Mary Kate Noonan is a Multidisciplinary Artist based in the United States. Her work is traditionally focused on surreal “dreamscapes” often using collage, painting, and ceramics as her chosen mediums. While at Fish Factory, Mary slowed down her rapid process of making to spend time around Stöðvarfjörður and reconnect with her passions for exploration and music. Many nights she would lay up on the hill behind her residence and talk with stars and spend every afternoon dancing on the dock; allowing her body to move as it may, ever in search of the freedom that comes with letting go.
Susan Wood is a Scottish artist, now living in Gateshead in the north-east of England. Her first Residency at the Fish Factory was in March 2017. Having decided to do four Residencies, in order to experience the different seasons in the east Fjords, this is her fourth and final month in the series.
Inspired by nature, beachcombing, and found objects, she creates unconventional weavings, and assemblages. The aim is to hold a Cabinet of Curiosities exhibition in Gateshead, including weaving, linocuts, woodcuts, knitting, and further developments of her experiments with low-firing glass paints applied to float glass and mirror glass. The interdisciplinary approach will highlight the many different sources of inspiration, from kelp and mountain silhouettes to a dead whale founded beached at the end of the fjord.
Martina Mäsiarová (1991) is a visual artist and art educator based in Žilina, Slovakia. She is interested in implying Montessori elements to her practice. In 2018 she graduated from The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (Slovakia) in the Department of Painting and Other Media in the studio led by professor Daniel Fischer, later Martin Špirec and Rastislav Podhorský.
In her practice she mainly creates inter-and trans-media projects based on observation (both the outer and the inner world) through drawing as a usual starting point, which often leads to the extension to spatial installations, site-specific interventions, and eventually creating complex environments that are opened toward all the art media, emphasizing on their interconnection, harmonization, supporting and underlining each other. The core of her interest is a relationship: the process of creating a relationship, communication, dialogue, the feeling of closeness – whether as an ideological and conceptual theme within her artworks or as a form of creation and realization of the artwork or in collaborative projects in relation of her toward the other, the space or the world.
Artist statement:
”In the last couple of years my work gained certain elements of performativity, body-ness, temporality, it has deflected from visuality and imagery towards immaterial – gesture, word, movement, atmosphere. Let´s call it “situations”. By creating a situation, I explore ways of evoking a bodily experience using im-material means (sound, light, drawing with just a minimal trace, gesture, fleeting movement in the space…the body subtly touches another body, lungs exhale, the moon overlays the sun. stealthy). I try to evoke a suggestive feeling, to create some sort of timelessness, to make one feel present, to experience the moment, the being, being present. This comes together with questioning the impact of memory: how does memory influence our perception of space? I analyze the space limits and limitations, as well as limits of one´s body – what does the „outside“ mean? Where does the „inside“ begin? What is bigger: the outside or the inside? What „in-between” is?
During my residency in Fish Factory, I wanted to continue in my long-term research of the topics essential for my work – a mountain, sound, body and memory. These mutually overlap and interfere, together with my fascination with the sea and wind and sky. I was specifically fascinated by a phenomenon of the indistinctness of the horizon: the state of quietness, emptiness, stillness, indefiniteness; the time when the day turns into night and the light and dark have the same intensity, listening to the stones, their stories and histories, following the horizon, tracing the fog… Is there a way to reach the horizon? Is there a way to draw it? Is there a way to draw it, except the line? When I reach its point – would I find the edge of the world?
Most of the time during my stay I spent observing and perceiving the landscape. Only through a bodily experience and movement in the mountains and sea could I explore it as a whole. The result of my walks and runs and hikes and wandering and getting lost and found is a series of drawings and ink paintings, notes and videos. Now, more is to come…”
Taylor Raye Erickson is a painter and art educator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was her second visit with us this year, that she wanted to re-explore the landscape in Stöðvarfjörður, hereon the east side of Iceland. During her residency time, Taylor made a collection of paintings mainly using acrylic paint on Yupo-paper. She has also created some short videos, where the multi-layerdness reflects the essence of dreams presented in her paintings.
