FLAT_land 06
Sunday September 27th 2-5 pm Potahof Delft (nl)

bij wijze van SPREKEN (artist talk) with presentations of Barbara DePonti (it), Hetty Krapels (nl), Jolanda Jansen (nl), Peter Owen (us) and Simon Dirkse (nl) about their work at FLAT_land.

_galerij_loop_06_____ (exhibition) with work from Alison Owen (us), Audio Compost -Kim Schonewille (nl), Maarten Punselie (nl), Matthijs M. Jansen (nl)-, Barbara DePonti (it), Dattah (nl), Fiona Weir (nl), Freshn the Impression (au), Hetty Krapels (nl) & Jolanda Jansen (nl), Mary Jo Gilligan (ie), Patricia Eustaquio (ph), Paul Santoleri (us), Peter Owen (us), Rolina Nell (nl), Sanne Avenhuis (nl) and Simon Dirkse (nl).

Alison Owen (us)
I make site-responsive paintings and installations that alter the environment in subtly invasive ways. I focus on the peripheral, using simple, often-overlooked materials to create works that reward sustained investigation and attention. www

Audio Compost: Kim Schonewille, Maarten Punselie and Matthijs M. Jansen (nl)
Empty but not so Empty. A dark and deserted house in which a multi-channel audio composition the reflection of emotions and activities still reverberates. www

Barbara DePonti (it)
(in collaboration with Iskra Sguera)
“Speaking things”, the project, satisfies the desire to know a new city, which you have never seen before. The project wants to discover a new urban reality asking the collaboration of every citizen. The citizens will be actively involved in the project giving one of their belonging and then explaining its affective value and/or symbolic value. Collecting the objects will be the first point of contact between the artist and the people, and a first approach to the place. When enough object will be collected for every district and neighbourhood the artists will position them. The whole roof of an apartment will be covered with a large Delft map. The objects will be placed below the streets and houses they belong to. They will be hanging with a strip of paper that will describe each story as it was described by their owners. The work will fill up the room with hanging objects that all talk about the city of Delft, anyone with its own specific message. The project will place the city of Delft in an interior space that will become domestic and warm thanks to the “speaking things”. At the same time the “speaking things” will bring the visitor outside the walls with his mind, around every zone of the city with the entire story that describes them. www

Dattah (nl)
The installation performance Expo-sure deals with the relation between individual and group. The central question is when an individual is visible within a group and when the group is perceived as a whole, making the individual dissolve in the image of the mass.The audience is invited to explore, in their own tempo, the entire installation space and the performers that are in it.Dattah is a collective based in Delft, their primary medium is dance, but other disciplines are also incorporated. www

Fiona Weir (nl)
Fiona Weir (1973) lives and works in Rotterdam. Her photographic works are subtle impressions of an environment. On the one hand she deals with the pressures of fleeting moments and on the other hand the ‘still’ photographic image. In her attempt to reveal traces that lead to- or lead away from a situation, the images recall to the viewer a sense of recognition and uncertainty. The images tend to be in between reality and perception. In this, the role of the viewer shifts from being participant to voyeur. For FLAT_land Fiona Weir flirts once again with the notions of the familiar and the unfamiliar. www

Freshn the Impression (au)
We are graffiti artists from Sydney in Australia and this is our project: Our project is directly related to the graffiti and urban art culture and scene, the materials we are using for the project are high pressure aerosol spray cans and some roller paint for background. Our teams name is Freshn the Impression which to us means to change peoples views and opinions and also refers to the changes that are happening around this area in Delft with everyone moving out and everything getting demolished and rebuilt. We decided that this month we would paint the apartment based on the graffiti and urban art scene with some relation to anti commercialism. The graffiti culture has been around since ancient Rome and Egypt where people used to write their name on walls with rocks, our project is about from then to now.

Hetty Krapels and Jolanda Jansen (nl)
Multimedea installation in apartment 654. The basic elements for this installation are 3 video’s. One made by each artist and one made together. In total they form a dialogue between the mind and the body, about connecting and disconnecting. We will create an ongoing experience that moves itself between the 3 environments in which the video’s are placed, just like trough a nervous system.
Hetty Krapels LETTING GO For my own installation in flatnumber 654, I want to try to combine my audiovisual background with my very private personal experiences of the last year: This installation will be the starting point of a larger audiovisual creative, poetic portrait I want to make of my mother and our disturbed relationship including her loss of memory caused by Alzheimer. The question I ask myself is whether I will be able to interpretate the world she is now living in, including her own awareness of this world becoming smaller and smaller in a subtle but relentless moving way. Through this installation I will also bring my mother back to her place of birth and youth: Delft! www
Jolanda Jansen SELF I am fascinated in the relation between observer and object; the conflicts in relations trough media like video and photography, right trough the eye of the lens. That is why my video’s deal around the private and public. For this video installation I inhabited the apartment with my body and did several researches in the space that concluded in a very intimate, somehow obscure relationship with ‘the self’. www

