HANNE DAHL GEVING – VISUAL ARTIST

Norway

Hanne Dahl Geving (b.1991) is a visual artist based in Trondheim, Norway. She has a master's degree in photojournalism from Mid Sweden University, Sweden, and a bachelor's degree in photography from the University of the Creative Arts,England. Geving has worked with different mediums including photography, video, performance, text and sound, where she explores acoustic environments and human response to sound and multisensory experiences. In her art practice, Geving is interested in exploring themes that affect the human mental and physical health, and how art can be used to deal with difficult situations and emotions.

Her work has been shown at various exhibition venues both nationally and internationally, such as, Centum för fotografi (SE), Kystmuseet i Sør-Trøndelag (NO) Truman Brewery (UK), Sundsvall Könstforening (SE), Teaterhuset Avant Garden (NO) and Porsgrunn Kunstforening (NE). Geving has worked with different artists which has resulted in both national and international collaborations and led to the establishment of the artist group HRKCollective.

During her time in residence Hanne worked on editing her new projects and recording sound from the island.

SAM ROCK - PHOTOGRAPHER AND FILM MAKER

UK

Originating from Yorkshire, England, Sam Rock (b. 1987) is a photographer and film maker primarily based in London.

Rock’s imagery leans on his dedication and investigation of the expansive language of the medium in order to continuously evolve and maintain a fresh development of his work over time. Rock allows for time and intuition to craft photographs that excavate the mundane and nostalgia from the core of society. His work is characterised by a unique colour palate, romanticism and conversation between himself, his subject and their collaborators.

Rock is a regular contributor for magazines such as i-D and M Le Monde but is taking time away from editorial photography to concentrate on personal collections of work that have been evolving over many years. He is currently focused on exploring new approaches to the medium in order to expand attitudes within his output. 

During his time in residence, Sam worked on his writing, edit his upcoming photography book and explored the island and habitants taking new photos

SIR ROMY – SONGWRITTING AND PERFORMANCE

France

Sir Romy grew up in Marseille, France, where her parents' records filled the house with the sounds of Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, and Ray Charles. These legendary voices left a deep impression on the young artist, who kept soul and blues as her artistic compass. 

At the age of 7, she began taking singing lessons and made her first stage appearance at 10 in a musical theater troupe. In secondary school, she received classical training, which allowed her to perfect her vocal skills through opera arias and gain a solid grounding in music theory. She then joined several jazz groups in high school before moving to Brighton, UK, to study songwriting and perform her own compositions on open mics at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM). 

After returning to France in 2020, Sir Romy has been working on her first solo project and touring various venues. In addition, she collaborates with other artists on different phases of work such as writing, topline, and composition. Her first singles were released in 2023, and an EP is set to release in the spring of 2024. 

For her first project, Sir Romy explores different musical aesthetics that correspond to the themes she addresses. Through her songs, she evokes the doubts, anxieties, and expectations of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood. Her powerful yet gentle voice conveys her suffering, celebrates her joys, and morphs to the rhythm of her mindscape, creating a contrast of light and shadow.

During her stay at Casa na Ilha, Romy worked on new songs, rested, and found inspiration from nature and other artists. 

@sir.romy

https://linktr.ee/sirromymusic

SOFIA LOVE – MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST & DESIGNER

U.S.A.

Sofia Love (b. 1999, Boston, MA) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer tackling themes of identity, perception, queer expression and cultural aestheticism. Born and raised in Boston, but with deep family ties to the Mexican border town of Laredo, TX, Love’s acrylic paintings serve as a negotiation between ancestral memory and contemporary identity. The cowgirl (or vaquera) recurs throughout her practice – gun slinging, brown, and frequently nude – framed by expanses of desert. She’s a real, historical cowgirl. She’s the artist traversing her own imagination. For Love, vaquera is an object of desire and an extension of herself. 

Love received her BFA in Integrated Design from Parsons School of Design (New York, NY) with a concentration in Fine Art and a minor in Latin American Art and Design History in 2022. Love is the Digital Director at Sargent’s Daughters (New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA). Love had her debut solo exhibition VAQUERA in March 2023 at Shelter Gallery (New York, NY). She lives and works in New York.

During her time in residence, Sofia work on a series of paintings for her next show in New York.

website: www.sofia-love.com

instagram: @sofialove

LEXIE LEONARD – PHOTOGRAPHY 

Australia

Lexie Leonard (b. 2002) is a third year photography student at RMIT, based in Melbourne, Australia. She aspires to keep working with photography in global projects and make her debuts in publications and exhibitions in the near future. 

