July - August 2017
UK based artists in residence in Mexico
Two artists who responded through an open call hosted by Chelsea College of Art, London.
Three artists selected through an open call, with the support of the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL). These three artists are accommodated by the University of Oaxaca (UABJO)
UABJO has also supported FFR with studio space and exhibition space.
Holly Froy
Holly joined up with FFR two weeks ahead of the 2017 residency in Oaxaca. She completed a series of studies of nopal in the fields in the Morelos region of Mexico alongside botanical illustrator Rosemary Wise and FFR lead artist Antonia Bruce.
Holly studied Painting at the University of Brighton. She is concerned with domestic space and the kitchen sink, literally. After graduating, she joined the Drawing Intensive preparatory programme at the Royal Drawing School, followed by The Drawing Year. She has started to look outside the domestic space and at how a figure can sit in the landscape and in other imagined spaces. She is interested in where drawing and painting meet.
Anne-Laure Carruth
Anne-Laure is a creative explorer, working across the realms of art, architecture and design. Her purpose in life is to inspire others to explore their full potential through creativity. She readily shares her personal journey, a long meandering one, leading her away from the trappings of social norms working as an architect in a soul destroying office environment; to life affirming expeditions, remote landscape painting and personal mental health exploration through drawing. She believes that to be human is to be creative and that we all have the capacity to engage with this essential human need to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Her ambition is to pursue her own creative research and practice across different regions of the world, and in so doing, connecting and learning from other peoples and cultures.
"Beginning my journey in the kitchens of Oaxaca, this investigation will lead me deep into the landscapes surrounding the city - exploring the profound relationship we hold with the natural world and the sustenance it gives us both physically as well as spiritually."
http://www.anne-laurecarruth.com/
Fiona Beveridge
Fiona is a multidisciplinary artist who constructs mixed media environments that are vitalised by colour and metamorphosis. Her work is spontaneously playful as she combines drawing and sculptural methods to create sensory stimulated experiences through visual perception and emotion.
Fiona works impulsively with found material that is then removed of its intentional concept as she forms patterns of imagery through her experimental projects.
She is also interested in material purpose and unpredictable surface outcomes, as well as the indulgence of mark making and how natural systems can adapt and alter their own structures to account for new forces and therefore form new orders.
Received additional funding from the Hope Scott Trust (http://www.hopescotttrust.co.uk)
Orelie Pascale Wright - Chelsea
Craft and textiles are deeply rooted in Orelie’s work. Her investigations into colour, volume, texture and shape are essential to her practise which values the act of repetition in the creation of handmade traditions. Keen on biology and the micro patterns found in nature, she plays with the aesthetics and symbolism of lines, connections and the relations they form, in her exploration and creation of visual cycles.
"I am particularly intrigued by the idea of chains and webs as visual interconnections. Following on from my previous work such as ‘hay mas tiempo que vida’ and ‘physicologies’, I want to create a series of textile works conveying the complex relationships that exist between biological cycles, and the traditions and myths surrounding nopal."
oreliepascalewright.wordpress.com
Halima Akhtar - Chelsea
Halima is a London based artist whose multidisciplinary practice is grounded in curiosity and a responsive implementation of various processes and forms according to meaning. The vocabulary of marks she develops juxtaposes heavier blocks and smudges of flooded colour against soft, almost inconspicuous traces of line.
Halima adopts a sense of fluidity in negotiating the progression between processes of drawing and three dimensional making. Her work recurrently looks to investigative the fundamental role light and shadow play in the dynamic restructuring of spatial experiences and rendering transitional states of flux.
"The woven pieces I have been developing are created flat and then utilize the tension of the weave and rigidity of the wood to allow the structure to be navigated and twisted."
"In the spirit of sustainable practice and embracing ad hoc means of making I would also like to experiment with use of natural dyes and creating my drawing materials from the land."
https://halimaakhtar.wordpress.com/
