Cara Levine is a visual artist from the USA who stayed with us one month in May 2017. Cara explores empathy and absence and working across sculpture, photography and video. The absence of the body, be it through its physicality, perceptual sensitivity or language, is often the quality most present in her work. Her work also explores mutliple intersections of the pyhsical, metaphysical, traumatic, illusionary and playful.

During her stay in the Creative Centre, Cara has been working through a few streams of work. Her primary interest has been in working with the descendants of Petra, the local stone collector and founder of Steinasafn Petru in Stödvarfjördur. Then she interviewed and took portraits of 3 generations of women who now care – take the collection. Her interviews are being woven together with video footage of the stones from the collection shot on set in the Fish Factory.

Cara also was able to make sculptural objects in relationship to many of the stones in the collection as well as of her own finding. She worked on a driftwood – carving project, carving mouth and ear into separate pieces of wood as emblematic of the Norse mythology about the creation of man by the God’s Oding, Vali and Ve, the carver. The final stream of work she made at the Fish Factory were a collection of short videos and images of her body engaging with the landscape through gestural movements. For more information about her artwork you can check her website in below!

//More of Cara’s Artwork//

http://www.caralevine.com

Thank you, Cara!

Emanda Percival is a writer from Australia who stayed with us two months in April & May 2017. She completed a Masters of Writing in 2013 and has since been continuing to refine her skills. She was first published in July 2015, with the vignette, The Corn – El Choclo, in both Vine Leaves Journal #15 and The Best of Vine Leaves Journal 2015. Her novel, Aunt Mulvernia, had the honour of reaching the 2014 shortlist for the Impress prize. As she writes, she likes to involve herself in the world at large. Exploring countries, cultures, art and science, all of which have strong influences on her life, artistic work and practice. She is also kept busy editing and reviewing other artist’s works, and teaching Arts Education with ‘Sculpture by the Sea,’ in Australia.

Her writing is inspired by multiple interests (as can be expected with any artist), She enjoy exploring words and stories as they relate to music, visual arts, modern phenomena, and both natural and social sciences. She embraces the centuries old idea of studying multiple disciplines rather than just one with the express idea aim of exploring them through the creative arts, in particular writing, though she also dabble in the visual arts.

The concept and project She has been working on at the Fish Factory (and talk about in her interview), is inspired by the subjects of trigger memory, topophilia, and the release of 14 Carbon in rivers; then puzzling out how she might link them in narrative. You can find more detail about her project in the interview below.

//More of Emanda’s Artwork//

http://emandapercival.wixsite.com/canserrat

http://emandapercival.wixsite.com/littlewords

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank you, Emanda!

Kimi Tayler is a visual artist from the UK who stayed with us four month between February and May 2017. She is an artist with an interest in themes surrounding human relationships- in particular those of connection and disconnection. Living and working in London, much of previous work has been about isolation in a bustling city environment- so she chose to come to the Fish Factory for an extended residency of 4 months, in order to experience being part of a community in an isolated location.

Kimi is an artist who’s practice is and has been firmly rooted in drawing- using it as a direct tool for translating the experience of what she see’s and feels. However, during her time at the Fish Factory she used the space and time to process her experience in a multi-disciplinary way. She spent her first two months exploring Icelandic folk tales, the landscape, and transient relationships.

Like many artists, Kimi became drawn to the stones and minerals in Stodvarfjordur and this informed a larger body of work. Inspired by Petra’s Stone Collection, she found her own collection and explored them through drawings, prints and photography. This culminated in the building of performative objects inspired by the rocks of Austerland, as a means of better understand her own connection to her location.

The objects were then worn in a form that is performative, playful and active within the landscape that inspired them, by the community they became a part of. They also project endearing an amusing qualities in the undertaking mundane tasks. This is an ongoing project that Kimi plans to develop further.

//More of Kimi’s Artwork//

https://www.kimitayler.co.uk/

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank you, Kimi!

Eira Enkvist is a visual artist from Finland who stayed with us one month in April 2017. She born in 1986 from Finland. She studied at Novia in Nykarleby, Finland, for her Bachelor. After that she moved to Ghent, Belgium, for her Master of Arts at KASK. At KASK her art developed more to video art. After her Master she moved back to Finland to work as a teacher in Fine Arts on high school level for two years. In Finland she also became active in the artists association Rajataidery. From January 2013 she got elected second chairman, and in January 2014 the chairman of Rajataidery. In the spring/summer 2014 she was also the gallery coordinator for Rajataidery in gallery Rajatila.