Starting out in amateur travel photography, her work captures the majesty of nature with the chaos of human development. Now, her work is largely centred around abstractions of landscape and urban sprawl, inspired by her metropolitan upbringing and a claim to find her artistic voice. Recently, she's been experimenting with alternative processes to build variety in her work, as well as with portraiture, by making more personal series as a means of connecting with her loved-ones. 

Her artistic endeavours took her to Brazil where we worked in a series of photos.

@lexie.leo

ALEX BENNING – AUTHOR, COMPOSER, AND PERFORMER

France

Alex Benning is an artist of Franco-Dutch origin who works as an author, composer, and performer. He creates music in a multi-colored Alt-rock universe and has a patient and meticulous approach to his craft. 

Alex's music is characterized by a distinctive phrasing and undulating timbre that ranges from pop-rock choruses to blues ballads. As a producer, multi- instrumentalist, and singer, he always welcomes his artist friends into his studio
« Tamperproof »: they constantly come and go, helping him turn his wildest ideas into reality. 

Like Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz, The Good The Bad & The Queen) or producer Marc Ronson, Alex Benning bounces from aesthetic to aesthetic depending on the artists he works with. 

Alex's next project will be highly collaborative and will explore the theme of love in all its forms. Blues, Pop, Reggae, and other sounds will be summoned to speak this universal language. 

Pursuing his passion for writing new songs, Alex is immerse himself in the serene surroundings of Casa Na Ilha and embrace the creative energy of new artistic connections. He worked in new songs, recorder samples and collaborated with local musicians 

@aleeexbenning

https://www.tamperproof.fr/

SALLY BURCH - CONTEMPORARY FINE ART

UK

REALITY:  experienced, abstracted and reimagined

I have spent time drawing inspiration from the local Essex landscape and turning the visual cues into a personal abstract, artistic language made of geometric structuring, mark-making and patterning.  My paintings scramble together snippets of this information with other experienced places, both physical and virtual, to present a ‘compilation landscape’. A reconstructed, collaged tableaux of nowhere, but with the perception of being somewhere.  After all, it was Plato who said that beauty lies not in the real world but in geometry. Albeit my work is not calculated but intuitive and expressionistic.

The selection of hues, their location and worked surfaces are decisive factors. Layering paint or exposing the substrate, heighten the patterning and mark-making to produce a colour conversation.

Concerns that feed into my work, although perhaps under the radar include; ‘boundaries’, the physical, territorial and arbitrary lines that denote ownership: and “climate’ the pollution and destruction of our time on this planet and what we leave as our legacy.

During her time in residence, Sally worked experienced painting playing with the natural environment, such as rain, to generate different non controlled effects in her work. The same with photography, taking day to day objects and working with the shades and lights the sunlight will produce, and also with nature objects found in the area with close up visions.

All her work will be edited to become part of a new book. 

www.sallyburch.org

Instagram: @sally.burch

TIMOTHÉ GATTO – CINEMA WORKER AND FILM MAKER

France

Tim is a french cinema worker and film maker. His journey through audiovisual got him to experiment theatre, fiction, documentary, acting, scenography, music video, music events organisation... 

Passionate about languages and traveling amongst many other subjects, always jumping from one platform to another, following his curiosity, interest, and understanding of human behaviour, Tim sees himself like a chameleon, a fluid that matches his environment and takes spontaneously the spot that imposes itself on him, from which he will tell the story that he feels in asking to be told. He does so from his perspective but in a very eurythmic way - sometimes very egocentrically, sometimes fading himself completely. 

After working on movie sets for a couple of years, he currently is in a one year stay in Brazil, opening himself on new ways of expression, working on the core of any of his arts : what he has to say, how to express it in the most personal way.

Participating in the Casa Na Ilha writing workshop was a way for him to experiment his storytelling.

With his writing, Tim covers mainly his own contemplation of life mixed with introspective thoughts on one's feelings and purpose, reflexion on social ties, and adventure fantasies with a craving for intensity in the very experimentation of life.

During his stay he work in the first stages of a new screenplay mixing fiction and non fiction

IG: @timgatto

ANNA TOPPIN – FINE ARTS

UK

Having studied Fine Art at Wimbledon College and a year at Goldsmiths college, I was lucky to be employed by London Weekend Television as a Set Designer. I worked on a huge range of programmes from light entertainment to drama, “Dempsey and Makepeace“ through to “Poirot”. An exciting time in TV production. 
Leaving TV after having children I continued to work in various art forms, pottery through to printing, specialising now in Etching and Monoprint Inspiration has come from trips to Japan, Kimono, Cambodia, foliage and costume. 
Anna spent her time sketching, working on her photography and painting, as well as collecting information for future work.

