Without - Collezionando Assenze

Without - Collezionando Assenze

Paola Bernardelli

Without - Collezionando Assenze

Paola Bernardelli

Paola Bernardelli’s one month artist residency in Rome was arranged in collaboration with and curated by Maria Rosa Sossai and Claudia Rampelli, co-curators at Accademia Libera delle Arti. The studio was provided by ISFCI School of Photography, courtesy Ottavio Celestino, and the resulting exhibition/performance took place in the courtyard of the School over a three days period.

In an improvised living room Paola heard the stories relative to personal objects that the public was invited to bring along with them, subsequently photographing each personal object with a Polaroid camera and exhibiting the photos. Later in the evening the stories were hand written on individual cards and, together with the Polaroids, formed an archive of memories as imperfect and precarious as memory itself. Choosing to use a Polaroid camera and relying on memory rather than a faithful recording for the transcription of the stories, emphasize the imperfection and impermanence of the mechanisms of memory itself, thus evoking a sense of loss and absence. The title references absence and also its externalisation.

This residency kick-started four collaborative exchange residencies between the two roman institutions and the Void Art School in Derry and was also the prelude to further international collaborations between Art Arcadia and artists and art institutions from Italy, Canada and the UK.






by Neil Doherty

Mourning Becomes Electra I

Mourning Becomes Electra I

Collaborative Artist Exchange

Mourning Becomes Electra I

Collaborative Artist Exchange

Mourning Becomes Electra l was the first instalment of a collaborative artists exchange programme that enabled young artists from Derry to take part in a career development experience in Rome, based on the comparison and dialogue between cultures and disciplines. The four young artists used diverse creative approaches, working in collaboration with four graduates from the Istituto Superiore di Fotografia e Comunicazione Integrata.
This programme was the result of a conversation between Art Arcadia’s Paola Bernardelli and Rome based curator Maria Rosa Sossai and was developed as a collaboration between Void Art School and ISFCI. Curated by ALA Accademia Libera delle Arti, a platform for contemporary art and education based in Rome, the programme successfully ran for two years, had four residencies and helped 19 young artists develop their professional career in an international context.

Artists:
Eamonn Brown | Claudio Cerasoli | Nicole Furlan | Carlo Lazzari | Eve Logue | Richard Magee | Emma Nicholas | Agnese Sbaffi

Photos by Agnese Sbaffi and Claudio Cerasoli



by Neil Doherty

Mourning Becomes Electra II

Mourning Becomes Electra II

Collaborative Artist Exchange

Mourning Becomes Electra II

Collaborative Artist Exchange

This was the second leg of Mourning Becomes Electra, following on from the previous collaborative residency exchange that had taken place in Rome. In this second instalment four young artists from Rome took part in a career development experience in Derry, continuing the dialogue previously initiated in Rome with the four local artists. The participants teamed up in order to explore diverse creative approaches to the theme suggested by curators Maria Rosa Sossai and Claudia Rampelli, using resources and support from the Void Art School.
During 2013 Derry was host to the UK City of Culture and the Italian graduates had the opportunity to visit major exhibitions and events and also to receive tailored talks from curator Gregory McCartney and artists Ackroyd & Harvey and Locky Morris.
The work resulting from Mourning Becomes Electra I & II was exhibited both in Rome and Derry, and for most of the participants this represented their first opportunity to take part in an international exhibition.

Artists:
Eamonn Brown | Claudio Cerasoli | Nicole Furlan | Carlo Lazzari | Eve Logue | Richard Magee | Emma Nicholas | Agnese Sbaffi






by Neil Doherty

Lay Devotions & Flawed Recollections

Paola Bernardelli

Lay Devotions & Flawed Recollections

Paola Bernardelli

LAY DEVOTIONS & FLAWED RECOLLECTIONS​

The Lewyc Institute of Contemporary Art is an experimental space situated in the home of Theo Sims. It presents site and context specific art within a domestic setting, offering an apartment and studio space in historic Point Douglas, just fifteen minutes from the Winnipeg’s downtown.

In 2014 Paola Bernardelli was the first artist to be invited to take part in a creative residency to research, produce and exhibit new work.