Artist Statement:
”My body of work from my time at the Fish Factory is comprised of paintings, video work, drawings, and photographs. Regardless of the medium, the subject matter is primarily vivid, layered, and dreamy landscapes. These ethereal spaces closely represent the terrain of the mind: hazy, shadowy, and complex. Although ethereal, these images are often created by rearranging color, texture, and light from my immediate surroundings. The imagery of the wild Icelandic nature becomes a language for the world within. A collection of moments merge into representations of surreal, chaotic rhythms throughout the landscapes of the mind and the earth. I’m so grateful for the time I had at the Fish Factory surrounded by great people and inspiring landscapes.”
Ethan is a designer and illustrator from Brooklyn, New York. His original plan for his time at the residency was a series of outdoor paintings around the idea of “what do we think of as nature?”.
Work-demands and pandemic-timing-changes trashed the idea of pursing this project in a monastic-single-focus way. Instead, his 3-month residency was a mix of painting, ceramics, woodworking and a series of illustrations for the Climate Land Ambition Rights Alliance (CLARA) all fueled by exploring the East Fjords on foot and bike.
Artist statement:
“I lucked out in being at the Fish Factory, and in Stöðvarfjörður, and in the artists I shared the residency with. The place that Una, Vinny and the interns like Vid and Monika have made is a powerfully energizing place. I love that the mission of the Center is not only to support the arts but also ‘to regenerate and sustain our small village by making it into a possible and desirable place to settle’.
At times I struggled with the frustration of not being able to drop everything from back home to immerse myself in the work. But I also became very enthusiastic about being able to do my ‘work-work’ along with ‘art-work’ in this remote and beautiful place. Now back home, I see this mixed bag of projects, rather than being scattered and diluted, as rich, interrelated material to expand upon. And I am excited by the chance of returning for an extended stay, made possible by the resources to do many kinds of work”.
Takk Fyrir, Ethan!
You can see more of his work on his website or Instagram:
Simona Ledl aka Mona L is a visual artist, working and living in Salzburg (Austria). In her works, she deals above all with the topics of connectedness and multi-layeredness, as well as the complexity associated with them. Being in touch with nature and getting inspired by the energy coming from it plays an important part in her working process.
Artist statement:
”I see art as a way of getting to know myself, others, and the world. I am particularly interested in the question of how certain environments and social situations are perceived from different perspectives:
Our existence is determined by various events. From birth to death, we live through moments of joy, sadness, becoming, and passing away. Every person relies on a value system that offers protection and promises order. This order influences the way we perceive the world in all its details.
During my stay in Stöðvarfjörður I engaged with the concept of common ground. Drawing on the sensation of the individual, I establish a connection between people’s interpretations of photographs I made here in Iceland, thus creating an image of collective perception. Based on interviews I created digital artworks that combine people’s individual perspectives. Those digital works have likewise served me as a basis for further experiments with multicolour linocut printing. It has been a wonderful and exciting journey full of extraordinary treats for my spirit of discovery and adventure.”
Mikkel is an animator and illustrator from the Czech Republic, staying in the Artist Residency for the second time. He came here to take a break from making animation and started to focus on non-digital art. His artistic expression is inspired by arctic nature. First, he was focused on practicing the painting of Icelandic landscapes with animals, which later resulted into a bigger personal project – the picture book. Here was Mikkel trying to get through his emotional condition, doing everyday rituals in the mountains and catching his thoughts in the landscape. The whole story is told by a raven called Krummi, who has arrived in a fjord by boat and tried to get out of his lost mind. The book will be hopefully published one day.
“I was going through different stages of my feelings the last few months. I was working with my emotions surrounded by the local landscape. The light summer nights, austfjarðarþokan fog which could stay in the fjord for a few days, hot sunshine and cold refreshing mountain stream. The wind was so strong you could barely walk, clouds touching the mountains peaks or hiding them, all kinds of rain, morning sunlight reflecting in drops on long grass, and more and more in this magical fjord. I could identify my emotional state with the changing landscape and its weather.
