Joya: guest curators
At Joya: AiR, the guest curator plays a pivotal role in shaping and enhancing the residency’s creative and intellectual programme. Collaborating with Joya: AiR and working closely with participants, the guest curator develops thematic frameworks and curatorial concepts that engage both resident artists and the broader ecological context of the site. Their responsibilities include selecting and introducing works or programmes that resonate with Joya’s mission at the intersection of contemporary practice and environmental inquiry, facilitating dialogues among residents, organising presentations or exhibitions, and contributing specialist expertise that enriches the residency’s cultural exchange. By bringing distinctive perspectives and networks to Joya: AiR, the guest curator helps extend the impact of the residency beyond the immediate landscape into international artistic discourse. This role is typically collaborative and designed to expand the creative possibilities of the programme while upholding Joya: AiR’s commitments to sustainability, interdisciplinary inquiry, and site‑responsive practice.
Maddie Rose Hills:
Mater was founded by Maddie Rose Hills (b. England, 1993), who came to an interest in materials first and foremost as an artist. After more than a decade of studying and practising as an artist, she developed a close, hands-on relationship with materials and became interested in the tactile knowledge that artists build through making.
Alongside her studio practice, Hills curated exhibitions and wrote about art before completing a Master’s in Art and Material Histories at City & Guilds Art School of London, where she combined academic research with material experimentation.
Hills' paintings are held in public and private collections, and her material research has led to collaborations ranging from sculptures in Future Materials Bank, to a lamp collection for Porta Romana.
Both the non-verbal/sensorial alongside the theoretical/analytical come together to inform Hills’ approach to Mater.
Studies:
City & Guilds of London Art School. Masters (Distinction) Art & Material Histories, 2021
Universtiy of the West England, Bristol. BA (First Class Honours) Drawing and Applied Arts, 2012-15
AUB, Art Foundation, 2011-12
Annie Edwards:
Having undertaken residencies herself and built close relationships with the organisers, she is able to provide students with a safe, supportive, and enriching experience that fosters artistic growth, professional development, and cultural exchange.
Annie Edwards’ essential area of focus is the human body. Her multidisciplinary practice distorts our familiar sense of reality by incorporating robotic, figurative sculptures with abstracted skeletal forms. Annie’s installation and performances aim to understand the body from biological, psychoanalytical and social perspectives. Her research choreographs the tension between body and machine, embedding visceral knowledge into mechanical gesture. Annie references wider systems of control present in domestic, medical and industrial environments, drawing on her personal experience of trauma, neurodiversity, atopic illness, and her background in farming.
www.annieedwards.com @a_knee___