The end of project exhibition consisted of two installations; Lay Devotions was a multi part video and audio installation created during her time spent in Winnipeg as part of her residency with LICA and features a collaboration with Vincent Spina of Italia Barbers on Main Street. Flawed Recollections was the development of an installation previously conceived of in Derry and further developed during the residency, and involved multiple slide projectors presented in a site-specific context.

As part of the residency she also hosted a Salon Night at PLATFORM, presenting an artist talk and meeting fellow artists in Winnipeg. Many of the creative connections she developed with arts practitioners, funders and artists through this residency still form a significant role within her creative practice, and also over time came to constitute and important portion of Art Arcadia’s network.






by Neil Doherty

Theo Sims

Theo Sims

La Mola: Curatorial Residency

Theo Sims

La Mola: Curatorial Residency

In 2014 Paola Bernardelli invited artist and curator Theo Sims to carry out a research based residency in Italy and meet art practitioners in Rome for possible future collaborations with LICA (Lewyc Institute of Contemporary Art).

Whilst most residencies are geared towards artists, Art Arcadia also recognises the need to encourage mobility and discussion to wider creative practitioners such as curators, technicians and directors.

Sims also visited La Mola, in Pietrafitta, one of the Art Arcadia sites, researching the future possibility of creating a collaboration/exchange between artists in Western Canada and Central Italy.

Photos below by Theo Sims









by Neil Doherty

Tracy Peters

Tracy Peters

Tide land

Tracy Peters

Tide Land

Tracy Peters is a Canadian prairie-based artist who was the first international artist in residence at The Social Studios and Gallery in Derry. The residency was organised by Paola Bernardelli in partnership with Void Gallery.

Tide Land is the title of Tracy Peters’ end of residency exhibition at The Social, consisting of new work that investigated the ever-shifting environment of a north Atlantic shoreline. As part of her residency Tracy was also invited to exhibit her work and facilitate workshops at the Remote Photo Festival in Donegal, Ireland. Funded by the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council, Tracy’s residency fitted seamlessly into both the local arts and wider communities, offering a new perspective on a familiar landscape. Over the duration of the residency, Tracy exhibited her work twice while also delivering artist talks and workshops.






by Neil Doherty

Mak9

Mak9

[ri-ver-be-ro]

Mak9

[ri-ver-be-ro]

Resonance of a region can carry in the cultural expression within individuals; their gestures, language and the landscape that connect, travel and are packaged within us. [ri-ver-be-ro] is a sense of place through the interaction of people, its materials and cartography, connecting the relationships that unfolded between Italy and Northern Ireland through the artist response to an overseas residency and home territories.

In this two-part residency programme taken up by artist collective Mak9, the four participating artists spent two weeks in Pietrafitta, in Central Italy, in October 2016. This rural residency was followed in March 2017 by a site specific exhibition in St. Martin’s, a deconsecrated church in East Belfast, and a series of workshops, walks and talks as part of the Ulster University Arts & Culture programme.
For more info about the artist residency at La Mola, please check our blog page.

Mak9 are Stuart Cairns, Alice Clark, Gail Mahon and Heather Dornan Wilson





















Blog

by Neil Doherty

Irene Bindi

Irene Bindi

Irene Bindi

Irene Bindi

Irene Bindi’s ‘notte sopra, vipere sotto’ was developed during her artist residency at our La Mola site in Pietrafitta FR. It takes as its starting point Oskar Fishinger’s ‘Walking from Berlin to Munich’ (1927). As an exercise, Bindi walked from Pietrafitta to Sora, 27km away, taking hundreds of photographs in preparation for a conceptual ‘film’ documenting the journey.

In her ‘Annoucing notte sopra, vipere sotto’ installation at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, Bindi presents repeated field recordings and collages from segments of the walk, which are deliberately indistinguishable as start, rest, or end points. This is mirrored by the fact that Bindi chooses not to present the journey in chronological order, instead selecting key photographs as templates, recreating, disordering and repeating images. Bindi alters her walk from a single path/line, into a knot, where deadly and slow moving vipers continue to sleep, coiled in the grasses lining the roadways. Bindi also recorded animal screams in the Valley, people’s footsteps through the village streets and on marble staircases, as a back drop to her expedition, adding further layers of disorientation.