She mainly works on video art with what she experience and subjects which she researchs and she combines with installations. The works can sometimes be videos like paintings, but mostly they are longer projects in the genre of Expanded Documentary. Interviews and reality are the bottom for her work.

You can find two different previous projects of her. ”FLAIRCK” is musical project and ” Felix Around the World” is about a young man’s three-year travel around the world. He traveled in an ecological way and three years ago, she started one week with him by bike and she joined one week by foot.

https://vimeo.com/214292683

During her stay in residency, She has been working on a project with the working title ” good and bad ” and it refers to the vision of black and white or good and evil. She borrows words of a well known author, George R. R Martin ” in real life, the hardest aspect of the battle good and evils is determining which is which ” to explain her project’s subject. She interviewed with people on the subject and their personal views. Then she blended all these on videos. The people interviewed partly was locals and contain people with professions as judges, teachers, police and also the people who committed crimes etc. Her aim is to be able to present different perspectives within one society. After all she build video work that may contradict and confirm itself, depending on the interview results. Then she continue with more interviews her project in Reykjavik at the and of April 2017 and her project continues still in progress. You can find about her artworks and projects in her websites and in the interview below!

//More of Eira’s Artwork//

http://www.eiraenkvist.com/

https://vimeo.com/user43164933

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You, Eira!

Yasser Vayani is a visual artist from Pakistan who stayed with us one month in April 2017. He has been living in Pakistan for 12 years. His purpose of the stay in residency was to make more connections with people, only through art and objects which he can find out more about others and himself.

At the beginning of his project, he started to collaboration with the communities around here by taking short interviews and he created dialogue between the people and their spaces. He also took and borrowed objects from people and their surrounding areas. Then his project continued with drawing practices in progress between the objects and owners of objects’ stories. It opened a new field of his project which he explored to homes, places and different kind of life style which belong to the owners of objects and he blended all these on drawings. You can find more information about his project in the interview below!

//More of Yasser’s Artwork//

http://cargocollective.com/yasservayani

Check out the interview about his stay here:

Thank You, Yasser!

Eunhong Kang is a visual artist from South Korea who stayed with us during April 2017. She lives and studies in London. She usually ventures to confront important the social and political issues of our time, which is the
 rising tide of neo-isolationism, populism and protectionism in the world against the problems
 caused by indiscriminate globalisation; unemployment, terror and polarisation between rich 
and poor. Especially, She uses ‘The
 alienation effect’ that aims to make the familiar seem strange, to show everything in a fresh
 and unfamiliar light. Because this enables the audiences to be brought to look critically at everything
 even if people has already taken something for granted. Through these works, She wants 
audiences to remain objective and distant from emotional involvement so that people could 
make considered and rational judgements about any social comment or issues in her work.

Her purpose of the stay with us was to find a new inspiration and recall nature. She minimised the information indirectly obtained through the media and work through direct research through the five senses. She wanted to collect the ever-changing nature of Iceland as the impressionists did any express her feelings and thoughts from her own observation. Then, she created her sculptures by the new inspiration. Eventually, She blended her sculptures in photographs with nature of Iceland.

//More of Eunhong’s Artwork//

http://www.eunhongkang.com/

 Thank you, Eunhong!

Katrín Inga Jónsdóttir Hjördísardóttir is a visual artist from Iceland who stayed with us in March 2017. She born in 1982 in Iceland. She has MFA degree in Fine Arts from School of Visual Arts in New York (2014) and she is a Fulbright Grantee (2012). Katrin also has BA in Art Theory from the University of Iceland (2012) and she was awarded the Dungal Art Fund award (2012).

Katrín’s subjects often include the social and political landscape and ecology of the art environment, which she funnels into her practice in unusual and personal ways, through various methods and mediums, such as writing, performance, drawing, sculpture making among other forms.

She started her project ”Land Occupied love – Love Occupied Land” 1,5 year ago. During her stay in the Creative Centre she continued the project, which is in constant progress. Katrín made video installation inspired by the surrounding landscape and her inner emotions. You can find more detail about her artwork and video installation in the interview below!

//More of Katrín’s Artwork//

http://www.dottir.info/

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank you, Katrín!

Anne Weber and Daniel Foerster are artists from Germany who stayed with us one month in March 2017. Anne is a theater player and Daniel is a director. They were in collaboration during their stay. They have been working for multi-sensual video and performance installation with texts, sound records and photos by inspiration of Iceland.

