FRESH MILK is very excited to announce our first international residents from our recently launched programme, Canadian artists Marla Botterill and Conan Masterson, who will be on the platform from the 1^st-31^st of May 2013.

Marla Botterill received her B.F.A from Queen’s University, Ontario, and went on to pursue her M.F.A. at the University of Waterloo, which she obtained in 2003. She has exhibited widely in Ontario, Canada, including the solo show Close to the Skin at the AWOL Gallery in 2007, and most recently in the group exhibition In a Pinch, The Eleanor Pearl Gallery, 2013. She also exhibited in Berlin, Germany during the months of July-September 2011, where she took part in the Takt Artist Residency programme. Her work explores recurring characters through a combination of painting, drawing, collage and puppets that generate interwoven fictional narratives.

The role of time also plays a crucial role in my work. Paintings and drawings exist in the past, the process of creation ends once the image is completed; it remains as a record of that labour. A viewer may reinterpret the painting or drawing, its context may change, but the object itself does not change. Contrastingly, a puppet exists in the eternal present, it only serves its function when it is moving; the process of creation does not end once the puppet is built, that is the moment when it begins. – Marla Botterill

Website: http://www.marlabotterill.com/

Conan Masterson received a B.F.A. from Concordia University Majoring in Studio Arts, and in 2007 earned an M.F.A. from The University of Western Ontario. Her solo exhibitions include Sea Dab Jig at the Full Tilt Creative Centre, McIvers, Newfoundland, and earlier this year she took part in the group exhibition Process and Place at the Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine. Her residency experiences include: the MECA Baie Sainte-Marie Artist Residency in New Edinburgh, Nova Scotia, Harold Arts – Do Do II Session in Chesterhill, Ohio and the Fibres Student Association, St. Charles Borromée, Quebec. Her work aims to perceptually alter the traditional gallery space, manipulating the physical materials of sculptural installation and the audience in a way that is both impulsively humorous and unsettlingly carnivalesque.

My practice involves transforming my studio into an unusual workshop. While tinkering within it, I create absurd and abstract forms that are bizarre yet oddly familiar. From the readymade to bits and pieces, I play intuitively with my collection of luscious and mundane materials. These anthropomorphized objects then become curious, slightly freakish, installations… A necessary function of the work is the blurring of boundaries between the spectacle and the spectator. It is in this intriguing terrain I situate my work; a discomforting, beguiling landscape, impossible to resist. – Conan Masterson

Website: http://www.conanmasterson.com/

Although both artists have worked closely for years, this residency at FRESH MILK will be their first collaborative venture. Botterill and Masterson are keen to explore the extensive grounds around Fresh Milk for inspiration in the development of their project, where they wish to create a series of puppets and a fictional habitat for them to function within the local landscape.  This International Residency Programme will also provide an opportunity to promote an exchange of ideas between the two artists, as well as develop relationships within the Barbadian creative community.