Artists in residence, Stockholm 21 November 2022 – 26 February 2023

Mike S Redmond and Faye Coral Johnson (MSR FCJ) are a collaborative artist duo based in the UK, who have been working together since 2006. Rejecting traditional attitudes towards art, they consciously push ideas of making through an intuitive and experimental approach. Comics are large scale, abstract is figurative, ephemeral is treasure, narrative is ambiguous and context is obscured. Reworked and built up over time, mutating scenes reveal themselves through their back and forth painting and drawing process, forming like piles of doodles in a sketchbook. Through this collaborative exchange, somewhere between the chaos and the harmony of melding visual ideas, there is a complete merging, a third view, a middle ground, that is unforeseen and mind-bogglingly personal.

During their time at IASPIS, MSR FCJ will work on new large-scale paintings for their “Waste City” series. The series chews on metaphorical and physical themes of the ephemeral, rubbish and trash heaps. The large studio space will enable them to paint  on multiple pieces at a time and to experiment further with the “Frankensteining” of pieces to create larger compositions. They will continue to explore the transitional and unpredictable stages of their work and are eager to see how the series evolves within the change in environment. Among fleeting stages of making, they will take time to observe the pieces in temporary moments of mutation, valuing the importance of process within this reactive painting collaboration.

Mike studied at the Royal College of Art in London and Faye at the Manchester School of Art. Between them they have won 1st and 2nd prizes for the V&A Illustration Awards (2011/12). They have published and exhibited work in the UK, US and Europe. Recent publications: Bubbling Pitch, FPCF Editions, FR (2020); Dreaming About Worms Again, Very Bon, UK (2021); The Green Stranger, Café Royal Books, UK (2021). Recent solo shows: Bum Steer Heap, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen (2018); Bubbling Pitch, HOME Mcr, UK (2020); Cartoon Moon, Andy’s Gallery, Stockholm (2021). They have been awarded artist residencies at Hospitalfield, Scotland (2019), Piece of Pen, France (2017), Bibliothek Andreas Züst, Switzerland (2017).

Mike S Redmond & Faye Coral Johnson (MSR FCJ)