@annajtoppin

www.sudbourneprintmmakers.com

SAMANTHA SPONER – INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST 

U.S.A.

Samantha Sponer is an interdisciplinary artist and great advocate of the purple color. Hailing from the magical and mythical city of Las Vegas, of which stands on the rightful land of the Southern Paiute people, the city's influence is clearly evidenced in their work as their frivolous &  flamboyant color palettes often juxtapose the ways in which the content of their work interrogates systemic injustices. Living now on the East coast of the U.S. Samantha currently studies at Tufts University where they are soon to receive a Bachelors of Fine Arts and a Bachelors in Civic Studies. They have shown work in several colorful places including the Loyola Marymount University's student art gallery and a handful of Tufts student galleries for photography and printmaking. Samantha hopes to heal the world with art and shall continue working towards a more purple future. 

Mixed media including collage, photography, textiles, painting, scratching, eating, and otherwise living are the artist's main strategies when it comes to creation. The body and our emotions inform the majority of their art practice especially concerning the topics of desirability and fuckability. Discrimination on the basis of body is Samantha’s primary object of art making in the hopes that their work can serve to educate and sway the public to humanize fat bodies. In the near future, they hope to get their masters degree in the fine arts and transform the art world into a fat friendly space. 

During her time in residence, Sammy worked on a series of embroideries, designs on plants and started writing the first of a collection of zines.

Check more of Sammy at @arthambleton

 INES KAUFMANN - FINE ARTS

Austria

Ines Kaufmann (*1996) lives and works in Vienna. She is currently studying at the Academy of the Fine Arts in the Class extended painting expression of Daniel Richter. Her works thematize representations between figurative compositions and abstract play of colours. A game with the self and the collective body language defines itself playfully and humorously in their work process.

Compositions between collective pictorial sphere and animal abstraction. Body silhouettes look at each other, an encounter between eroticism and mythical origin of the natural. Between dirtiness and pureness, tenderness and dynamic structure, the boundaries of the images lie in the foreign, want to be. Closer to each other, closer to the self. Mythical moments between man, nature and life. The use of intermediate technique is a necessary item the way she works.

@ineskaufmann

https://www.ineskaufmann.at/bio/

SUMNER BROCK – PAINTER, MULTI-MEDIA ARTIST & GRAPHIC DESIGNER

U.S.A.

Sumner Brock is a painter, multi-media artist, and a graphic designer by trade. He is passionate about the intersection of community and creativity. He lives on a farm in the mountains of Southern Oregon. He has been featured in more than seven shows across Oregon and took part in an art residency outside of Bogotá, Colombia. He plays saxophone and is learning to play the banjo.

During his time in residence, Sumner worked on a big scale painting on canvas.

JEANETTE DINELLI - ARTIST, WRITER, INTERIOR DECORATOR & CERAMICIST

Sweden

Jeanette is a Swedish artist, writer, interior decorator and ceramicist living in Stockholm and Bilbao. Her work is based on the serendipity that (might) happen when experimenting with various perspectives in one body; a body of text with levels of interpretation, subjective meanings or parts of words and languages creating something else. Her ceramic bodies often come in combined forms, textures, patterns and colors of clay. The interior decorations are phenomenological images, expressing subjective/objective emotional memories in a body of space.

The artistic flow and creativity is found in urban settings as well as nature environments, often dissected down to the details of ideas and objects that are taken for granted. Words are repeated, rewritten and relaunched by taking on a perspective that seems closer to its sense, the clay pieces often stems from animal- and vegetable characteristics taken into a new context whilst space is filled according to an idea that there is no need to kill any darlings as long as the tokens and nuances play together in their own right.

After media- and communication-, literature-, language- and culture studies, Jeanette was a pressperson for an EU-institution for a decade and has worked with home styling, paper design and with an own home brand. She has lived in various countries and dedicates herself to words, crafts and art with a special focus on playfulness and the meaning of aesthetical experiences in everyday life.

During her time in residence Jeanette worked on a several of texts she had written over the years, editing and creating new ones in order to make them a collection.

ANDERS MCDONALD - PHOTOGRAPHER

Australia

Anders McDonald is a photographer with over 35 years photographic experience. Starting with film and a home dark room, he has transitioned to the digital era and is now skilled in all facets of photography. Anders has won recognition for his photography by the Australian Institute of Professional Photographers and works from his studio in Warburton, just outside Melbourne, Australia.

