Download PDFWhat are residencies exactly ?
An artist’s residency – or Artist-in-Residence (AiR) – is when an artist relocates for a period of time to another studio or location, usually within an institution set up for this purpose. Residencies can range from a few days, weeks to a year, or longer. There is often a proposal written by the artist stating their intentions and learning outcomes on the residencies, which can act as a starting point that is likely to change as the time goes on, especially for longer residencies.
What types of residencies are there?
There are residencies all over the world where one can visit for a period of time to research and make work in a particular environment; such as Antarctica (funded by National Science Foundation) or near a volcano in Hawaii (National Parks Art Foundation), there is even a residency on a cargo ship (Container Artist Residency)!
Benefits to the artist
It is this unfamiliar environment outside your daily studio routine which contributes to a change in thinking and that allows new ideas to be generated. New people and social interactions with the host institution, public and new audiences, can encourage these new attitudes or ways of thinking.
A residency is a sacred time set aside for a particular purpose and that can create a bubble of intense studio thinking or quiet contemplation. On every residency there is something new and unexpected. Something that couldn’t have been experienced in a studio alone. That is the nature of an artist’s residencies and the importance of their purpose.
What about Colart residencies?
From a Colart perspective this is an opportunity to engage with both professional and emerging artists and students. It raises our credibility and how we are perceived as makers not just manufacturers.
We have two artist studios located in the headquarters of the company in London. They are located on the same floor as the Laboratory that researches and develops new and existing materials for Winsor & Newton, Liquitex and Conté à Paris. These studios run a rolling programme for artists to investigate their practice with a fully stocked studio of Colart materials including acrylic, oil, watercolour, mediums, brushes, paper, canvas and more, allowing an artist to experiment with materials they may not have had the chance to use before.
This unique residency also encourages a dialogue between the chemists in the Lab which results in a mutually beneficial knowledge exchange; the chemists can see how artists are using the paints (sometimes in unconventional ways) and the artists learn about the chemistry and test the bounds and potential of paint. They encourage artists to experiment with paint’s behavioural qualities in ways not possible otherwise. It it embeds the qualities that make each brand unique and informs the user of what best meets their needs.
Residencies seed brand and build brand, they highlight the integrity of our materials and the legacy they came from. Working at the studio building with both the lab and the archive highlights how important the innovation achieved by our brands is still an ongoing commitment today. We constantly receive requests from institutions and now also major retailers, to visit the lab studios and archive realising that we have this commitment to quality. These residencies feature on all the artists CVs and have fast become a much coveted award. This has a global value in driving audiences to brand with professional artists and top institutions seeking to work with us as partners of choice.