The book about Krummi reflects my feelings in certain times and certain places. And I am also very glad, I was surrounded by wonderful people, I met so many nice souls here and made new friendships. And I know I will come back here again someday. Thank you for having me, dear Fish Factory team!”
Noah Hartley is a conservation artist and art educator based in the United States (North Carolina). His plan was to illustrate Iceland’s wildlife and in doing so study the history and relationship with them and the island they inhabit.
Artist Statement:
”After seeing multiple artists that were staying there do printmaking, I decided it would be a good idea to grow my printmaking skills and learn how to teach it for my classes back home. I was able to create 5 linocut prints with lots of prints from each one and truly learned so much from so many different artists (including Una)!
My stay at the Fish Factory undoubtedly changed me as a person and an artist, and equipped me with the necessary skills to teach printmaking in the states!”
Claire Thill is a Luxembourg-based writer, performer, and theatremaker interested in exploring multidisciplinary territories of performance and storytelling. Her pieces start from concepts and broader themes rather than from a structured idea of the plot. She intertwines different elements such as text and the body in movement with image and audio in order to create performance structures that are at once multilayered and fragmented.
She used her residency at the Fish Factory to delve deep into the preparation of her latest theatre project, an adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s ‘Der Besuch der alten Dame’. The piece uses the original script in order to investigate the feminist and women narratives hidden behind the lines. During her stay, she wrote and re-wrote fragments and extensively researched themes such as trauma, collective guilt, and rituals of forgiveness.
Florian Gantner, based in Vienna (Austria), is a writer and Art director of a literary festival.
During his stay at the Fish Factory, he worked on his next novel „Agile Arno“, which reflects on the future of work, service society and dignity. When not writing on his novel, he tries to create poems of undeniable truth, in the tradition of the Discoparty-Brothers (Licht ist gut für Augen / Seife aber nicht; Light is good for eye / but soap is not).
Alicja Natalia Wacowska (Balance with Alice) is a yoga teacher with certification as RYT200 – Multi-style Yoga Teacher Training Course, Yin Yoga Teacher and Yoga Nidra. She mainly works with her own method which is based on intuitive yoga flow and consciousness movement. She is also a mentor for creative development, with a few years of professional experience working on various cultural projects.
During her six weeks in the artist residency at Fish Factory, she did some yoga sessions for the artists and arranged a workshop called ”Look into your creative power”. She also continued to develop the ~Yoga & Creativity project, which focuses on exploring how yoga and other practices influence the process of creative work. She uses the word “~ yoga” in the means around yoga and other forms of conscious movement, mindfulness, or embodiment practices. The project includes interviews with creatives, workshops, yoga classes, private coaching/mentoring sessions and more of will be enriched by new forms emerging from the research. During her stay, she did interviews with 3 artists which are available to listen here: https://m.soundcloud.com/yogaandcreativity
Artist statement:
” For two weeks I’ve arranged Balance Studio where artists could come any time during the day to relax, recharge and take some time to connect with their creativity. I prepared the room to fulfill the various needs depending on what feels good at that time, for example, it was possible to practice yoga, dance, stay in silence, write, meditate, drink tea, use some cards or create.
My motivation is to connect yoga and conscious development practices. I have a few years of work experience in different cultural and creative projects where I worked with artists, designers, creatives. My intention is to explore how these two worlds influence each other and what are the possibilities for balancing the creative work process. I would like to open possibilities for creatives to grow, bloom, and flow their potential through the channels of conscious and grounding practices.”
Anna Lehespalu is an Estonian photographer from Tallinn. She uses photography, video, and music as a medium of expression. Her process of making art is very intuitive and connected with psychology, which helps her to research and understand the human mind. She expresses her feelings by documenting her closest surroundings and environment, which is often the landscape.
Artist statement:
” I had a big dream to visit Iceland for a very long time and for a while it did not happen. However, the wanting to go and knowing Iceland will somehow transition me got stronger and stronger. So much that I even visited Iceland in my dreams while sleeping. Then In 2020 it finally happened. I went to the South of Iceland first and started a project that I did not know what it’s going to be about. I knew that it will get more clear to me intuitively in the process. That year turned out to be an intense year for everyone. I was able to stay in Iceland for about 7 months.
