Artist Residencies: Challenging notions of “getting away from it all”

Paul Butler <em>Reverse Pedagogy</em>, 2008 thumbnail
Robert and Andrew thumbnail
Robert and Andrew1 thumbnail
Vesna thumbnail
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IMG_4516 thumbnail
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Paul Butler, <em>Reverse Pedagogy</em>, 2008 thumbnail
Paul Butler, <em>Post Post Graduate Studies</em>, 2011 thumbnail
Karen Zalamea, <em>Residency for Artists on Hiatus</em>, Ongoing thumbnail
Karen Zalamea <em>Residency for Artists on Hiatus</em>, Ongoing thumbnail
Milena Kosec <em>Residency for Artists on Hiatus</em>, Ongoing thumbnail
Reena Katz <em>love takes the worry out of being close: public assemblies in bed with queers</em>, 2013 thumbnail
Aislinn Thomas,  <em>why whycocomagh</em>, 2013 thumbnail
Aislinn Thomas,  <em>why whycocomagh</em>, 2013 thumbnail
Nomadic Residency Council <em>Airline Artist-in-Residence Invitation</em>, Ongoing thumbnail
Nomadic Residency Council <em>Artist-In-Residence Report Form</em>, Ongoing thumbnail
Paul Butler <em>Reverse Pedagogy</em>, 2008

Paul But­ler, Reverse Ped­a­gogy, 2008

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, artist res­i­den­cies are under­stood as a home away from home, where artists and cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­ers can leave their dai­ly oblig­a­tions and rou­tine activ­i­ties behind so that they can gain time for reflec­tion, research and pro­duc­tion. In the last few years, there has been a pro­lif­er­a­tion of new­er mod­els of artist res­i­den­cies that chal­lenge the idea of a res­i­den­cy as a retreat from every­day burdens.

In 2008, the artist and cura­tor Paul But­ler direct­ed an exper­i­men­tal res­i­den­cy called Reverse Ped­a­gogy at the Banff Cen­tre where he and six­teen oth­er artists dis­rupt­ed the cur­ric­u­lar struc­ture of an artist pro­gram in order to open up the res­i­den­cy to chance, errors and unex­pect­ed out­comes. Butler’s res­i­den­cy at the Art Gallery of Ontario titled Post Post Grad­u­ate Stud­ies (2011) exper­i­ment­ed with an alter­na­tive art school cur­ricu­lum by invit­ing the pub­lic to join him in a series of infor­mal class­es, work­shops and field trips led by mem­bers of his com­mu­ni­ty. Sim­i­lar­ly, edu­ca­tor, art crit­ic, and inde­pen­dent cura­tor Ves­na Krstich direct­ed a three-week res­i­den­cy at gallery TPW titled Back to School (2013). Inspired by his­toric and con­tem­po­rary per­for­mance scores and instruc­tions, the res­i­den­cy host­ed a range of school and pub­lic per­for­mance-based work­shops, screen­ings and dis­cus­sions, with the aim to rethink ped­a­gogy and par­tic­i­pa­tion in both tra­di­tion­al class­rooms and exhi­bi­tion spaces. The artist Reena Katz takes a more inti­mate approach dur­ing the 2013 HATCH per­form­ing arts res­i­den­cy at the Har­bourfront Cen­tre. Titled love takes the wor­ry out of being close: pub­lic assem­blies in bed with queers, Katz trans­forms the exhi­bi­tion space into a pub­lic hon­ey­moon suite where the par­tic­i­pants are invit­ed to talk pol­i­tics with the LGBTQ community.

Oth­er artist res­i­den­cies com­plete­ly move out­side of art insti­tu­tions, cre­at­ing their own artis­tic retreats. Found­ed by Robert Gors­ki and Andrew Ranville in 2014, Rab­bit Island Res­i­den­cy is a plat­form to inves­ti­gate, expand, and chal­lenge cre­ative prac­tices in a remote island, respond­ing to notions of con­ser­va­tion, ecol­o­gy, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and resilience. In her project Walk­ing Stu­dio, Diane Bor­sato con­struct­ed an 11’x18’ stu­dio on the Ontario coun­try­side. Func­tion­ing as a mobile field-study space that can be assem­bled or dis­man­tled, the Walk­ing Stu­dio serves and gives mate­r­i­al form to artis­tic prac­tices that are site-respon­sive. Sim­i­lar­ly, doc­u­ment­ing her trip to rur­al Cape Bre­ton, Nova Sco­tia, the artist Ais­linn Thomas cap­tures spaces of rela­tions between two neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties and their local res­i­dents through a series of inter­views. Her accor­dion book titled Why Why­cocog­magh serves as a vehi­cle for dis­sem­i­nat­ing her res­i­den­cy, using the form and the con­tent of the book to speak to the expe­ri­en­tial divide felt in any one place. Oth­er exam­ples of mobile res­i­den­cies include The Nomadic Vil­lage, a mobile art soci­ety that responds to the emer­gence of a new kind of nomadic artists, Lenka Clayton’s Artist Res­i­den­cy in Moth­er­hood , a self-direct­ed, open-source artist res­i­den­cy to empow­er and inspire artists who are also moth­ers, and the Res­i­den­cy for Artists on Hia­tus (2013–2017), which took place as a vir­tu­al res­i­den­cy for artists who were not cur­rent­ly mak­ing art, orga­nized by Shi­nobu Aki­mo­to and Matthew Evans.