Joya: arte + ecología is looking for a ‘technical coordinator’ to be a permanent part of their collective.

Duties will include:

Web development

Programming

Electrical engineering

Co-Curating electronic arts projects

Promotion

Furthermore the technical coordinator will be invited to contribute to all other aspects of our collective.

Joya: arte + ecología is an arts collective based at Cortijada Los Gázquez in the heart of the Parque Natural Sierra María – Los Vélez in the north of the Provincia de Almería, Andalucía. The guiding principle behind the activities of the organisation is to facilitate, through production and collaboration, art and artists whose work manifests a discourse with the environment and sustainability… read more here

‘Luce Choules has spoken inspiringly about Joya: arte + ecología and the landscape of the Parque Natural Sierra María-Los Vélez – I would love to share in the special atmosphere of creative living you have made there. Luce’s small rocks sitting on her windowsill are a constant reminder of the landscape and I long to see those illuminated by the light of that place. With Joya in mind I have been developing some new ideas to test my practice in the context of an expansive landscape – an opportunity to explore colour and aerial perspective. Adding this new element to my established concerns of sequence and duration is an exciting prospect’.

Please follow this link to read Elizabeth Jackson’s proposal.

“Luce Choules me ha hablado de manera inspiradora sobre Joya: arte + ecología y el paisaje del Parque Natural de Sierra María-Los Vélez. Me gustaría participar de esa atmósfera especial de vida creativa que habéis creado allí. Las pequeñas piedras de Luce posadas en su alféizar son un recordatorio constante del paisaje y anhelo verlas iluminadas por la luz de ese lugar. Con Joya en mente he estado desarrollando algunas ideas nuevas para poner a prueba mi trabajo artístico en el contexto de un paisaje extenso, una oportunidad para explorar el color y la perspectiva aérea. Añadir este nuevo elemento a mis inquietudes sobre la secuencia y la duración es una perspectiva emocionante”.

Sigue este enlace para obtener más información sobre el proyecto de Elizabeth Jackson para Joya: arte + ecología.

David Mabb has been working with the designs of 19th century designer and socialist William Morris for over ten years. William Morris thought that interior design had a fundamental role to play in the transformation of everyday life. This essentially political motivation - a commitment to the radical potential of design - is behind much of his work as a designer and craftsman and the setting up of Morris & Co. Morris’ designs constituted a radical break with the orthodoxy of neo-Gothic of his time. They are highly schematized representations of nature, where it is always summer and never winter; the plants are always in leaf, often flowering, with their fruits available in abundance, ripe for picking, and with no human labour in sight. This is a Utopian vision, an image of Cokaygne. Mabb’s paintings, photographs, textiles and videos all, in different ways, work with and against Morris’ utopian designs by contrasting them with other forms of modernist production. Mabb never simply paints or covers over the Morris pattern with another image: elements of the Morris pattern always poke or burst through. This combination produces an unstable picture space that is never fixed, where a Morris pattern and the other image are never able to fully merge or separate.

David Mabb will view his residency through his engagement with the work of William Morris. Morris never went to Spain, however he was well aware of Islamic design and his Peacock and Dragon woven textile is heavily dependent on examples of Spanish Islamic weaving. Mabb might imagine what Morris would have made of the Alhambra or the desert foliage, or might deliberate on Morris as a proto-green in the context of Cortijada Los Gázquez, or by reading Morris’ Icelandic journals it might be possible to create a counter-journal, a distorted mirror to the Icelandic Journals. Mabb might deliberate on all these things, or none of them.

To find out more about David Mabb’s Joya: arte + ecología residency, please follow this link.

This painting course is the opportunity to embrace the natural surroundings of Cortijada Los Gázquez in the heart of the Parque Natural Sierra María-Los Vélez. This is a wild and dramatic landscape made all the more beautiful by the winter sunshine. The light is low, casting long shadows across a textured and beautifully coloured landscape.

Here you can work on and develop individual painting projects. The discussion can be about ideas and techniques, composition and colour. Additionally we have talks in the evenings where we look at personal development and direction helping you to build your own visual language…

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