Joya: AiR / Zoe Tissandier / UK
“On my first day at Joya: AiR I wrote in my notebook ‘You have all the time in the world Zoe’. I often experienced time differently at Joya – it felt eternal. And as I draft this at the airport leaving Spain, desperately trying to capture the last essence of my residency experience, I realise soon it will exist only as memories, documents and images. However, I believe this collection of thoughts and ideas will have longevity.
I came to Joya with the intention of utilising the abundance of sunlight to produce photopolymer plates. Though such experiments were undertaken, as was inevitable other investigations and production took place.
I have an on-going project whereby I collect news headlines and re-create these using various media/technology. I have a particular collection that I return to often. They have previously existed in various incarnations – as letterpress prints and digital projections. I found myself drawn to these yet again during the residency and created these as photopolymer plates (to be printed on my return to the UK).
I collected ‘new’ current news headlines during my time at Joya. They have now become a part of this on-going project and have been subsumed into my collection. It will be interesting to see what they signify in a week, month, and year.
The physical newspaper also became a material for me during the residency as I began to experiment with cutting up and collaging news images and using the studio window as a way to experiment with the transparent nature of the paper.
In addition, I also created Cyan prints of various plants and objects that existed in the landscape and environment around Joya. I was interested in the layers of history that inhabit the space and the stories these objects reveal.
The positive experience will certainly influence the ‘personal’ headlines I intend to create as a document of my residency period”.
Zoe Tissandier