Magnetic is a new network of 8 visual artists' residencies in France and in the United Kingdom created under the umbrella of Fluxus Arts Projects.

Magnetic is a joint Franco-UK initiative that brings together eight venues to create a new programme of artists’ residencies : four in France – CAPC in Bordeaux, CRAC Occitanie in Sète, FRAC Grand Large in Dunkerque, Villa Arson in Nice, and four in the United Kingdom –Grizedale Arts in England, Flax Art Studios in Northern Ireland, Cove Park in Scotland and Aberystwyth Arts Centre in Wales.

The programme has been designed to foster artistic development through exchange and to enhance sustainable cooperation between the UK and French visual arts scenes in the longer term. It will gradually build an expanding network of partner institutions with shared commitments and values.

Eight artists have been selected for residencies of 2 to 3 months across the network of eight institutions, in France and the four nations of the United Kingdom. Societal and environmental issues will be at the heart of this programme, the residencies will be situated, with the selected artists expected to work in resonance with each specific context –geographical or historical, societal, artistic etc.

Magnetic is a new collaboration conceived by the the Institut français du Royaume-Uni and the four UK arts funding agencies, produced under the umbrella of Fluxus Arts Projects, a charity founded and run by the Institut and supported by French and UK institutions and private donors. Over the past twelve years, Fluxus Art Projects has become a marker of notoriety for artists and venues, supporting exhibitions and curatorial research in France and in the United Kingdom.

Flax Art Studios - Azzedine Saleck

Azzedine Saleck was selected for Flax Art Studios, he is an artist based in Paris who works in sculpture, installation, video and poetry. His residency will take place with us from 8th November through to the 8th January 2023, he aims to create a body of work through sculpture, film and publication of a subjective overview of how it is to be living next to man-made borders. He will also lead community workshops.

Azzedine Saleck is a poet and an artist currently living between Paris and Nouakchott. Of Mauritanian and American descent, raised in Mauritania and France, Azzedine Saleck captures the complexity of fragmented cultural influences at the intersection between language and form. His practice involves language-based sculptures, and the design of spaces that create intimacy and affective responses. Dislocating references (Litany, 2016), Saleck's recreation of fictional spaces and habitat (She said what he said was what she said, 2017) refer to and induce ritualistic behavior. These resulting situations capture and trigger
transformational moments of awareness. They act as testimonies of moments of subjective and collective histories.

Saleck has exhibited at the Gulbenkian Foundation, Paris, and the Confort Moderne, Poitiers, Southard Reid gallery in London, High Art gallery in Paris, and the artist run space Treize in Paris, Villa Arson in Nice, Palais de Tokyo and Centre Pompidou inParis. His work is published in Talismans, The desert between us is only Sand, Gulbenkian
Foundation, 2018, Year, Komplot, 2016, Alter Zombie, TBA, 2015.
Flax looks forward to working with the French visiting artists and to partnering with the other organisations.

For further information see: Fluxus Art Projects