Joya: AiR / Alice Gompels / GBR

“It is a rare opportunity to stay in one place for two weeks: no comings and goings, no visitors, no shopping to collect or work to go to. A pleasure to find yourself on acres of land intersected by only small tracks, seven artists, and a large, empty, gorge. Juxtaposing the sparse landscape, however, is the abundance of what Donna and Simon have created, which presents as a large Farmhouse, surrounded by fruit trees and made up of light bedrooms and beautiful studios. In reality, there is even more than initially meets the eye.

For me, the set-up at Joya: AiR facilitated a perfect balance between private work and time to be with and learn from some incredible artists. In the studio, I was working on moving between printmaking and painting, to see how my process of image-making can become more fluid, through images based in magical realism and Andalucía.

Thank you to Simon and Donna for being great company and creating a space with such a vision. I am deeply grateful to my fellow artists who also revealed how nourishing it can be to live in an artistic community.

Alice Gompels

Alice’s work is about quiet moments, the times in silence that allow your brain to drift, and the places this can lead. Undertaking an art foundation at Kingston University in 2017, Alice went on to study Illustration (BA) at the University of Brighton, where she was awarded the chance to study at MCAD (Minneapolis) for four months. During the rest of her university career, she had several residencies across Europe, working on socially engaged projects in Rotterdam, Skopje and Bruges. Alice takes great pleasure in expanding her practice through study. After graduating in 2020, Alice worked on painting commissions and saved money to move abroad for further study. Arriving in Florence in 2021, she studied a six-month intensive technical drawing course. In September 2022, she received a grant to attend a specialisation course at Il Bisonte, a printmaking school in San Nicolò, where she continues to enjoy producing work today.