Janette Kerr’s paintings and drawings represent immediate responses to movement and rhythm within the landscape.
Here in Skagaströnd they are about advancing snow and mist, wind, glancing sunlight, whiteness and shadows, land and mountains disappearing and reappearing – elements that seem to be about something intangible.
Visit Kerr’s website for more information or read her blog on her experience here in Skagaströnd and the far north.
Suzanne Yeremyan is an artist from Providence, Rhode Island [US]. Her practice revolves around the perspective that there is a delicate collaboration that exists between darkness and beauty. Through her practice, she attempts to translate and emulate these findings. Sources of inspiration are intangible or tangible, internal within the self or external around the self. Emotion and environment.
Her work reflects abrasion, corrosion, decay, woe and isolation. Works are on paper, glass, and repurposed materials such as textile, metal, and plastic – using ink, charcoal, and powder pigment. Finding the process of traditional, “correct” printmaking to be limiting for her practice, Suzanne’s experimental approach calls for less immaculacy and precision.
Working mostly with monotype and drypoint, self-made tools and solvents such as wire brushes and salt sprays are utilized.
In addition to printmaking, Suzanne’s body of work also includes mixed media abstractions, painting, illustration, collage, as well as music – using with sound as another way to explore the same concepts that inform her visual work. Despite a relatively diverse body of work, the purpose behind each piece remains consistent: there is warmth in darkness, there is beauty in the harsh.
Alex Kahler is an author of fantasy and horror for adults and children. While at NES, he’s working on novels inspired by local folklore and ghost stories, and letting the magic of the landscape pull his writing in new directions. More information about his works can be found at www.arkahler.com
WRITER IN RESIDENCE – Sonja Sophie Kreis is a writer and artist from Switzerland, where she also works as a lecturer for art and art history. Her writing is very much inspired by art. She writes novels, but also experimental texts and texts about art. Her last book – KEIN SCHNEE IN VENEDIG/ NO SNOW IN VENICE – was published in Spring 2019 by edition pudelundpinscher.
Currently she is working on a novel with the title THE BIG ICE, inspired by a painting from the Swiss artist Adolf Dietrich (1877 – 1959), that shows the frozen Lake of Constance in the 1940’s. Today there is no more ice and snow at that place, so Sonja Sophie Kreis does some research in the winter landscapes of the north.
Last winter she spent some time in Greenland and now, in february 2020, she is experiencing the extreme weathers of Skagaströnd, writing in a room in the wonderful Salthuis, while observing the rapidly changing sceneries over the sea. It is a wonderfully inspiring place for someone interested in snow and ice in all possible forms and colors.
Indigo Perry is a writer and artist from near Melbourne, Australia. She is a Senior Lecturer in Writing & Literature in the School of Communication & Creative Arts at Deakin University. She writes memoir in poetic, experimental forms. Her first book, Midnight Water (Picador) was shortlisted for Australia’s National Biography Award. Her second book, Darkfall (University of Western Australia Publishing) is due for release in April 2020.
At NES, Indigo is working on her third book, Midnight Fire. It’s a memoir about the profound effects of grief. Since she has been at NES, and after seeing the phenomenon of iridescent nacreous clouds (glitsky), she has become interested in diffraction: the bending of light around objects. This is influencing her imagery and form in writing. She has also been inspired by the stormy weather, the changing skies, the rhythms of the wind and by Icelandic music during her residency.
Indigo also writes live in performance as part of a performance art duo called Illuminous. In that work, her writing is digitally projected over herself and her collaborator in a performance space as they improvise live.
At NES, Indigo has carried out a series of text projection experiments with another artist, Sinéad Bhreathnach-Cashell. Some of those experiments in the NES studio and at the Skagastrond swimming pool are shown in the images below, along with some fragments of writing from Midnight Fire.