The project I started has a name. It’s called: Stay home, go out. It is inspired by nature being a resource of new found freedom.
During the residency in Fish Factory, I started working more deeply with my idea while giving space and time to explore the ideas and feelings that reflect back to me through nature. The goal was to get closer to the series of images and videos for a personal exhibition. While staying in the residency I discovered many suppressed emotions and fears inside of me and I decided to observe them more closely.
Usually, I work mostly alone but this time I got very lucky and was surrounded by many beautiful souls who I was able to share this time with and they helped me in my search more than they know. The fish factory is a very magical place and there is a lot of love there. What emerged from my residency is a lot of new material. I work a lot with film photography, I am excited to be able to work further with all the material that was born there in the east fjords. I started to work on a new idea there at Stöðvarfjörður, where I put myself as a subject in nature for a series of self-portraits. As a human, I am interested in what way I am a part of nature. How I am born from the ground and become the ground. I am looking for new ways to connect through listening to my instincts and testing my own limits within nature.”
If you want to see more of her work, check out her Instagram account: www.instagram.com/annalehespalu
Emma Banks is a poet born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, and who has since wandered all over. She’s currently in the process of completing her BFA in English from Kenyon College and the University of Oxford. While her work is written and therefore visually static, she adds dimensionality to it by weaving storytelling and imagery, crafting together a sort of tempered, ebbing narrative. She is currently in the process of finishing her debut poetry collection, titled A Body of Its Hungers.
Artist Statement
I (so very luckily) came to the factory nearly two years after my project was approved and as an almost entirely different person. This book too has held many forms, both in my relationship to it and the story it’s trying to convey. At first glance, this collection was a reflection of myself and the environments I’ve found myself in over the years. And in a way, it still is: it’s very much tied to the idea of place, to the idea of the self and body in a specific landscape, and the manner in which our memory influences and is influenced by spaces we occupy. But in other ways, it’s no longer just my story that I’m attempting to tell. It’s about my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, which is perched in a water-crossed part of the central Southern United States. It’s about the generations of women in my family, of the birds stalking through the reeds with each season’s tide, of being empty and full, of my leaving and returning.
During my residency, I was able to fold a divided prototype of the book, with almost two sections complete. I never anticipated writing nearly half of my book here, but the factory ended up being such a kismet space to redevelop A Body of Its Hungers. That’s not just because of its energy and history (and all the wonderful people within it). Situated right by the mouth of the fjörd and tucked between two mountain ranges, the factory building is both hidden by and revealed through the fog that trudges low towards the water. What a captivating, mysterious, and inherently of-the-landscape space to think about the places I have been, who is still there, and what of me exists because of them.
Members of this international collective come from various creative fields; fine arts, dance, performance, music, sound engineering, and audiovisual communication. The collective does not yet have a name. During their stay at the Centre, the group focused on creating a new performance piece juxtaposing different elements from each of their professional fields.
“We used the opportunity at the residency to knit together a team to explore sound and movement. Experimenting with acoustic instruments, microphones, synthesizers, samples, and field recordings, we found ways to produce soundscapes and melodies based on trust and affection.”
Two members of the group, Otho and Erna Gunnarsdóttir are a part of the Icelandic Dance Company and the residency stay of the group was a collaboration between the Creative Centre and the Icelandic Dance Company. The performance piece the group developed during the residency stay was later on performed in the Reykjavik City Theather, the home of the Icelandic Dance Company.
Gillian Pokalo is a visual artist living and working near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the USA. Her artwork integrates printmaking, photography, and painting, and it reflects on the ways that man-made architecture is eclipsed by nature.
During her residency at the Fish Factory, Gillian photo-documented abandoned farmhouses in the East Fjords, developed those images as silkscreens, and created a series of paintings that incorporated her photographic imagery along with cyanotypes of wildflowers that were blooming throughout July. The pieces she created while at the Fish Factory were authentic reflections of the time and place in which they were created.
