Past Residents
Past Resident2012: Carclew Youth Arts
Amy Joy Watson
Amy Joy Watson examines the human propensity for imagining different and better worlds from a highly personal and idiosyncratic point of view. There is the presence of a childlike alter ego in the work, suggesting a subtle sense of nostalgia for the joys of childhood play and a way of seeing mystery and possibility in everything. Eccentric objects and environments such as mutant clams with gobstoppers for pearls and machines that fly helium balloon, come from the artist’s imagination. The imagined worlds of childhood are transcribed through the adult patience and refinement of her painstaking production methods. Watson often employs delicate hand-stitching of segments of finely cut balsa wood to create geometric forms. The recent inclusion of unexpected outré materials – helium balloons, glow-in-the-dark pigments and glitter – have caused these works to wobble, spin, glisten and levitate.
Amy Joy Watson (born 1987 in Adelaide, Australia) completed a Bachelor of Visual Art with honors in 2008 graduating from Adelaide Central School of Art. Watson has shown in various solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia including a solo exhibition at GRANTPIRRIE Gallery in Sydney and at the Contemporary Art Center of South Australia’s Project Space. She undertook a two-month studio residency at Takt Kunstprojektraum, Berlin in 2009. Watson has been successful in winning several CARCLEW, Helpmann and Arts SA grants and was awarded the 2011 CARCLEW Ruth Tuck Travelling Scholarship. She has received various awards locally and internationally, including the 3rd Ward Brooklyn Open Call Early Entry Prize in 2011. Howard was awarded the 2011 Adelaide Critics Circle Contemporary Art Award and won the 2009 Core Energy Group Sculpture Award and the 2009 SAlife Emerging Artist Award.
Amy Joy Watson, Solo, 2011, Balsa wood, watercolor, and polyester thread, 37 × 24 × 24 in. (93.98 × 60.96 × 60.96 cm).
Amy Joy Watson, Untitled, 2011, Balsa wood, polyester thread, and balloons, Dimensions variable.
Amy Joy Watson, Untitled, 2011, Balsa wood, water color, polyester thread, and helium balloons, 138 × 32 × 32 in. (350.52 × 81.28 × 81.28 cm).
Past Resident2012: Artadia
Allison Smith
Allison Smith’s artistic practice investigates the material culture of historical reenactment and the role of craft in constructions of national and gender identities. Invoking various forms of public convocation such as battle reenactments, peddlers’ markets, quilting bees, military musters, parades and craft fairs, Smith uses a range of tactile media such as textiles, ceramics, printmaking and wood furniture to produce performative sculptures, interactive installations and artist-led pubic events that redo, restage and refigure our sense of collective memory. Smith’s large-scale sculptures take on an artifact quality through their association with events and their engagement with the public, whether through activities of collective making, activation in social space or material transformation from one context to the next.
Allison Smith (born 1972 in Manassas, Virginia) lived in New York from 1990 until 2008 when she relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area to join the faculty of California College of the Arts, where she is Chair of the Sculpture Program. She completed her undergraduate studies at Parsons School of Design and her graduate studies at Yale University School of Art and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Smith has produced solo exhibitions and artist-led projects for Public Art Fund, SFMOMA, MCA Denver and Berkeley Art Museum MATRIX Series, among others. She has contributed her work to museum surveys at MASS MoCA, CAM Houston, Creative Time, Andy Warhol Museum, P.S.1 MoMA, Palais de Tokyo, The Mattress Factory and many more.
Allison Smith, Hobby Horse, 2006, Wood, paint, horsehair, leather, brass, and glass, 98 × 112 × 36 in. (248.92 × 284.48 × 91.44 cm). Collection of Saatchi Gallery, London.
Allison Smith, Fancy Work (Scattergood Quilt), 2010, Dimensions variable.
Allison Smith, The Donkey, the Jackass, and the Mule, 2008, Laminated wood, paint, horse hair, glass eyes, leather, brass tacks, steel rubber, oak boards and hemp ropes, Dimensions variable.
Allison Smith, Stockpile, 2011, Unfinished wood and mixed media, 144 × 216 × 216 in. (365.76 × 548.64 × 548.64 cm).
Residents from United States
Ailyn Lee
Studio #210
Angel Lartigue
Studio #217
Past Resident2012: Wallace Arts Trust
Akiko Diegel
Akiko Diegel’s works deal with existence: things that are consumed, worn, worked, worried, carried, things used as comforts and things used as crutches. Diegel’s practice utilizes and examines the act of collecting, recording, constructing and stitching. She works to balance the works between the corporeal and the behavioral sides of being a person. Diegel’s final artworks often relate to the body and human behaviors. Her practice moves fluidly between the seductively kaleidoscopic and the poised, quiet and contained.
Akiko Diegel (born Japan) lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand. She graduated with an MFA in 2008 from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. In 2011, Akiko Diegel was awarded the Paramount Award for her work, Cure, at the 20th Annual Wallace Art Awards. Her work has been included in the Wallace Art Award finalist exhibition every year between 2006 and 2010. Diegel was a finalist in the Waiheke Art Awards (2011), the Waikato Museum National Contemporary Art Award (2007-2010) and the Norsewear Art Award (2007).
Akiko Diegel, Untitled, 2009, Wool blanket.
Akiko Diegel, Up Where We Belong, 2008, C-type print, 151/2 × 151/2 in. (39.37 × 39.37 cm).
Akiko Diegel, Untitled, 2008, Wool blanket, 7 × 10 in. (17.78 × 25.4 cm).
