photo Simon Beckmann
Joya: AiR / Kimberley Beesley / MA Painting / Manchester School of Art Postgraduate Residency
photo Simon Beckmann
Joya: AiR / Georgina Hustler / MA Painting / Manchester School of Art Postgraduate Residency
photo Simon Beckmann
Joya: AiR / Bethany Jones / MA Fine Art / Manchester School of Art Postgraduate Residency
‘Visiting Joya: AiR has been a wonderful experience, it’s given me the chance to realise perspective and importance within my painting and drawing practices but also my day to day life.
It’s given me the spring in my step to tackle the next phase of work and it feels great to be excited to get back to the studio, even if the weather won’t be coming with me!
A big thank you to our hosts Donna and Simon for being so wonderful and creating such a welcoming creative space’.
photo Simon Beckmann
Joya: AiR / Anne Rowland / MA Painting / Manchester School of Art Postgraduate Residency
‘I was amazed by the colours of the landscape on the journey between Murcia Airport and Joya: AiR - the pink of the stone and the incredible light really stood out. We were in for a fabulous week.
I’ve focused on the landscape, different views in every direction, my paintings becoming more abstract as the week went on. Sunrise, terraced landscape, zoomed-in cropped buildings, even the colours of the concrete mixer and adjacent tarpaulin - there’s so much here to inspire. The long days in this serene environment give lots of time for painting, walking, contemplating, collaborating and cameraderie. I’ve made lots of work, one painting leading onto another idea, and have a full sketchbook which will provide inspiration for lots of future work. I’ve tried unexpected new things including cynotype, whittling and meditation! Donna and Simon are wonderful hosts’.
photo Simon Beckmann
Joya: AiR / Ruth Morrissey / MA Painting / Manchester School of Art Postgraduate Residency
photo Simon Beckmann
Joya: AiR / Isobel Panatti-Reeve / MA Painting / Manchester School of Art Postgraduate Residency
‘I came to Joya: AiR with no plan of what I wanted to create, other than to expand my artistic practice by experimenting in a landscape completely new to me.
With walking being a huge part of my existing practice, I spent much of my time exploring the rugged landscape close to the house, making close friends with a cat named Nippy and immersing myself in a living environment I had never experienced before.
After an early morning walk to the top of one of the surrounding mountains, I became inspired to cyanotype print onto rocks, roofing tiles, wood and stray bits of pottery around the hills. My main practice involves a lot of analogue photography experimentation, and delving back into cyanotypes was a refreshing experience especially on new surfaces.
After realising I couldn't bring the larger pieces back with me I decided to put them back into the landscape, in the dried out river beds and rock falls surrounding me, giving my work back to the landscape I had taken it from.
My time at Joya: AiR has been refreshing, invigorating and eye opening, it is certainly a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience both a different type of living and a different way of creating’.
Isobel Panatti-Reeve
@izzypanarty - instagram
photo Simon Beckmann
Joya: AiR / group residency / Manchester School of Art / Manchester Metropolitan University / ENG
Joya: AiR is once again delighted to host Manchester School of Art / Manchester Metropolitan University after a few years break (thanks to the pandemic). This time led by Dr Dave Griffiths (Senior Lecturer and Section Head, Art Postgraduate) and teaching assistant Anna Clough, as Brigitte Jurack (Reader and Head of Sculpture/Time Based Arts), who has traditionally brought student to us is exhibiting in HOME Manchester. Her exhibition ‘Fieldnotes’ and I quote…
A series of diaristic drawings of rocks with compressed fauna or marine life, and fungi, are shown together with photographs of collaborative happenings with Manchester School of Art students, on land that has been degraded through intensive monoculture and water shortage or excess. Whilst the drawings depict geological time, the photographs document moments of re-imagining, being in the land(scape). Produced in two vastly different European climates, Dovestones in Greater Manchester and one of the most arid, Joya: arte + ecología / AiR in southern Spain, they function as an homage to water, an increasingly scarce natural resource.
The students, as always, are eclectic and super enthusiastic investigating every mountain and valley experimenting with land based installation, moulding clay, weaving dry grass, experimenting with alternative photography techniques, embroidery, stone carving and much more.
It has been great to bring this collective force of nature into the natural habitat of the high sierras of Almería.
We look forward to next year…
And in their absence they have left their sound… Spotify Manchester School of Art at Joya: AiR 22 playlist