From Ilana Blumberg

1 - 31 Oct 2019

I was in Nyon for the whole of October 2019. I took most of my normal studio machinery and materials with me. At first I was amazed with the amount of space available to me. I have only lived and worked in small, cramped spaces in London for years. It was fascinating to work in a room with excess, blank, empty space, with space to move, breathe, and stand back. 

Temporarily moving my practice from London to Nyon, I was shocked by how the context of my work fell away, and made me realise how deeply my work felt connected to London, something I had never considered before and has made me see my practice in a new way. The ‘pod’ made it possible to stay focused and fully immersed in work while feeling totally comfortable and at home. I met some amazing people and am incredibly grateful for the experience.

From SIMA Yuan

1 - 22 May 2019

My recent solo exhibition, 'Art Is An Endless Acquisition', in Beijing at TELESCOPE was heavily influenced by my time at the Trelex Esp'Asse residency in Nyon. Maybe the most interesting thing on the residency was meeting artists from all over the world and listening to their stories. 

While in Switzerland I gathered “evidence” of my daily consumption, such as train tickets, supermarket shopping lists, chocolate papers, maps, bread bags, receipts from restaurant, and exhibition tickets. And then transformed them to something permanent. I believe that the most important thing in creation is the insight into the essence of things, the imagination, and the structural control of the materials. They seem to be anti-violence, anti-motion, and anti-labor. It seems that you only need to "acquire" and "select". 

Life is a process of "choice." What to eat every day, where to ride, what to buy, what to wear, whom to chat with, what exhibition to watch... These choices seem random, but they are based on the judgment of some experience. Choosing life is creating life. The images are the “evidences of my choice”. My work is to interfere or change them and make them become evidence of my thinking.

Article from TELESCOPE, where I held my solo show, with live photos and an introduction to the space. And a live video of the exhibition including an interview with me. Translated version below:

Sima Yuan (Michelle) graduated from the London College of Communication and currently resides in Beijing, China where she continues to create artwork at her self-named SIMA Art Museum. She is simultaneously the director, curator, artist, exhibition decorator, audience, material and exhibit.

From Sarah Bovet

Pour faire court: la résidence de Trélex à l’Esp’Asse m’a apporté de nombreux avantages. Avantage n’est pas le mot réellement approprié mais il s’en rapproche. Pour faire long: c’était vraiment une belle expérience riche pour mon parcours artistique. 

Je me rappelle avoir dit au début lorsque j’ai présenté mon travail que je souhaitai travailler sur des plus grands formats et travailler avec de l’acrylique. Quelques mois après, je ne peux que dire que les deux cases sont cochées. Je peux voir de manière très concrète ce que le temps passé au studio a permis sur ma pratique artistique. 

Ma manière de travailler s’est révélée de plus en plus expansive, Alors que les premières semaines, un simple bureau me suffisait, à la fin de mon séjour, je devais étaler sur le sol mes toiles et ainsi me propager sur le sol autour de mon espace attribué. Une toile séchait, une toile attendait le geyso, une autre était tirée. 

Au delà de ce grand espace libre pour la création, il y a eu tous les échanges au quotidien avec les autres artistes. Chacun a compté dans ma résidence. Que ça soit par leur temps au détour de la tasse de thé matinale ou en me promenant dans l’espace, que ça soit par leur point de vue différent ou leurs pratiques, ils m’ont permis d’avoir une pratique artistique saine au sein de la résidence. Et puis il y a eu le lien avec Nina qui m’a accepté sans me connaitre tout en m’accordant une totale confiance. Nos discussions m’ont nourrie et engagée encore plus dans ma persévérance. Sa bienveillance a beaucoup compté pour moi et je pense porter encore longtemps son regard, à l’instar d’une mentor pour moi. 

Sans avoir vu les autres résidents travailler à côté de moi, je n’aurai pas cru en ce que je pouvais moi aussi faire. Parce que l’essentiel que j’ai réalisé en étant dans cette résidence est de faire ce qui nous habite. Le poser en dehors de soi-même. Et j’ai eu toutes les meilleures occasions de pratiquer, de construire et de faire ma pratique personnelle artistique.

Alors merci Trélex Residency, vivement notre prochaine collaboration!

From Kiril Kuzmanov and Raha Farazmand

26 Aug - 30 Sept 2019

Within our evolving shared practice, we bring in our interests and skills from each of our backgrounds (visual arts and architecture, respectively), to develop procedures of reflection and self-reflection, progressing both collectively and individually.

In search of an unfamiliar surrounding that gives us a ground for strategic exploration and wandering, we arrived at Nyon. We aimed to accomplish the production stage of our film project Morning Glory that we started back in 2017.

Morning Glory reworks the banal morning interval in-between a man waking up to leaving his dwelling. It focuses on the juxtaposition of the space of reverie and the spaces in which we live. The visual and semantic narrative traverses these spaces to break the dichotomy between the inner and outer landscape; to approach a place in relation to other places.