Mary-Jo Gilligan (ir)
At present my studio is becoming a multi-sensory notebook. I am experimenting with sound, heat, scent, balance and movement to investigate the space and my relationship with it. I am exploring questions such as “how do we perceive our surroundings?” and “how solid is a wall?”. ‘Velour Peristalsis’ I created the piece ‘Velour Peristalsis’ for CARart 2009 upon commencing the residency. The street of Troelestraan became my open studio as I hand-sewed the work amoungst other parked cars. The process became an intervention, an unintentional performance of sorts and it was a wonderful way to become part of the neighbourhood, meet people and share stories. ‘Velour Peristalsis’ explores the sensory experience of the architecture of a car. The piece draws links between car interiors, our own bodily interiors and various cultural practices of caring for cars. The exterior cover is influenced by vernacular car covers as improvised by car owners in Egypt and serves to heighten the sensory realm inside. The blacked out interior involves the audience in an immersive experience of space and pre-recorded text and sound. www

Patricia Eustaquio (ph)
My works weave objects into a narrative and rely on the spaces in between what is actually there. The objects serve as clues, to complete the puzzles in our heads while our mind-cogs grind into the social, archaeological and art-historical spheres that our lives encounter. The idea of Poptahof as a space, and of Delft as its context, is a playground for material that is both palpable and conceptual, and it seems appropriate to create a dialogue for these materials in a domestic sense: a reference to the residency as the well as the home and the community in general. Being in Poptahof for me is like walking into a garden that vibrates with the comings and goings of children and commuters and retirees whose activities seem to explode into chaos that is tempered by quiet blocks of brick and greenery. I see the community as an overgrown garden where green, whether flowers or weeds, are beautiful, untended and unruly. I see it as a home where people have lived in for so long, or changed so frequently, their shadows are permanently engraved on the walls, like fossils unearthed from sheets of rock. My idea is to represent such impressions into objects and transform the little spaces in my studio into snapshots of this community existence. For the next three months, I shall be collecting discards as well as flea market finds and will be transforming these into an overgrown garden, and a petrified living space. www

Peter Owen (us)
I make drawings and paintings that encompass personal experience, public spaces, and the collective memory and narrative of cities. For this residency, I am creating a series of drawings using as source material specific architectural elements of the surrounding neighborhood. The drawings indicate the simultaneous renewal and entropy that transforms cities over time. www

Rolina Nell (nl)
I make site specific paintings/murals and work with acrylic paint on canvas. My paintings often express my curiosity concerning women’s roles within a social and cultural structure. My work captures and isolates images of ordinary woman and girls; so common that it is usually overseen. They almost get absorbed by there surrounding, but despite of this it seems they turn their back to you and do what ever they like. It is mysterious who they are; their identities are only given by clothing and decorations. In spite of the colorfull forms, funny garments and details the paintings also have a feeling of sadness. My interest in unravel the existence of ordinary things generally invokes a feeling of emptiness and a sad look on the past or unfulfilled desires. www

Sanne Avenhuis (nl)
Humans and animals play central figures in my work. I make drawings, objects and installations. A recurring theme in my work is the imperfect human. In my world, he fulfills the role of both perpetrator and victim. Alienated from himself and his surroundings, he tries to understand himself and his surroundings. In this quest he is dealing with complex situations, conflicting interests, emotions and observations that lead to inner conflicts. In my work I explore the impact of these inner conflicts on an abstract mental and imaginary level. I use very recognizable forms, but usually something is never exactly what it appears to be. The animals are dog-like, rat-like or insect-like, but never a dog, a rat or an insect. I try bringing elements of beauty, fragility and innocence together with its contradictions and yet again pulling apart from each other. With those created situations I am questioning the audience as to what it is that they witness and what the situation was before they witness this situation (similar to an agent who witness a crime scene). Furthermore a somewhat absurdist world confronts with the imaginary experience world of the spectator, which I would like to question. www

Simon Dirkse (nl)
The measures of each space, the proportions of the surfaces of the rooms and other connections between the spaces are a base for the arise of a design for example on a wall or a 3d-object. I use materials in stock (available) or materials generated by the process. By means off this ‘game’ the spaces enter in a new world under the protecion of the ‘eye’ of the MAGUS. Preparing the MAGUS 22 for the arrival of the mysterious guests, drowned in blacklight.