About the artist- Irene Bindi‘s work combines variations of installation, collage, and sound. Informed by formal and structural elements of experimental cinema, her projects often manifest as “film without film”, where material film forms the conceptual starting point for an exploration. In recent work, the deconstruction and reconstruction of the moving and/or photographic image, using non-photographic material, attempts to evoke epistemological questions about the essential image, material/medium adherence, and culturally defined areas.

Aiming to question the prescribed narrative and cultural value of objects and spaces, Bindi’s interest is in breaking down images and their surroundings to simple physical relations and generating confusion. She is interested in the way that inversions, material alterations, and re-contextualisations can affect the way that we navigate artworks.

As a visual and sound artist, Irene Bindi has exhibited and performed in venues across Canada and the United States. She holds an MA in Film Studies from York University, and is production editor for the progressive Winnipeg-based book publisher ARP Books.

For more information about irene Bindi’s work during the residency, please check...





















Blog

by Neil Doherty

Sara Riel

Sara Riel

Solo At Marshall House

Sara Riel

Solo At Marshall House

Sara Riel (Reykjavík, Iceland) is a master drawer and all her work have their origin in the drawing that she then fully realizes as works of art in different medias. Her artwork have a distinct character and her career is rather unusual. She studied in Berlin and got her masters degree from Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee in 2005, then took an extra year as Meisterschuler. In these years she was very active in the graffity/street art scene of Berlin as well as a part of a international network of urban artist. Her urban-art can be seen in various places such as Tokyo, Berlin, Barcelona and of course Reykjavík. Her distinguished big scale murals are familiar to everyone used to walk around Reykjavik and have become an integral part of the urban landscape. Sara Riel has along with creating urban art developed her visual language and shown her works in all of Icelands major museums as well as taken part in various projects, residencies and exhibitions abroad.

Additionally to her fine art, she has designed album and book covers, music videos, opening sequences for television series and made illustrations for various clients. Sara Riel has works in major art collections owned by The National museum, The Reykjavík Art Museum and in private collections. She has been granted Official Artist salary/The State Of Iceland, numerous times and has been awarded grants and art prices.

This residency will conclude with a solo exhibition at the Kling and Bang Gallery, Marshallhouse in Reykjavík City. Curator is Daniel Björnsson and producer is Ragnheiður Pálsdóttir.

The exhibition will contain new drawings, paintings, graphics, sculpture and performance. Plus a book about the process and the ideas behind automatic creations, and also a new mural in Reykjavík.

The artwork will be, like all of Sara’s work, a result of drawings made by hand and in the spirit of automatic drawing. From there she works in different media through computer, 3d printing, graphics, paintings and sculpture. The foundation of the exhibition are roughly 100 drawings she has already produced and that represent a new and exciting visual language that she can call her own. During her residency at La Mola, Sara Riel will make drawings and paintings that she will edit digitally for further productions of artworks in multiple medias.

http://sarariel.com/






by Neil Doherty

UmbriaMico

UmbriaMiCo

Festival Del Mondo In Comune

I Percorsi Del Desidero

UmbriaMiCo

I Percorsi Del Desidero

UmbriaMiCo – Festival del Mondo in Comune is a Tamat NGO project co-funded by Agenzia Italiana per la Cooperazione allo Sviluppo. The 2018 edition took place in seven cities in the Regione Umbria from 1st to 9th June.

Art Arcadia’s Programme Manager Paola Bernardelli was invited to curate a call for artists that resulted in the selection of 18 artists from three continents, all based in Umbria. The selected artists responded to the theme of the call ‘Desire Paths’ and the exhibitions took place in three locations: Complesso Monumentale di San Pietro in Perugia, Museo Dinamico del Laterizio e delle Terrecotte in Marsciano, and the Auditorium Santa Caterina in Foligno.

Participating artists: Laura Alunni | Lucia Arcelli | Fabrizio Bellini | Maria Eugenia Caceres | Diana Ciubotariu | Saikou Colley | Elizabeth Cura | Simone Di Stefano | Emmanuel Di Tommaso | Osamudiamen Anthony Edobor | Kennedy Eghomie | Chuks Etumudon | Modulamin Jammeh | Michael Patrick | Valeria Pierini | Elisa Pietrelli | Violeta Raclau | Nicola Renzi















by Neil Doherty