Joya: arte + ecología / lightsgoingon
Friend and collaborator with Joya: arte + ecología, Gill Nicol of lightsgoingon (former Head of Interaction at Arnolfini Gallery; Director of Spike Print Studio in Bristol and numerous other things) has kindly offered to help us ameliorate our arts award, AGUAZERO. Joya: arte + ecología is inviting submissions for a competition which has an environmental agenda.
Each week Gill Nicol, as an independent arts consultant specialising in contemporary art, will be looking at artists from the past (1960’s onwards) who have engaged environmental issues through their work. These ‘posts’ are designed to be ‘inspirational prompts’ for those considering applying for the award. She will be posting on her web site, lightsgoingon, and here on our blog as well as on the Joya: arte + ecología Facebook Page.
‘I have been invited by Simon and Donna Beckmann – founders of Joya: arte + ecología, an artists residency/opportunity programme based at Los Gázquez, a beautiful artist’s eco-retreat in Southern Spain – to be a guest blogger for the next three months. The theme is around artists and ecology and supports a new award for artists entitled AGUAZERO; an amazing opportunity to work in this beautiful place. More info here – but a quick summary:
AGUAZERO is looking for artists working in water-based medium on or with paper. The competition has an environmental agenda requesting submissions to reference the contrary character of climate change. For example, increased desertification and the escalating effects of weather events such as flooding and soil erosion. The work should be based on observation, experience and invention. It must be as involved with the process and materials of painting/drawing etc as with the response to climate change.
Above all, they are interested in works that invite close scrutiny and, like environmental events in the world around us, reveal themselves gradually and steadily over time, prompting reaction and renewed contemplation of the ecological challenges the world faces.
Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring written way back in 1962 brought people’s attention to the way we are using and abusing our planet and its effect on the natural resources around us. During the 1960’s, an increasing collective urgency, along with a turning away from the commodification of art, led artists to begin to make statements about our relationship with the earth we live on.
Over the next thirteen weeks I will blog once a week, looking at thirteen artists who work with these issues of climate change, ecology and Nature, with the aim of highlighting how artists and art can communicate and impact on how we might feel or respond to literally saving the planet.’
Gill Nicol