Anne Klein is a printmaking and textile artist from Chicago in the US. She completed her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently an MA/MFA candidate in print media at the University of Iowa. She specializes in woven textiles, illustration, print media, and design for print.
During her time at the Fish Factory, Anne worked on a series of linocut prints drawing on the surreal landscape and idle sleepy scenes of small-town Stöðvarfjörður. Anne’s work typically responds to consumer culture specific to the American Midwest. This moment of reprieve in the eastern fjords was an exciting exploration into Iceland’s vernacular visual language. Anne’s work is underpinned by an open narrative loosely connecting each print as comic panels. She found that depicting these scenes in the stark black and white format of the linocut reflected the occasionally unsettling deep shadows and sleeplessness that came with the midnight sun in the Icelandic summer.
Artist statement:
In a turbulent moment marked by social isolation and all-consuming capitalism, I’m desperately clinging to comic relief. My work reacts to a consumer culture of kitsch icons and constructed narratives that have wormed their way into our collective consciousness. I create images of flattened dreamscapes depicting ritual, routine, and repressed memory through allegorical narratives of everydayness. I poke fun at the hellishly mundane pains of everyday life.
I work in printmaking to comment on the value and preciousness of a masterpiece in its singularity. The matrix becomes a symbol of feminine labor, the womb, and me, the imperfect machine of mass production in this mode of making. I am interested in the relationship between maker and consumer; often asking who the artwork is for and who has access to it.
Ruby Bateman is a visual artist, working and living in London. Her work is often self-referential, (re)depicting and translating imagery across different materials and processes. She uses film, photography, drawing, and painting to discuss her personal and political relationship with (institutionalised) motherhood.
Artist statement:
Iceland’s legacy for storytelling, Norse poetry, mythology, and folk law are renowned worldwide, sparking imaginations for centuries. The Fish Factory residency immersed me into Iceland’s dramatic landscape, the generous spirit of Icelanders, and their culture and language. I was able to write, draw and film a piece of allegorical fiction inspired by the absurdity of Norse Mythology, the Stöðvarfjörður mountains, and my passion for maternal politics.
This has been a truly transformative experience, opening myself up to the written word in a new and more literal way. Before I had been exploring storytelling in more abstract terms on film, often drawing on myself as the subject. Now I feel I have progressed into a more imaginative mode of language, one that can relate to my interests and concerns for (institutionalised) motherhood without having to put myself so centrally. What emerged from my month’s residency was a super 8 film, a collection of sculptures, film photography, and a series of ink drawings: originally storyboards for my film, but became works in their own right. The trust and freedom I was given at the Factory allowed me to create work more prolifically and without expectation or inhibition. I was able to weave together a fully formed collection of work that commented on patriarchy and its suppression of women’s reproductive and intellectual knowledge throughout history.
Nina Schipoff is a German interdisciplinary artist, living and working in Geneva, Switzerland. She graduated from the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD) in 2008 and obtained a postgraduate diploma in painting from the Gevena School of Stage Set Design in 2009. Nina articulates her art around the concepts of space, time, movement, and light with a specific focus on the interactions between humans and nature in the accelerating world. She questions the invisible and visible traces of the interaction between man and landscape and their ecological and geopolitical impact on the world.
At the very beginning of her stay in Fish Factory, Nina spent a lot of her time outdoors getting to know her new home. This motivated her to realize a series of photos titles the ”Untold Stories”. She also enjoyed exploring and integrating sculpture as a new medium into her work practice. This finally lead to the installation ”in the land of magic volcanos and golden waterfalls”, completing her photographic narration.
Once her curiosity had been responded to and her mind has settled a bit, she realized her main project, the development of motivational hypnosis for a sustainable future in a safer world. Nina, who is also a trained hypnotist, found a lot of inspiration on her discovery trips through Icelandic nature as well as in scientific environmental research.