"This year represents the first time post Covid that I am able to concentrate on a new environmental project about the impact of the Anthropocene on the marine / water environment. My concern is that the issue is “out of sight, out of mind” compared with other issue we have direct exposure to like global warming, climate change, the decline in trust in institutions, Trumpism, the ugly and unsustainable growth out on the urban fringes of our cities and more.

You can see the body of my work at www.andersart.gallery.

Whilst all these things confront us on dry land, under the surface of the water the destruction continues "out of sight". Destruction of the physical environment, lifeforms in the oceans, habitats, plastics and other forms of dumping our trash go largely un-noticed except by those people and communities directly affected.

So, with my camera and underwater housing, I plan to shoot in the “near urban environment” to document what is happening globally and locally. If possible, I hope to do this with the collaboration of local folks who would be prepared to get in to the water with me. I am happy to try and source these people myself, or accept any advice you may have about sourcing local people.

If a visual artist can bring the ‘out of sight” into sight, then perhaps the conversations and actions can change. My aim is to make a small contribution to that.

I have visualized several approaches to this from the abstract which will make the viewer do the work, to the caricature of media advertising of “glamorous” locations, resorts, excursions etc. I would like to build on the ideas with the folks on the residency to get a more solid notion of the way the project will be styled, but it will definitely be an eye opener.

DEBRA STUCKGOLD - INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST AND EDUCATOR

United States

Debra Stuckgold is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. Her multi-media work focuses on the interconnection between human beings, their place of origin, and the changing landscape. For more than two decades, she has been creating installations that transform public and private spaces using visual media ranging from kinetic shadow displays to wall drawings and cyanotypes that address geo-political themes. Trained in somatic-based Expressive Arts, she facilitates collective art projects within community groups and refugee camps.

During her time at Casa na Ilha, she used the ocean waters to assist her with ephemeral drawings of maps and the implications and possibilities ignited by the breaking down of walls and borders. 

Debra works with maps as a metaphor for socio political changes, using dimensions and patterns to present the changing landscape and raise awareness of current conflicts around the world. 

www.stuckgold.com

TALIA JOHNSON - MULTIMEDIA ARTIST

USA

I am a multimedia artist and musician from Los Angeles, California. I’m currently in pursuit of a BA in Studio Art at California State University, Long Beach, set to graduate in Fall of 2023. My primary visual mediums include drawing, painting, analogue and digital photography. I am also a singer at heart and pianist. I’ve pursued an arts-centered education since high school, where I attended a visual-performing arts school, and throughout my college career where I’ve studied art and design across three different institutions.

I come from a creative family of multidisciplinary artists and musicians. My father is a musician and visual artist as well, and a professional hairstylist; my mother is a psychologist and

writer. I’ve practiced mixed media and music performance since my formative years, and my ultimate goal is to bring these two worlds together to tell personal stories. As it currently stands,

my artistic practice involves creating highly independent work exploring themes of identity, culture, and notions of family, from my perspective as a mixed-race, female creative in a constant state of introspection.

Besides creating artwork in my free time, I enjoy writing, live music, collecting vintage clothes, and eating food from various cuisines at unique restaurants. I do lots of these activities with friends and family, and with my partner. I have a younger brother who is also an artist in the making; we often spend time together talking about our creative ideas and questions.

The concept of my project is to explore ongoing themes of my work in a new setting far from home. As an artist stepping into her professional career, I am pursuing this residency program in

order to focus on my craft, expand my experience and perspective, and allow all of the naturally

During my stay in residency, I wanted to create work that depicts where I am in life as a daughter, sister, artist, and partner embarking on a new and independent creative experience.

TIN NGUYEN - VISUAL ARTIST

Vietnam/USA

My subject matter—referenced from my observations and intuitive attraction to a certain quality of light and intimacy—ranges from the corners of my domestic space to scenes of natural beauty. I am drawn to capturing the quieter moments of life, which can be easily overlooked. In my paintings where I shifts the gaze towards myself, I question how we view and present ourselves, pointing to the suggestive nature of nonverbal communication as I leave an impression of a casual, yet intimate invitation into my world and the reflections of queer identity. Lately, I’ve been painting a series on wild flowers and the wonderful lessons we can learn from them. I enjoy painting as an act of self-inquiry and meditation and, almost poetically, my titles recently have grown more melancholic as of late, such as: “the flowers, too, sighed with me (but, oh, how they danced for you)”, and “all things grow (with messy parts too)”. 

