I officially began my first artist in residence program on Saturday. One of my goals during this adventure is to engage with the online world more consistently – so I have decided to blog about my experiences during the residency.
The basics,
WHERE? Zaratan Arte Contemporânea
But WHERE IS THAT? Lisbon, Portugal
HOW LONG? One month
WHAT DO YOU DO DURING AN ARTIST RESIDENCY? I don’t really know yet. My impression of this residency so far is WORK MAKE PLAY MAKE MAKE WORK WORK WORK PLAY MAKE etc etc. I have been assured that there is no pressure to create a ‘final product’ so I am going to use this opportunity to have fun with my art and see where that leads me.
WHY LISBON? Just had a good feeling about it and spontaneously applied for the residency.
Days 1 and 2,
were basically just Loki (my fiancè) and I relishing in our new digs. We had been staying in Airbnbs and hostels since we arrived and were ready to stay in one place for a bit.
On Day 3,
I had my first meeting with the gallery directors Gemma and Jose, and the other two resident artists, two Italians Gianluca and Marco. The Italians are collaborating on a very epic sounding project – I won’t give too much away but there’s talk of masks, prints, urban mythology, found objects, zines and street parties. The more I heard about their plans, the more I felt that my approach was totally opposite. When I try to plan things too comprehensively it always feels contrived and stresses me out. My plan was to buy a big piece of paper and start drawing some butts with my non-preferred hand. I tried not to feel too self conscious when it was my turn to explain what I was going to do during the residency but I definitely felt like I was being very vague after hearing the Italian plans.
We are going to do artist talks during the residency – my first one! I was initially anxious and was like ‘what the hell would I even tell people?’ but then I remember I spent five years getting paid to rant to uni students about art and art processes and realised it will be fun, so that’s cool.
The meeting ended with a 40min discussion about why risograph printing is the worst thing to happen in the world vs why its actually really nice and cool, and Gemma digging up a big piece of compressed bark chip wood stuff for me to paint on which I quickly scuttled off to my studio with.
Basically, if you are interested – my plan so far consists of playing around with drawing, painting, sculpture, multimedia, performance and dance.
Loki and I also began Portuguese classes which is nice. I LOVE HAVING A TEXT BOOK! I LOVE HOMEWORK…how long will this last….
Day 4,
The first official day of work! Had a severely prolonged battle with the snooze alarm situation on my phone, eventually made it to a cafe to do my Portuguese homework, this was slightly marred by an unfortunate overpriced orange juice situation but I’ve been instructed not to dwell upon that any more.
Today I make a tiny prototype sculpture of big-butted visor wearing gym junkie, a half woman/half chicken sketch, some hairdo studies and got really obsessed drawing the same cranky face over and over again (see my instagram for the GRIPPING live coverage of this). I also made some photo collages using photographs of neighbourhood buildings and some old magazines. They made me chuckle out loud a lot so I think I’m going to go nuts on those, here’s a little clue as to why.
I went to a pole dancing class for the first time in one million years and it was wonderfully difficult because the teacher noticed all the things I was doing wrong and made me do them properly OMG whyyyyyyyyyyyy. But obviously that’s a good thing and I am planning to do a live performance online and want to incorporate pole dance into it so stay tuned for that!
AND now I am writing this blog and now I have finished because it’s getting late and I want to eat a peach and some chocolate.
xxxxx
Alice