Our preconception :

Morning Glory overlays both the physical site – a room / Our studio – and its broader context – a city / Nyon – with the internal and external landscapes of the protagonist. The film uses objects, animated drawings, videos, texts and sounds, weaving them together with the morning rhythms of repetitive day-to-day activities. 

Our first week was to cognitively and emotionally navigate the space to discover locations that challenge the interplay of power and place through their spatial and temporal boundaries.

In our physical shift from the studio to the dynamic network of other places around it, we found ourselves encountering forces already implicit in the surroundings, revealing dimensions too often hidden by our ideas of use/function, purpose, hierarchy, order and threshold. 

With our camera and microphone, we have archived fragments, employing visuals, objects, videos, texts and sounds. 

Our next step is to explore transpositions, cutting out, montaging, sticking and cataloguing as techniques that interrupt structures and orders and enable a fluid space without geography.

From Hella Keck

15 June - 13 July 2019

To describe my experience I would say Trelex Nyon gave me an incredible beautiful and fragile space to create. Filled with time and the ever shifting light of long summer days. Fragile in a sense, because different from my usual work, it was only me holing, creating and working with the space given. Which means anything that influenced me in that time also reflected back on the use of the studio space given. Trelex also was a space for a dialogue with others as much as myself. This I found important to experience because in my normal day to day life the dialogue with oneself doesn’t receive as much space often. 

About the process of the residency I can say the time there felt quite a lot like part one and part two. Part one being the first two weeks, where the first week really felt like settling in and then beginning to get a feel for how I’m working when given the time to do what I want. After the second week new people arrived and I found myself being the next one to go home, even if there were still two weeks to go. In the second part especially I met amazing people and there was a real sense of community. 

Long walks, communal cooking, swims in the lake, movie nights. My urge to explore Geneva or the surrounding art venues, to “get input” began to quiet down towards the middle of the residency time and I experienced this as a positive shift. 

I began to go inwards rather then searching outwards. Working with a mix of sculpture and photography, I began to use more found materials rather then making my way to Geneva to shop art supplies or then to buy things online. This felt liberating and brought me back to my early days of art making. The interest I had in the work I was making became more about the materials, objects and the space as well as  the context in which everything was used, rather than just the look of things.

Before arriving in Trelex, we all prepared a little presentation about our own work and work of inspiring artist. Now some of the images from artists I had found interesting before Trelex, seemed quite superficial. I could really see how my perception was changing.  

The images I took of the work I made feel incredibly intimate in a way since they reflect the playfulness, ease and non judgemental attitude towards art making I was engaging with during the residency.

The place where the residency is located feels pretty perfect, amongst other creative studio spaces, right next to the little cool stream and not far from the station. I am very thankful for my time there and I hope that there will be more years for the Trelex Residency to come in one way or another.
  

From Sara Ashrafi

7 Sept - 30 Oct 2019

My endless wonders always create infinite images for me. More than the words, it’s the eyes that are the sources of inspiration to me I may not remember much of Raha’s description of the grander of the mountains and the nights at the Alps, but her eyes in the expression of this grander will always stay on my mind. 

And the Welsh girl, Cairi, is in love with the darkness as she likes the dark and lightless nights of the safe alleys of Wales. Living, watching, and hearing are my assets along my journey, and it’s not a trivial asset. 

I am grateful to the time for meeting with people. 

It would be a great loss if I had never met with Judith. To me, she is a champion with no medals. 

And watching Ilana, in her 20s, behind the old spinning wheel and large headphones cannot be described in words. 

And thanks to the swans of the Nyon lake, all passersby, the earth and the sky. The crows and the leaves. Large moving ships and the boats in sleep. Thanks to the ripe oak tree fruits lying on the grass. And thanks to Nina Rodin for all that I’m experiencing and turning into painting.

saraashrafi.com

From Judith Appleton

25 Aug - 26 Sept 2019

View from the pod 

One of the images that intrigued me in the announcement about the new additional location for the Trélex Residency in Nyon – 6 km from the original home-based residency in the village of Trélex was the sleeping pod. Up to 6 artists were to live and work in a shared space just minutes away from the Nyon railroad station, 25 km from Geneva. Having been in several differently styled artist residencies, following which I always felt a boost of energy in my work through the new challenges, I was eager to come to the shores of Lake Geneva since I have always wanted to be near water. I see that is a theme in my work, which is mostly landscape painting in oils, and figure drawing in charcoal. I thought that I would continue my attempts to combine figure and landscape, thought also about ambitions to be a little “wilder” in my work and less “serious,” (?stiff? worried about criticism? Of course I am utterly serious about my work – it’s NOT a “hobby”), to try to bring in more imagination and less literal-mindedness, to rediscover the joy of coloring as a young girl.