I used this time at the residency in 2023 to continue this thread of internal dialogues in communion with plants and flowers, while

learning more about the nature within us and around us, even in cities, or by the ocean. I dream of making art that captures the intimacy and personification of flowers.

At Casa Na Ilha, I was already inspired by the beauty of the location, the communion with the water, the island, and the earth. While I used the majority of my time fostering my own project and nurture this artistic series, I was also eager to meet and cross-pollinate ideas and artistic thought with other residents.

SARA PERRY-DIN - JEWELLERY AND METALSMITHING

Canada

Sara Perry-Din is an artist living and working in Mohkinstsis (Calgary, Alberta, Canada). They graduated with a BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts) in 2020 with a degree in Jewellery and Metalsmithing. Since then Perry-Din has been focused on consistently making and selling jewelry and other small objects from her studio space. In their making process, Perry-Din observes a curiosity for materials, assemblages, sensations, touch, and intuitive ways of making.

They identify as a formalist, valuing craft processes to experiment with materials and form. They retool to reveal new ways of mark-marking and other sensory experiences. Scissors become vehicles for stones to clang together, shells become headphones, mark-making becomes language, and tools are alphabets. 

IG @ouraboura

https://ouraboura.com/wares

BENEDETTA GIUIDI – FINE ARTS

Italy

Benedetta Giuidi was born im Rome the 03/09/93, she attended the Waldorf school, and the artistic high school of Ripetta in Rome, she continued her art studies at ArtEZ: the Academy of Fine Arts and design in Holland, after four years she goes back to Rome where she continues to paint and cultivates the other big passion for sport and dance, she becomes a sport teacher.
In 2020 she finishes a master in art management with the Sole 24h business school in Rome and start to work at the famous museum Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Modera for one year, at the moment she is a dance instructor and she makes art projects with paintings and performances.  Art and sport have helped her a lot to increase a sense of discipline and constancy.

Art is research, it is a path of the soul, an awakening of the spirit, it is the answer to questions which in turn produce new ones. For me, art is like a symphony of senses, talking about art is like talking about love.

EVA SAMUELS – MIXED MEDIA

Brazil/U.S.A

What if the sun cried? What if you were only 2 inches tall? 

Eva Samuels dives head first into these worlds of the unreal, aiming to spark introspection on the impenetrable truths that connect our wildly different  human experiences. 

Eva is a Brazilian, Jewish-American mixed-media artist born in South Florida bringing whimsy and unrestrained exploration of form to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her creative journey is shaped by themes of childlike wonder guided by classic principles instilled throughout her completion of a BFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Eva's reimagining of the bounds of reality is depicted across 2D and 3D mediums, with materials ranging from bronze to clay to pastels all portraying a careful dance between rawness and refinement.

In addition to experience across various styles of animation, Eva produces rich and layered soundscapes to further draw audiences into the imaginative realms she creates. Through these immersive viewing experiences; she offers an alternative perspective on what’s possible; a sentiment designed to break down the rigidity that underpins how we conduct our daily lives.  

Eva is currently using and expanding her skill set by working in collaboration with other scenic artists. Her personal practice will continue to weave pieces that invite the exploration of life, nature and human experiences, all the while embracing the endless boundaries of imagination. In the future, Eva aims to put together creative spaces for artists around the world to find community, collaborate, and showcase their work

Check more of Eva's work @dewdrop

PETER MUSSCHENGA - MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGNER, ARTIST AND TEACHER

Netherlands

Peter Musschenga is a Dutch multidisciplinary designer, artist and teacher. This year he celebrates 25 years of his graphic, web and spatial design studio. He often works on many different projects at the same time for various clients in the cultural, non-profit, governmental and commercial fields: from developing brands to designing and building sets or installations. 

In his designs he combines monumentality with attention to detail. Tactility, the influence of light, and perception are important themes in his work. Since a few years he teaches photography students, focusing mainly on artistic development.

Peters spatial work comprises a vast range of set designs, being an early adopter of automated scenery. In recent years the center of gravity has shifted from the theatre stage to public spaces for which he designs multimedia and exhibition installations and light art works. In 2021 his floating mirror installation won the London International Creative Competition. 

On Ilhabela Peter now likes to take some time to reflect on his work an dive into themes he has incorporated sideways in previous work: reflection, perspective shift, slow movement and floatation, by raising awareness and foster contemplation. He will study the different appearances of water(surfaces) on and around the isle as a basis for new (light) art works.