But WHERE IS THAT? Lisbon, Portugal<\/p>\n
HOW LONG? One month<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
WHY LISBON? Just had a good feeling about it and spontaneously applied for the residency.<\/p>\n
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Days 1 and 2, On Day 3, 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.<\/p>\n Basically, if you are interested – my plan so far consists of playing around with drawing, painting, sculpture, multimedia, performance and dance.<\/p>\n Loki and I also began Portuguese classes which is nice. I LOVE HAVING A TEXT BOOK! I LOVE HOMEWORK…how long will this last….<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Day 4, 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 <\/a>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.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alicedolling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/zaratanblog1.jpg?resize=300%2C214\")
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\nwere basically just Loki (my fianc\u00e8) 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.<\/p>\n
\nI had my first meeting with the gallery directors Gemma and Jose, and the other two resident artists, two Italians Gianluca<\/a> and Marco.<\/a>\u00a0The 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.
\nWe 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.<\/p>\n
\nThe 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.<\/p>\n
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