Lieselle McMahon is a visual artist from Dublin, Ireland where she studied Music & Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin and Art & Design at CEAD at the National College of Art and Design. Her practice is mainly sculptural, encompassing 2D, 3D installation, live art and sound sculpture. Drawing on the assertion that the personal is political, conceptual themes around feminism and anti-capitalism manifest in her work and she has been a member of A4 Sounds Arts Community since 2017, where she bases her practice. She draws on both music and art sensibilities in her work and her central focus is the body.
Currently she is exploring themes of intimacy, how we relate to the other and to ourselves, and our connection (or reconnection) to the body-mind. Whilst at NES she is investigating this through sculpture, performance and sound, drawing on local mythology, storytelling and folklore (particularly as it relates to Prophetess Mountain), engaging with the natural elements in Skagastrond and the execution of her artistic endeavours in the prolonged darkness – a time with an almost magical quality in the air when the intuition seems more easily accessible.
Many thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for funding this artist residency with a travel and training award @artscouncilireland #artsireland @a4sounds @lieselle.mcmahon
Sandrine Elberg from France, photographer and visual artist; graduated from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in analogue photography.
‘My attraction to distant journeys invites us to lead projects inspired by the stories of Jules Verne (writer) and Georges Méliès (filmmaker and director). Also, I am inspired in search of territories, hostile climates to create lunar photographs.
When I am not traveling, I stay in the darkroom of my art studio to make light and chemical experiments. Influenced by the surrealist artists, Man Ray for example, I decline the photographic medium to technical and aesthetic possibilities. I love serendipity and experimental way to create my photographs’. https://www.sandrine-elberg.com/
Natasha van Netten is a visual artist from Vancouver Island, Canada. Her studio practice revolves around whales and cetology (the study of whales, dolphins and porpoises). Museum displays, charts, graphs and scientific data all inform her work. While at the Nes Artist Residency she is creating experimental drawings using watercolour, ink, wind, weather and the ocean. These processes allow nature to manipulate and alter the work.
“I am interested in incorporating elements and fragments from specific locations into my drawings. In a way the drawing then becomes a record or a specimen of that place, adding another level of complexity. Working with nature has its challenges, difficulties and risks but the surprises can be very rewarding.” For more about Natasha’s work, check out her website: natashavannetten.com You can also follow her on Instagram @n_van_netten.
Sinéad Bhreathnach-Cashell is an artist from Belfast, North(ern) Ireland. She is a member of the Array Collective and Bbeyond. During her time at Nes she will be experimenting with video installations. In this clip she is creating indoor northern lights using a skirt and a head torch. Her residency is possible thanks to the Artists’ International Development Fund supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the British Council.
An idiosyncratic specimen of globalization, I was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan, my father being North Korean and my mother being Russian. Having caught a glimpse of the ex-USSR, I have a nostalgic, conflicting perception of political and cultural systems. The image of Korea evokes for me a tantalizing, fragile and beautifully moving atmosphere. How come? Perhaps, because my father, who was born Pyongyang, writes essays and existential about the Korean diaspora in former CIS countries. Devoid of a homeland, I focus my art on the themes of ethnical atomization, emptiness and nostalgia. Unable to fully assimilate into any one culture, I find myself as an outsider with an eclectic artistic taste. Art represents the act of seeking, assembling and immortalizing beauty. Through my artistic practice, I recreate the state of inspiration and emancipation, experienced during my childhood. My works strive to capture the ephemeral impressions. The concepts, which I explore in my work, include the globalization, surveillance, nostalgia, utopia and eroticism.
Recently, I was involved in initiatives with the Royal Watercolor Society, Art Below, Art Wars in London, Red Dot Miami and Los Angeles. This year, I am having shows at 508 Kings Road in London as well as Untitled Space, the New York Art Expo, Theresa Byrnes Gallery and Salon Anise in New York. Currently, I am curating an emerging artist in Hackney, London and welcoming artists to apply for our next open call on the theme of “Spacetime” (deadline February 1st, all details here): https://www.instagram.com/p/B7G-ahnJcUg/