Firstly, They started to build a cage in the factory according to texts and photos. Then, Daniel started to make Anne’s videos around the local place. They worked in the hard winter conditions and used various places, materials in the water and snow. It provides the strong view of their video as well as the cage and the other materials. Eventually, Anne & Daniel made video installation at the end of their stay in here. You can find the video installation and their interview below.

Video Installation:

https://annegretaweber.jimdo.com/art/i-n-g-e/

//More of Anne’s & Daniel’s Artwork//

https://annegretaweber.jimdo.com/

https://www.schauspielfrankfurt.de/menschen/hinter-der-buehne/regie/daniel-foerster/

Check out the interview about their stay here:

Thank you, Anne & Daniel!

Claudia Senoner is a performer and choreographer from Germany who stayed with us during March 2017. She has worked as a dancer, soloist and teacher in theatres and ballet schools. She has also worked a lot with musicians and composers on various kinds of music for movements in Germany. Now she works as a freelance choreographer for her own art since many years and also as a teacher for dance. Claudia’s purpose to come here was to go away from her normal work and focus only on here own art. Then she started looking at the subject of water and was then inspired by an Icelandic book of the name ”H2O” from 1974. She created a choreography on seeing how the body liquids are moving as a soft and hard. It is also about discovering the environment and the landscape in the body by Icelandic inspiration. As a result, she focused solely on movements which she hasn’t worked in the last two years. She was also inspired by the other artists at the Fish Factory and by old Icelandic folklore. She made lots of drawings and recorded a different kind of sound from the outside. After her residency, Claudia will be working on her performance project which she will do in July in Germany. You can find more detail about her in the interview below.

//More of Claudia’s Artwork//

http://www.tanztendenz.de/files/detail_memberE.php?seite=4&folge=00&id=10

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank you, Claudia!

Lilly Allen is a freelance illustrator and water colour artist from the Isle of Wight, England and she stayed with us during March 2017. She spent countless hours just sitting and painting where ever she could find the perfect perspective of what she was going to paint. This could be on the side of a mountain, on the sea shore or in the warm comfort of the studio using a photo.

She also decided to collect photos of every house in the village. She was captured by the range of colours and shapes considering each house as an individual with its own character. She greatly enjoyed the solitude that was possible during her residency. Being able to step away from normal life and focus on things that you have not been able to give time to until now.

//More of Lilly’s Artwork//

http://www.lillylouiseallen.com/

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank you, Lilly!

Susan Wood was born in 1950. She grew up by the sea and loved foreign languages. She completed a PhD in German and had a successful career as a German lecturer, publishing many books and articles. It was not until 2002 that she began to paint, and she’s been actively involved in art ever since, particularly since she took early retirement in 2007. In 2016 she completed an MA in Glass at the University of Sunderland, with a final project entitled ‘Shore’.

Her decision to apply for a Residency at the Fish Factory was based on this love of the shore, art and remote places. For the month of March 2017 she walked by the fjord every day, took lots of photographs, and collected stones and flotsam and jetsam. These formed the basis for a series of shore-inspired works using a mixture of these materials.

She is now back in London and hoping to exhibit work inspired by Iceland’s stunning coastline.

//More of Susan’s Artwork//

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank you, Susan!

Brynja Bjarnadóttir is an Icelandic Musician who stayed with us during January and February 2017. She has been writing songs for the last 4 years and she decided to come here for far away from her daily routines and focus her own artwork. She has recorded 3 songs and inspired by the darkest winter of east fjords! During her stay, She also has been recording videos with her vintage camera and she experimented in ceramic and metal workshops with the other artists.

Brynja is also a member of the band Dark Marcy which she formed with the other visiting Artist & Musicians at the Centre. Dark Marcy performed a couple of concerts at the Centre and where very well received. Dark Marcy has a facebook page worth visiting.

Þór Þorbergsson & Brynja Bjarnadóttir are a good friend and they collaborated on Brynja’s dance performance during their residency in February 2017. Then, They recorded their performance in front of the ocean with the vintage camera at the end of their stay.

// More of Brynja’s Music & Video //
https://soundcloud.com/hestur

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEWD8jqWayI&sns=fb

Dark Marcy Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItiFxyOre3k

Check out the interview about her stay here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h0UjF174-c&feature=youtu.be

Thank You Brynja!

Ina de Saint Andeol is a visual artist from France who stayed with us during February 2017. For the past 20 years, she has been travelling the world, eager to delve into the roots of its many cultures, beauties and histories. Through collages of various mediums, She likes to naively incorporate those experiences along with deep research and create a surreal world of the chosen subject.