Anna Zadra is an Austrian conceptional artist and stage designer. After studying theatre-, film- and media studies at Vienna University, she completed her studies at the University of Mozarteum Salzburg with a stage- and exhibition design diploma. Her work revolves around the relationship between humankind and its surroundings. While focussing on man’s location in space, she tries to collect and display its materialistic and haptic aspects in her artistic research.
Anna’s studio work process, though thoroughly backed with research in literature and applied science, is highly immanent. Materials derived from the surroundings of her current workplace form the base of her artwork. She then enhances her conceptual and artistic work by experimenting with different materials and media and adds her personal perception of the space surrounding her. Anna characterizes her work by playing with spacial dimensions and adding a high level of materiality and meticulous precision to it.
During her residency at the Fish Factory Anna tried to grasp the relationship Icelanders have with their nature. While observing their behavior and lifestyle within the exceptional landscape of Iceland, Anna tried to gain consciousness for all living things around her. She went on several hikes in the surrounding mountains in order to experience the natural forces that work on the island with her own body. Her experiences in Iceland have fuelled her interdisciplinary research and enhanced her inspiration for her Ph.D. studies subject “The exhaustion of space in the area of the Anthropocene”.
Sofia Fresia and Delfo Pozzi are two Italian artists working in the fields of Painting and Photography. Sofia completed her MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts of Torino in March 2021, while Delfo is studying Photography at Accademia di Brera in Milano.
They decided to go to Iceland together in order to work on a common project focusing on landscape and climate change. During their time at the Fish Factory, Sofia and Delfo realized a series of works on paper using the technique of mixed media on cyanotype: Delfo took the photos and obtained the negatives, then they worked together at the printing process, and finally Sofia modified the printed cyanotype with pencils and watercolors in order to get a final result placed in the middle between painting and photography. During the time they spent in Iceland, they also worked on single projects: Delfo realized some photo series, while Sofia had the opportunity to create two big oil paintings on canvas inspired by pools, her personal universe of visual references.
Sofia Fresia (Italy, 1992) is a visual artist who draws mainly on the iconographic universe of swimming to create artworks that deal with contemporary society and the new difficulties involved in being part of it, with particular regard for the environment and for the problems that affect young people living in a changing world. In her main series Pools (2017 – ongoing), she uses references to recurring elements in her own experience, modifying and recombining them in order to create paintings that can provide an active reflection on today’s issues. The constant references to the swimming world recall her personal experience as a swimmer, but also the concept of social liquidity introduced by Z. Bauman and the key role of water for life on Earth.
Delfo has been studying Photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, since 2018. After a master’s degree cum laude in Literature at the University of Genoa, with a thesis on the Theory of narration, he chose photography as his favorite medium for expressing himself. Coming from an over ten-year passion for photojournalism and portrait, he is gradually probing and deepening the possibilities related to art photography. Even in this evolution, the goal of his research remains truly humanistic: to collect the testimony of the passage of time and the trace of the complexity of the relationships that are created between people in social contexts. He is a mountain enthusiast who loves rock and ice climbing, skiing, or simply take a tour on foot in the natural environment.
Lisette de Greeuw (1990) was born in Hoorn, the Netherlands. She lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. During her residency, she used the time at the Fish Factory to think, read and research. Besides that, she started to work on a new embroidery piece and a new series of drawings based on the embroidery work. She has also experimented a bit with folding lines and scratch letters.
Artist statement:
In my current practice, I’m working around (abstract) language and translation. I notice that I’m losing my own language. I don’t make, build, sentences as I’ve learned. I miss subtleties and nuances. I notice that when I would like to say something I’m searching for the right form to say it by constantly making translations.
By making translations, on one hand, you lose material and on the other, you can gain information. This is depending on the translation itself but also on the viewer, who interprets. By making different works that have this translation in it I’m testing the structural limits of communication of which language and translation are part of. I want to extend this into absurdity. To make a multitude of images that all have the same meaning. In a way, all those images are working as a tool to the actual work. But for me ‘the tool’ is as important as ‘the actual work’. I see every translation I make as a language on its own. Within each language, there are nuances and subtleties that you only get to know when you know the language well.
