Artist Residency in Faroe Islands
Faroe Islands was an adventure from start to finish. A 10 hr delay at Copenhagen, meant arriving in the Faroe Islands at midnight instead of 2 pm which had been the original plan. With no public transport at that time, and not likely to be any public transport expected for 2 days, due to a forecast of high winds, I was in the process of looking around me at the airport arrivals and not making sense of much at all when a Faroese couple at the airport asked me where I was going. When I said Tjørnuvik, they told me the news about the incoming weather and invited me to their place in Torshavn, the main town. I stayed with them for 2 nights before the public transport started up again. I shall always be very grateful to this couple who took me in, and also advised me on how to get to Tjørnuvik and other important things about the Faroe Islands that aided my understanding of the place and what to expect.
The view at the bus stop change over at Oyrarbakki, to go to Tjørnuvik.
Tjørnuvik.
Listafólkabústaður Artist Residency. I had 4 weeks here approximately..
It challenged me, the weather, the isolation and well…the weather, but it was a challenge that I had been looking for.
Tjørnuvik has a population of about 70 people. A local woman told me that the houses are gradually being sold off to people who only come here for the weekends and in the summer. There are no shops here, just houses, sheep, the sea, the impossibly beautiful land, the constantly changing sky and waterfalls.
Getting outside daily was a challenge in the first 2 weeks, due to the cold temperatures and a period of snowing for about a week, followed by a week of rain and wind. When the sky cleared enough for the sun to show itself, the rays still did not reach the village. I spent a lot of time looking out the windows at the weather, but part of staying motivated meant getting outside at least once a day for a walk, and to take photos. I became a weather watcher and picked my moments for outings and the occasional trip out of the village on a mini bus to get food.
The landscape is stunning, steep, barren, and harsh, waterfalls abound.
In the studio which is the classroom in the original school here, I worked on my drawing/painting process and created a series of mixed media works on paper that are a response to the things that I encountered.
I became interested in the patterns of the man made things on this land, the fences, and paddocks etched into the steep rock faces where the hardy sheep live.
After the snowfalls I loved how the fences looked like drawings in the landscape, and emphasised the scale of the landscape. I did some small mixed media paintings on paper using water based oil paints and oil pastels.
I made small 3d works with my food packaging, making one sculpture per day, in response to documenting the views out of the various windows of the school building.
Window views: Cardboard, paint, paint tubes. There is a real freedom to making work with less precious materials. A letting go of expectations, outcomes and the fear of wasting expensive materials.
For the transition zone interaction I took photos of the detitus in the environment and collected the materials from the beach..sadly I found plenty, it appears that no place, no matter how beautiful is exempt from human consumer goods being carelessly discarded into it. Kind of hidden sometimes, but I do find it interesting how the materials over time often start to take on the look of the landscape they have been discarded into.
Laying out the found objects after cleaning them.
I then just play around with the materials, arrange, re-arrange, maybe make a stop-motion movie. Always in the end I make as many small sculptures as i can out of all the materials.
Clear views. 2024. Found clear plastic.
Bang. 2024
Pace of life in Tjørnuvik
When the residency finished I took the bus back to Torshavn and stayed there for 9 days, checking out the art, met some Faroe artists and went for walks, and took photos. I am continuing to create painting inspired by this landscape and also have a selection of limited edition photographs for sale.