Ina is currently working on a collection about faith and religions throughout the ages and cultures. She uses sand, water colour, acrylic on wood and believes that Iceland and its inspirational environment will undoubtedly enrich her research. She is influenced by fish skin patterns, winter lighting, bird feathers and stratum on the local rocks. She longs to plunge into the Icelandic nature, extract its singularities and try to capture the winter silence.

Ina has also been working on linoleum printing and she created characters such as man & women in the water with dark concept.

//More of Ina’s Artwork//

http://nue-design.com

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You, Ina!

Þór Þorbergsson is an Icelandic artist and a poet who stayed with us in February 2017. His main focus is on poetry and literature, and during his stay he worked on a poetry book wich will soon be published. The book’s title is ” <3 ” and here below is an example of one of the poems.  You can also see Þór read this poem and   talk about it’s meaning in his interview.

Þór Þorbergsson & Brynja Bjarnadóttir are a good friend and they collaborated on Brynja’s dance performance during their residency.

//More of Þór’s Artwork//

https://twitter.com/halldorlochness

Check out the interview about his stay here:

Thank You, Þór !

Yang Jianwei is an animation artist and a visual artist from China who stayed with us during February 2017.  His work revolves around fictional characters which he portraits in his drawings on paper with pencil, gouache and water colour. Yang is interested in researching the connections between people’s lives and social and urban development. He thinks that human behaviour plays a certain role in social development and he is interested in the impact society has on people’s lives.

Yang became interested in the Ceramic Workshop in the Factory and started to experiment with forming his character in clay as an alternative approach to his work method and it opened up a new field for his project, since he never worked with that medium before.

//More of Yang’s Artwork//

http://yangxiaolv.tumblr.com

Check out the interview about his stay here:

Thank You, Yang!

Nicole Pedersen is a sound artist and a visual artist from Denmark and she has been staying with us during January and February 2017. Before her residency, she travelled to south-east Asia and was inspired by their cultural heritage. Her project was to create objects that had references to historical relics and archaeological finds and temples that represent a history of lost civilisations.

Furthermore, she is interested in science fiction and artificial intelligence, outer space and life on distant planets. In Stodvarfjordur she constructed a number of fake historic relics that implies an extinct existence, thus creating an artificial history of a civilisation or intelligence that has never been. She was very inspired by the rural and other worldly scenery of Iceland during her residency here and she worked on various objects with different materials such as electronic lights and different kind of metals. Also, she started to create various objects from clay in the ceramic workshop, which helped her to get into the right frame of her mind for her project!

//More of Nicole’s Artwork//

http://www.nicolececiliebitschpedersen.com/

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You, Nicole!

Sara Nanna Jørgensen is an Animation Artist, a Visual Artist from Denmark who stayed with us for one month in February 2017. She works on films and images with her characters. She makes characters with her special materials and her perspective. During her residency, she made three characters inspired by the landscape surrounding Stöðvarfjörður.

She seeks inspiration in dreams, thoughts and memories, she captures impressions, behaviour and moods of people around her and as well from drawings of her surroundings. Then she recreates them. She uses her recreated characters as symbols to act out her thoughts and moods.

The images are a juxtaposition of naturalistic characters and abstract creatures interacting with each other in the setting/stage set. Through implementing poetic fragments from everyday life, she aims to mix symbols, moods and conflicts, all of which relate to the world we inhabit, simultaneously underlining the meaninglessness of life and its conflicts, alongside magical elements and a poetic aesthetic.

//More of Sara’s Artwork//

http://sarananna.dk

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You, Sara!

Sacha Ratcliffe is a Canadian Sound Artist, Filmmaker and Graphic Designer who has been staying with us in the Shared Studio for the months of December 2016 & January 2017. During her stay, she has been working in various mediums, such as linoleum printmaking, drawings, photography as well as experimenting with instrument making.

Sacha has also been collaborating with Marina Shaltout on various performance – based photography, but the duo met during their residency stay here :)

Sacha is also a member of the band Dark Marcy which she formed with the other visiting Artist & Musicians at the Centre. Dark Marcy performed a couple of concerts at the Centre and where very well received. Dark Marcy has a facebook page worth visiting.

Dark Marcy; Brynja Bjarnadóttir, Sacha Ratcliffe, Billie Zizi, Marina Shaltout,

/ /More of Sacha’s Artwork/ /
http://sacharatcliffe.com/
Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You Sacha!

Amy Caterina is an American artist who stayed with us for one month in January 2017. She was working on the Pinhole & Polaroid Photography and Sewing  during in her residency in the Fish Factory – Creative Centre.