I created a lexicon (based on embroidery patterns) for making images, which creates a threshold for the viewer. It’s a personal logic that is systematized. I hold on to this structure to build images that can be filled with new meaning – independent of the material, medium, or scale of the work. In this system, I leave space for ‘mistakes’. Making mistakes loosen up the work and create space for new forms and meaning. By using a lexicon that not everyone understands I create a problem with communication: what is the best form for information and meaning to function as well as possible?
Mallory is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer from New York working out of Brooklyn. Mallory’s work consists of printmaking as well as wearable textiles; including drawing, painting, and small editions of clothing. She completed her B.F.A in Printmaking at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 2018 and have been working on independent projects and freelance work since; while attending residency programs and developing a clothing brand and collaborative screen printing business.
During her time at the Fish Factory, Mallory worked on a large-scale linen picture book, cooking, and drawing shared domestic spaces. This work came from thoughts of collectivity and how it relates to language, food, and handmade processes. Her main focus during my time at the factory was a latex coated linen book called Three as well as a short written manuscript, Tomorrow Morning.
Artist Statement:
Through multiple mediums and disciplines, I am interested in relationships. My primary focus is defining relationships, including romantic, familial, and other interpersonal relationships as they relate to relationships on a formal level. I am studying the butterfly effect; the way that small things can have an impact on larger systems. Three is a sculptural book about butterflies and feelings (the to the touch kind). I have noticed that these qualities of life often evade language; they exist more as sensations. Three exists within this space as a part of a whole; my work includes created objects as well as interactions – potlucks and parties or a video call. The translation of thoughts can vary visually across different languages but reduced they are all pictures made by sensitive human hands. The language within Three bridges the gap between language in its literal sense (thoughts as symbols as letters as words as sentences) and nonverbal exchange.
I am interested in the qualities of life that make it all kind of feel like it’s worth something. As things become more and more automated and clean and geometric sometimes the human touch can be lost. There is so much time spent trying to mimic the human touch that could be spent making a big dinner for your friends and family or holding someone really tightly. I am not yet willing to eliminate the more luscious qualities of life at the expense of more measured order (cleaner, faster, less waiting, less wondering, less mess). I would like to reframe the mess, frame it specifically so that it is viewed, and reframe touch so that the results of it are beautiful without retouch.
Imogen Marsteller is a British-American artist who expresses herself through photography, painting and drawing. She completed her BA in Studio Arts and Art and Architectural History at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and at the University of Edinburgh.
During her time at the Fish Factory, Imogen explored her many modes of creation – finding more connections between each way of making. Her work tends to focus on the exploration of friends and becoming friends with oneself, and all that entails. She references Art Historical compositions and color schemes within her works. In particular through painting and working with thread. This brings out an aesthetic interest focusing on line and contrast, thus fusing a graphic sensibility with a painterly one. She continued to explore the idea of monumental and painting further by using stitched lines and forms. She also used different shaped canvas, paper, or multiple pieces to create a quilt type of work – to further break down the body.
Artist Statement:
From, my early Pre-Raphaelite influence to my most recent interest in aspects of the Renaissance, the Baroque and Pop art, I have fused a graphic and painterly sensibility, as evidenced by my strong use of line, color and shade, with a visual focus on contemporary intimacy. My paintings and drawings use stoicism in restrained poses and monumentalism on an expanded scale. While my photography borders on the humorous and the serious, the commercial and the artistic. I use my painting to self-examine while I use my photography to distort through a surrealist lens, to capture female play through both my self-portraits and my depictions of others. All my mediums result in ennobling the lives of women and enriching my practice both figuratively and literally.
Karen Morris is a visual artist from Richmond, Virginia and she joined us here at the Fish Factory art residency for the month of May 2021. She spent her time here in Iceland traveling and taking pictures of landscapes. During her residency, she painted with pastels and she used her photos as a reference. The end result was beautiful, photorealistic pastel paintings of the Icelandic landscape.
Karen spent a lot of her time here visiting surrounding villages and their attractions and she always selflessly offered a ride to the supermarket or to the Djúpivogur hot pot! :)
