Past Residents
Past Resident2013: Canada Council for the Arts
Paul Dignan
The starting point for Paul Dignan’s recent paintings are squares aligned in an even grid. Within these squares there are individual compositions based on one original source drawing. These paintings challenge the viewers’ perception in that the apparent uniformity of the schemata gradually begins to dissolve over time allowing slight shifts to occur. The feeling of order is further disrupted by the placement of flat areas next to airbrushed areas that feign an illusion of depth. Within a limited and regular format the paintings offer endless shifting variations that initially engage the viewers eye before ultimately revealing a certain resistance to it.
Paul Dignan (born Dundee, Scotland) is based in Ontario, Canada. He has lived and worked there since leaving Scotland in 2003. He is a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art, London and is a past recipient of The Rome Scholarship in Painting at The British School at Rome. He has received numerous awards from the Scottish Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts. His work has been included in shows at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje; FYR Macedonia and The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. His work can be found in numerous collections, including The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, The Unilever Collection, London and The Canada Council for the Arts.
Paul Dignan, Cota 1, 2011, Acrylic on canvas, 48 × 48 in. (121.92 × 121.92 cm). Courtesy of the artist and The Canada Council for the Arts.
Paul Dignan, Beamish 2, 2012, Acrylic on canvas, 36 × 36 in. (91.44 × 91.44 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Paul Dignan, Beamish 2 (detail), 2012, Acrylic on canvas, 36 × 36 in. (91.44 × 91.44 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Paul Dignan, Corridor 2, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 60 × 60 in. (152.4 × 152.4 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Paul Dignan, Corridor 3, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 36 × 36 in. (91.44 × 91.44 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Residents from Canada
Past Resident2013: Instituto de la Cultura y las Artes de Sevilla, Fundación Valentín de Madariaga y Oya
Simón Arrebola
Simón Arrebola uses painting and drawing to express events through an unusual way of conceiving space and time. These elements are essential in every act of telling stories. To build the arguments, Arrebola starts from those memories or experiences that live in our mind or arrive to us as a product of a foreign stimulus. Memory and its mental images are the origins of these stages and coexist with traditions and mythical legends. His conception of landscape is a kind of nature with an evocative character where the spaces talk about people and other times and the characters hybridize with the space that exists around them.
Simón Arrebola was born in Spain in 1979. He studied Painting, Engraving and Design at the University of Fine Arts in Seville. He received his MFA from Seville University in 2011. Arrebola has exhibited his work at Isabel Ignacio Gallery, Seville and Ángeles Baños, Badajoz. He also took part in the 3rd Mediterranean Biennal in Tunis. Arrebola won the Focus Abengoa Painting Award in 2008 and received an Iniciarte grant by Junta de Andalucía in 2009. He is one of the 2013 recipients of the “Sevilla es Talento” Grant, sponsored by Valentín Madariaga Foundation and ICAS. His work is in the collections of the Valentín Madariaga Foundation, Seville University and Focus-Abengoa Foundation.
Simón Arrebola, An Ending Doesn't Finish Anything, 2011, Oil on canvas, 233/8 × 315/8 in. (59.44 × 80.26 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Simón Arrebola, Greed, 2010, Oil on canvas, 191/2 × 191/2 in. (49.53 × 49.53 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Simón Arrebola, The Swimmer - Scene VIII, 2012, Graphite on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
Simón Arrebola, The Swimmer - Scene X, 2012, Gouache on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
Past Resident2013: Foundation for a Civil Society
Majlinda Hoxha
Through a language of displacement and fragmentation, a set of objects, images and memories articulate the process of the familiar becoming unfamiliar. In her photographs, Majlinda Hoxha creates a personal environment that is sensitive to the recent political and economical situations in her home country of Kosovo. The monuments hown in the photographs demonstrate a situation that is yet to be revealed.
Majlinda Hoxha (born 1984) holds a BFA in photography from Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design and a MFA from the Elam School of Fine Art at Auckland University. In 2012, her work was featured in the annual Mulsim Mulliqi exhibition, hosted by the National Art Gallery of Kosovo, as well as a curatorial project Aftermath – Changing Cultural Landscape initiated by the Photon – Center for Contemporary Photography, Ljubljana. Hoxha is the deputy photo editor and photographer at Kosovo 2.0 magazine where her work is regularly published. Her Family Portrait #1 is currently on display at The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington. She took part in the anniversary exhibition for Human Right Commission Article 27 at The Physics Room, Christchurch and has presented solo exhibitions at The Laundromat Art Project Space, Tauranga, Tetris Gallery, Pristina and The Ministry Gallery, Pristina. Hoxha lives and works in Pristina.
Majlinda Hoxha, In Tandem #2, 2012, 33 × 33 in. (83.82 × 83.82 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Majlinda Hoxha, In Tandem #3, 2012, 33 × 33 in. (83.82 × 83.82 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Majlinda Hoxha, In Tandem #5, 2012, 33 × 33 in. (83.82 × 83.82 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Majlinda Hoxha, In Tandem #7, 2012, 33 × 33 in. (83.82 × 83.82 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Majlinda Hoxha, In Tandem #1, 2012, 33 × 33 in. (83.82 × 83.82 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
