Joya: AiR / Katherine Leedale / GBR

“Joya was a cocoon and a loaf of good bread, sheltering and nourishing in equal measure.

I took with me ideas that quickly became redundant, so formative is this place. Rather than write about sailors and monsters, I found the heat, the cracked land, the thirst (of various kinds), the conversations with other artists, the expanse of time, the cool interiors and the strong sense of being held in suspension all insisted their way into my words.

While in residence I sliced up airport magazines to form cut-up poems (like a ransom note? asked another artist), using them to think through my nascent process and finding them a useful tool to tap into unconscious seams of interest as well as reflect and challenge patterns of word use. The colour palette of the surroundings and house and the rhythms of each day made themselves known, joining a palette of perennial interests. Certain textures, objects and the rise and fall of the sun repeatedly appeared in these works - china, for example, or gold.

The thinking space afforded by Donna and Simon's care meant I was able to tackle new technical challenges in my pen-to-paper writing, setting about capturing the movement of leaves and flies within set rhyme schemes, or exploring a mythic love in sonnet form, or a classical Greek ode to a much-longed-for ice-cold full-fat Coke. Finding support and encouragement from fellow residents meant I swallowed my nerves and actually memorised spoken word pieces before performing and filming in the land itself. I left poems on paper under rocks and in holes.

Each evening a handful of haiku made a diary of the day. This short form, existing so ephemerally, was perfect to capture the experience as it happened.

Now I am back in the UK I am shaping all these pieces into an interconnected set of three pamphlets. It feels good to have a concrete outcome but I would have been as delighted by the strides my writing practice took at Joya and the clarity of vision that the fortnight gave me.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Katherine Leedale

Katherine Leedale studied English Literature with papers in Italian literature and culture at the University of Cambridge, and photography at the University of the Arts London. After graduating from the latter in 2010 she spent twelve years combining work as a portrait, theatre and dance photographer with her own arts practice and commissions as a visual arts workshop facilitator.

Exhibitions, readings and performances include The Vagina Festival; exhibitor at the PageMasters Zine Fair at South London Gallery; several iterations of The Icing Room including performed reading and installation of the manifesto Against Bathing at ‘I’m in the Bath, Where Are You?’; inclusion in ‘To Make Radical Poetry from Home’ publication, Athens Zine Bibliotheque; inclusion in the Inland Project at the Poetry Cafe; writing included in UWE Centre for Fine Print Research Book Arts Newsletter; published work as part of the Bloomsbury Festival; solo exhibition at VAULT festival; group exhibition at Photofusion Gallery; solo exhibition at the Yard Theatre.

She is the founder and curator of the micro-gallery and library gallery neuf neuf, an itinerant and occasionally activated space for small works of all disciplines.

Simon Beckmann26 September 2023