Amy is interested in exploring issues such as topography, reclamation, personal interactions, and domestic happenings. Direct and indirect, the real and artificial, and the cause and the effect of human and environmental interaction. She uses a variety of media to address these polarities. Her installation and public artwork continue her working method of interconnectivity. Amy was interested in the small community of the Factory and worked on series of portraits of her fellow Residency Artist and the staff of the Centre.

She was also fascinated the powerful landscape and how the variation in weather influenced the light and atmosphere. Amy experimented with Pinhole & Polaroid photos in the attempt to capture and represent her experience.

Later on she got her hands on a sewing machine for the first time and it opened up a new field for her. She started to experiment with sewing on fabric and paper as an alternative approach to drawing the surrounding landscape.

// More of Amy’s artwork //

http://www.amycaterina.com/

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You Amy!

Shannon Faseler is a visual artist from the USA who stayed with us during in January 2017. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin where she received a BFA in Studio art. She also holds a MFA in painting and drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Upon graduating in Chicago, Shannon moved to California, where she exhibited, taught and ran a University Gallery. Recently she has moved back to Austin, Texas where she continues a rigorous studio practice in addition teaching, exhibiting and curating. In her down time, she enjoys all outdoor activities with her husband and yellow Labrador retriever ‘star’.

Shannon works in a variety of media, She strongly believes in an interdisciplinary approach to the visual arts. ”Aesthetics of Decay” is a series of paintings, drawings, video and installations that challenge their customary view of aesthetics in the natural world. Rather than perceiving and representing a factual reality, her work is an illusion fabricated to conjure the imagination.

Her works are based on climate change and its visual effects on the planet including flood, glaciers and drought affected landscapes. They evoke the fragility and instability of our seemingly tangible reality. Subjective associations are made based on formal parallels that encourage the viewer to make new personal associations. Her work deals with the documentation of events while focusing on aesthetics and representation. Also, her practice is research based. She uses her own photography, documentary photography, climate change graphs and statistics as well as credible academic articles and texts on the subject of climate change as a foundation for her work. Currently, She is visually deconstructing the glacial landscape and formally reconstructing the forms and shapes. These works illustrate the futility of rebuilding the glacial landscape, like attempting to complete a puzzle when the pieces have changed shape.

//More of Shannon’s Artwork//

http://www.shannonfaseler.com

Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You, Shannon!

Billie Zizi is a Musician & Artist from Canada and she has been staying with us in the Private Studio for the month of January. Billie has been writing new music for her album and filling the Centre with warm tunes. Her sound is a heady mix of dirty, soulful, indie jazz pop, and these tracks give off serious bedroom vibes. You can get a  taste of Billies music here. Billie is also a talented Artist and during her stay, she has been making some beautifully coloured drawings and paintings on paper.

Billie is also a member of the band Dark Marcy which she formed with the other visiting Artist & Musicians at the Centre. Dark Marcy performed a couple of concerts at the Centre and where very well received. Dark Marcy has a facebook page worth visiting.

/ More of Billie’s Music /
https://billiezizi.com/home
Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You Billie!

Marina Shaltout is American Artist who has been staying with us for the months of December and January 2017. Marina’s work has a humorous undertone and is marked by playfulness. It is based on sculptural costumes, performances and photography. During her stay Marina has been working with various found materials and fabric, creating sculptural costumes as well as performance base photography with Sacha Ratcliffe, but the duo meet during their residency stay here and started to collaborate.

Marina is also a member of the band Dark Marcy which she formed with the other visiting Artist & Musicians at the Centre. Dark Marcy performed a couple of concerts at the Centre and where very well received. Dark Marcy has a facebook page worth visiting.

/More of Marinas Artwork/
https://marinashaltout.squarespace.com/
Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You Marina!

Melissa Dole is mainly sculpture artist working with texture and big formats. But during her residency, she was working on small sculptural objects. There was a lot of black paint, seaweed, bird corpse, etc. in Private Studio during month of December. Melissa was exploring realm of connection between human ability to explain things to itself and nature as it is.

/ More of her artwork /
http://melissamdole.com/
Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank You Melissa!

Katarina is a photographer from Czech Republic who stayed with us for one month in November. She was working with the stone texture and surface and taking pictures of them. During her residency she was filling up her photography portfolio. For more information on her project, we invite you to see project below and interview with her on our YouTube channel.

/ More of her artwork /
http://katarinahudacinova.blogspot.is/
Check out the interview about her stay here:

Thank you Katarina!