Shape. For this session, Da Luz Collective collaborates with PADA studios, inviting Emilie Peyre Smith and Lea Renée Vajda, two artists who are developing a research through a residency program in the arts organisation. The idea of shape can guide the understanding of the two artists’ poetic, in a perspective of tangibility and inner tensions of the artworks.

 

Emilie Peyre Smith (1985, Delaware, USA) is a French/Dutch multidisciplinary artist who works predominantly in sculpture. Emilie aims to find the susceptibility of commonplace and utilitarian materials and hopes to find parallels with the continual over-mechanisation of human experience. Her artistic practice presents evidence of fundamental forces within a material reality to create anxious, uneasy works. Emilie is currently studying for an MFA at the Glasgow School of Art. Recent exhibitions include Three Times Removed, Tontine, Glasgow in 2018 and Upriver, Center of Contemporary Art, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 2017.

 

Lea Renée Vajda (1992 Munich, Germany) is working between Munich and Lisbon. Her work is mainly focused on photography and sculpture - questioning and challenging the two-dimensionality of the photographic format, the capturing processes within photography and its' representation. Materiality play a central role in her practice, such as the relation of the material to its representation, its inherent structure and rule. Raised in Germany, Lea studied Psychology, Philosophy and Art in Amsterdam followed by Fine Art Studies in Lisbon and the Independent Study Programme at Maumaus - Escola de Artes Visuais Lisbon in 2018.

 

 

 

PADA  is an artist-led, non-profit arts organisation based in Barreiro in Lisbon’s South Bay, founded in 2018 by Tim Ralston (UK) and Diana Cerezino (PT).

Set in a derelict industrial park within the old Companhia União Fabril (CUF)  industrial zone in Barreiro, the site of PADA studios has a history of fabrication as a jute factory. The studios are surrounded by industrial history as well as contemporary craftsmen and artists providing inspiration, material knowledge and the resources for experimentation and production. PADA’s facilities reinforce this with large studios and technical support to encourage and facilitate ambitious work. PADA residency programme welcomes 6 artists per month offering them time and space to develop their practice through the exploration of technique and process.

PADA gallery exhibits artwork that connects with and responds to the history of the location , with an emphasis on fabrication and materiality that will take inspiration from the industrial past.