelona, Spain, and her work is included in the United States Library of Congress, the National Museum of American Art, and the Smithsonian Institution. Additional work can be seen at: https://www.instagram.com/fotonomad/





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ARTIST IN RESIDENCE – ELY GERMAN

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“I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2000. I moved to Houston, Texas in 2014 and currently study art at The University of Texas Austin. I will be graduating in the Fall of 2021 with a Studio Art BFA. I love to create visually exciting images of all sizes and mediums. My work seeks to raise questions and spark discussions about environmental issues, cultural phenomena, and identity.”  

You can find out more about the art of Ely German at https://www.elygerman.com/

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ARTIST IN RESIDENCE – ANNA KATRINE THUESEN

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Anna Katrine Thuesen, is a Danish documentary filmmaker living in Switzerland. She has been an artist in residence at Nes since April. She has been taking the time in Iceland to develop her filmmaking style, going from a formulaic television approach to a more expressive approach.

Her subjects in Iceland have all been people who are personally connected with an ancient Norse legend or concept, such as rune reading or experts in norse mythology. Usually, her films center around people and their traditions set in the mountains.

plein air from Anna Katrine Thuesen on Vimeo.

In June Anna Katrine will move on to another residency with ArtsIceland in Isafjördur in the Westfjords to meet and film people living in more extreme mountainous and remote conditions, exploring how their lives and practices and the legends they tell each other are influenced by the landscapes of dramatic mountains and rough seas around them. She has also spent her time in Skagaströnd to reconnect with her own Scandinavian and Norse heritage by studying Norse runes and learning how to knit local Icelandic patterns from the local knitting ladies.

You can see more of Anna Katrine Thuesen’s work at https://bellatolafilms.com/ https://instagram.com/annnakatrinee?utm_medium=copy_link

PS:
 SHE WILL BE BACK 😉

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ARTIST IN RESIDENCE – LENA MARIE EMRICH

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“The constant connection with the elements at their purest forms. The fluent feeling you get meanwhile seeing water drop and stone melt.

When art and craftsmanship are eternal allies united in the local car workshop, where Óli, a former fisherman, shared with me his knowledge of welding and gave birth to my twisted aluminum shapes in perfection.”

In her work, Lena Marie Emrich focuses on the marginal and the social – both topics that are key elements in her artistic practice. Car tuning races, abandoned airports, lapsed graffiti, meteorological phenomena – all these are cultural references that nourish her multidisciplinary practice. Emrich interweaves performance, documentation and sculpture and sheds light on the characteristics of these unique communities. She mixes scientific research findings with a kind of poetic form language, as well as examining objects and phenomena for their aesthetic and social relevance. Her works tell of the encounter between supposedly rigid everyday objects and human longings, and conserve them in a simple formal language. In 2020 she won the Toy Award presented by the Berlin Masters Foundation. For 2021/2022 she is awarded the Art Prize of the Kunstverein Hannover.

http://lenamarieemrich.space/cv

Photo credits – Anna Katrine Thuesen

Skagaströnd, Iceland