An exploration of contemporary and ephemeral art at Joya: AiR within the Parque Natural Sierra María-Los Vélez, Andalucía, Spain.
Joya: SENDA: is a project for contemporary, multi-disciplinary and ephemeral art and is designed to offer international artists the opportunity to develop their practice within an environment of outstanding natural beauty, a semi wilderness on the high mediterranean steppe.
Brief: Rationalism, especially when applied to the natural world, has become a vector for exploitation. Our ‘reasoned’ response to nature is to measure how best it can serve our appetite for food, shelter and wealth. Our thinking when embraced by the natural world is seldom defined by an emotional response. Infrequently do we encounter the intangible without the desire to anatomise or elucidate meaning.
We have become un-empathetic to the inanimate, the non-living and the apparently motionless. The preternatural, that which is outside our sense of normal, has escaped us. And infrequently can our individual systemic thinking grasp the unrevealed for ‘the unseen exists and has properties’ (Richard Ford The Lay of the Land 2006), attributions we fail to comprehend simultaneously as the Earth’s four spheres exert their influence upon life. Hyperobjects forgo self-knowledge, obscuring our place in the biosphere.
On a planet with a rapidly declining climate we are looking to address the unseen, the character of the sublime as it struggles to appear, not to celebrate its loss but justify its salvation.
Simon Beckmann curator and co-founder of Joya: arte + ecología / AiR
SENDA will be a series of multi-disciplinary and ephemeral interventions within the landscape. Contemporary art, creative thought and ideas will make subtle and transitory interventions within the pine forested sierras, the clay bottomed barrancos and fossil strewn dry riverbeds called ramblas.
As a rolling commission Joya: arte + ecología / AiR intends to populate the land around the residency, accumulating artworks (ephemeral or permanent), documenting events and inviting the public to access the project.
Inaugural work:
Title: Bajo la Sierra Larga / Simon Linington
The Joya: SENDA inaugural work is by artist Simon Linington…
‘Bajo la Sierra Larga’ is a site-specific sculpture, and the first from the Souvenir series made to be presented outside.
The Souvenir series is an ongoing sculptural sequence that displays broken down materials in acrylic or glass vitrines. The materials for this sculpture have been taken from a nearby dry riverbed, and sorted by size, type and colour.
I grew up on the Isle of Wight, and as a child I would go to Alum Bay to fill glass bottles with coloured sands from the cliff face. Ever since, material and place have been inseparable.
Biography
Simon Linington is an artist dividing his time working between England, Spain and Mexico City. He has a BA (Hons) in Sculpture from Chelsea University of the Arts, London. In 2010 he was awarded the Emerging Artists Bursary Award by the Royal Society of Sculptors and exhibits internationally.
Notable solo exhibitions include More home ideas, Calle Tajin, Mexico City (2020), LA LA LAND, William Benington Gallery, London (2019), In from the light, Castor, London (2018), Everything is medicine, Lily Brooke, London (2017), Everything can be broken, Division of Labour, London (2017), Now Showing..., Manchester Contemporary (2015), Out of the Dark, Hayward Gallery, London (2015), Dirty Matters, Galleria Emma Thomas, São Paulo (2015).
Notable group exhibitions include From Cellar to Garret, South Parade, London (2021), Salon Acme 8, Mexico City (2020), Under the Volcano, Brooke Benington Residencies, Mexico City (2020), Habitual, Castor, London (2020), Prevent This Tragedy, DATEAGLE ART at Post_Institute, London (2018), Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, William Benington Projects, (2017), Art Rotterdam with Division of Labour (2017), The London Art Fair with IMT Gallery (2017), Arco Madrid with Galleria Emma Thomas (2015).
Simon’s first solo publication LA LA LAND was published by William Benington Gallery, London, in 2019 and was released on the occasion of his first play, Simon Says.
“Art creates an intimacy between subject and object in ways that lead to profound, yet sometimes discomforting, connection. It is this connection that is crucial to our ability to find solutions to the climate crisis. Whilst the dominant discourses of climate change construct a clean and sterile narrative suggesting that the crisis can be addressed by some shiny new technology, and a bit of adaptation, those who paint, dance until the moon drops, pen ecstatic poems, capture dying suns, are best placed to create different stories. Art has the capacity to engage with the murk and mess of life and, importantly, its profound beauty too – art is a celebration, and criticism, of that which makes us human and it is an exploration of this humanness that is required if we are to heal our violent relationship with the more-than-human world. It is our profound disconnection from this world that is the cause of climate change and only art has the techniques and approaches to heal this disconnection and, in so doing, build our awareness of what we are doing to this beautiful planet.”
SENDA is an initiative from Joya: arte + ecología / AiR. This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
Credit must be given to the Joya: AiR and individual artists who’s work is featured within SENDA
Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.
No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.