There seemed to be a pattern that developed whenever I traveled to a new and entirely different location to make new work. There is a period of exploration before arrival, mental expectations of some sort, an opening up to be able to take in the new experiences and people to come, some research-based exploration of the area – always making sure to be open to surprises – “settling in” and working, being open to inspiration from others, from the site, and from art that can be seen in the area. Then comes the physical exploration of the area, the wandering around, the information gathering from locals. The phase of returning home is during, after and before new work: the long process of the images filtering down in the memory, through photographs (my “aide-mémoire”), on-site drawings, photographs by others – very different from my personal photos. This sounds obvious but I didn’t really see what I was seeing – my “obsessions” – until today, my last full day, when I reviewed my photos for myself and for another artist who just arrived and wanted to have a talk before I leave.

Meeting other artists from different countries with different practices was extremely exciting and enriching, if these words are not too clichéd. I have numerous recommendations about interesting artists to look up and see their work, information about newsletters, a sharing of information and views. An excellent addition is the presence of local artists who know the best places for everything and can tell us more about what life in Switzerland is “really” like, tips, favorites, where to get stuff, and of course show their art.

What ensued was indeed (as Nina wrote, “practical help and critical dialogue, exchange and collaboration”) cooperation, feedback, discussion, cooking together--- all of which resulted in assistance in things technical in a good spirit, and a new way of looking at my practice. Because of the shared space and prohibition on materials with strong odors (no oils or turps), and my avoidance of acrylics for the moment, I happily went back to gouache, black/white/gray, and continued my practice of visible “handwriting” in works on paper. What I gained from the residency was a new confirmation of working on paper without feeling I had to “justify” it. The feedback I received from younger artists strengthened my resolve to be more confident in what I do and to realize the power in doing what I do.

The first few days: Walking around, pencil on grey scale paper, 21x30cm

I decided to go with the flow, walk around, and photograph as much as possible whatever caught my eye, to stop and draw whatever caught my eye. 

WINDING down, CLOSING up. Thinking about the past nearly five weeks. Serendipity. People I was “supposed to meet” (that’s why we are all here at the same time.) Curiosity. Dialogue. Sharing. Cooperation between artists. Collaboration between a working couple. Inspiration. Walking around. PLAYING as the main GIFT of the residency. (Thanks, @Nina Rodin-Artist!). Thoughts arise as I overpaint the traces of the previous artist who left “traces” bringing up thoughts of erased De Kooning drawing by Rauschenberg. Meeting the next artist – an overlap of 10 minutes - enough to share that we were both in Greenland – who knew??? And for me to repeat the “lesson” learned from this residency – that the sketch IS the “finished work.” Confirmed by my very intense visit to the Kunsthaus in Zurich yesterday, a big effort, not organized very efficiently, but so very happy that I did go and saw WORKS ON PAPER which helped imprint the experience of self-acceptance of my own practice as sketch and process.

Playing: Mountains, ticket collage in sketchbook, gouache, pencil, detail of 13.5x20cm

My initial curiosity was not disappointed: I had imagined myself living in the pod, “falling” out of bed and working (AFTER COFFEE!!!) in a divided large spacious floor with other artists. I found a space of incredible light and sense of air in the Trelex Esp’asse Residency Nyon. The cozy sleeping/reading units allowed each of us to live in the art space, arise, make coffee, sit, think, and work. Switzerland has such a beautiful network of “pedestrian tourism” along the pathways which led me to explore. I finally found my themes, what I call my obsessions, which I found that I photographed repeatedly almost without remembering that the scene caught my eye already: the vineyards and the little airfield (memories of Dad). The time to play in the space allowed me to work bigger (inspired by the flats and the other artists and the exhibitions I saw and the encouragement) and to work more from memory and emotions. I think that by doing “other stuff” in gouache and watercolor, lots of drawing, mixing mediums, making collages of all sorts of “stuff,” ending up being not so “heavy.”

The quiet and the lake of Nyon was one component of my stay; the proximity to other cities in Switzerland and convenient location of the railroad station and system was the other. The most important component, however, is the dynamics between all the other artists from different countries and cultures and the sharing of information. Although I have been in other artist residencies, this was the most intense in terms of living in a shared space. I have worked in a communal situation but never made art in such a total living experience. I expect the peaceful green of the country will filter down into my work when I arrive home and resume work. I let some of the silly play out in this piece of my reactions to Nyon: It encapsulates my fascination with distorted selfies, the lake, chocolate, architecture, coffee, footpaths, and the greens, as well as all the “accidents” – drips, spills, juxtapositions of weird encounters. 

Silly stuff and obsessions: Swiss memories, watercolour, gouache, pencil on paper, 40x75cm. Photo on terrazzo tile floor, each tile 15cm, good for measuring. Memories include coffee, chocolate, rooftops, sailboats, pumpkin...I reminded myself that Klee travelled only with watercolour and that he was born in Switzerland.

Everything an artist needs:

Platform, space, light, air, internet, other artists (and a kitchenette, fridge, washer & dryer) (Thanks to Nina and the resident artists “in our conversation”: Kire, Raha, Sara A, Laetitia, Lindsay, Cool and to Cairi, Sara C, and Rita).

In the studio: photo by Sara Ashrafi

With the art world so competitive, the Nyon space is a haven of mutual respect and a calm workspace.

Detail of work in progress: to be continued at home

Images (c) Judith Appleton 2019