For the second edition of the Crystal Ruth Bell Residency, Red Gate & China Residencies are calling all duos, trios, collectives and groups of artists working collaboratively to apply for a funded residency in Beijing for the month of July 2015.

Dancers, filmmakers, musicians, circus performers, street artists, fashion designers, curators, activists, researchers, and all kinds of visual artists are encouraged to apply with a project proposal that echoes some of Crystal's best traits and favorite things in the world: kindness, curiosity, color, adventure, and popsicles.

Joshua Lue Chee Kong is an artist and designer with a keen interest in exploring and redefining cultural uniqueness and identity, and transcending racial and social barriers. Joshua recently completed a two month residency at Red Gate in Beijing.

CR: You’re originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, but have Chinese ancestry and relatives still living in China. Had you been to China often before this residency?

JLCK: It is true that I am from Trinidad and Tobago, I am a second generation Trinidadian as my father was also born here. However my mom is from China, as well as my grandparents on both sides ...

Heidi Bryce drinks tea with a tablespoon of honey. In between cups, she hoards newspapers and found objects, consumes an unhealthy amount of internet content and photographically documents her experiences. Heidi took part in the Swatch Art Peace Hotel residency in Shanghai in 2014.

China Residencies: What motivated you to apply to the Swatch residency?

Heidi Bryce: I initially just graduated from FIU and felt stir crazy about the post-graduate lifestyle. I was tired of academia, but wanted to engage an environment where I could still learn and practice. I started looking into a ton of residencies I found on R ...

Juliann Wang is an artist working across many mediums to "create adventures that inspire individual curiosity across often generalized topics of implicit ethnicity, shared humanity, and an intrinsic inseparability with nature, to distill complex concepts into intimate, playful, and approachable experiences." 

China Residencies: You were a Fellow at the Schoolhouse in April and May 2014. How did you first hear about their program, and what aspect of the program first caught  your interest?

Juliann Wang: After completing over a year of research and development, exploring the increase in personal vehicl ...

Brendan Earley (b1971) is an Irish artist who lives and works in Wicklow, Ireland. After graduating from NCAD with first class honours, Earley spent a number of years travelling before receiving the Fulbright scholarship to attend Hunter College, New York City. He graduated with a Masters in Fine Art in 1999, and returned to Dublin where he exhibits regularly. He is represented by mother’s tankstation. Earley completed a residency at Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing, and Iona Whittaker caught up with him over email to learn more about his time there.

China Residencies: What sparked your interest in China?

Brendan ...

Christopher Strong is an artist and illustrator from Australia who recently completed a two month residency at Dongdong & Lulu in two different cities, Nanjing and Beijing.

China Residencies: What sparked your interest in China?

Christopher Strong: I’ve had an interest in Asia and particularly China for a while now. A lot of my art has a focus on Asia. China was a natural choice for me for a residency. My initial interest in China was sparked by the fact it is totally different and much more complicated to where I grew up and what I am used to in Australia.

CR: What interested you in particular about Dongdong & Lulu?

CS: I w ...

In the year and a half since China Residencies started taking a close look at residencies in mainland China, the one constant has been change. Independent arts organisations close and new ones open in their place. People running spaces move on to other projects, program staff comes and go, rents go up… and all three factors contribute to notable demises of community organisations, co-working spaces, collectives, and residencies.

In Beijing, independent base Homeshop closed after nearly six years at the very end of 2013. Founded by theoretically-minded artists and writers, Homeshop hosted discussions, fil ...

China Residencies is excited to announce our collaboration with randian 燃点, a bilingual online publication fostering intellectual exchange between China and the rest of the world through independent commentary on art, artists, exhibitions and galleries, as well as video, architecture and design. China Residencies and randian 燃点 will share content and cross-post articles about independent art spaces, residencies, and interesting people doing cool things in China's art world.

One of Randian's editors, Iona Whittaker, is now based in New York, and will be contributing research and interviews for our News secti ...

Artist Jeff Musser was an artist-in-residence at Pantocrator Gallery in Shanghai, and had since decided to stay in China. As a friend once told him, "Ya know, being an artist right now, in this country isn't exactly the best plan. When people ask you what you do, you might as well tell them, I Run A Unicorn Shop!" which became the name for his blog, where he chronicles his adventures in painting. 

China Residencies: You started out in Northern California, what first got you interested in China?

Jeff Musser: I vacationed there shortly after I graduated, and there was just something about being there, more than just the glow of be ...

The Sanbao International Ceramic Art Institute is nestled in the Sanbao valley outside Jingdezhen. Terrance Lazaroff, Sanbao’s International Program Advisor, talks about their residency program for ceramic and visual artists housed in old farms in the Sanbao valley.

China Residencies: Please tell us about how Sanbao got started.

Terrance Lazaroff: Sanbao began as a dream of Jackson Li of Jingdezhen and Wayne Higby of Alfred University, USA, back in the mid-1990’s. They envisioned an international ceramic art center located in China, that would provide the opportunity to the international art commun ...

I: project space is a new non-profit platform and residency program that holds exhibitions, workshops, lectures and more in their space in Beijing's hutongs. I: project space was founded earlier this year by two curators and art critics: Antonie Angerer and Anna-Viktoria Eschbach. 

China Residencies: I: project space opened a few months ago, in August 2014. Tell us a bit about how it got started:

Anna Eschbach: We, Antonie Angerer and I, have known each other a rather long time now. We met while studying art history in Tübingen, Germany. After finishing our BA, we continued in two different directions: Antonie concentrated on h ...

China Residencies and Red Gate are greatly humbled by the overwhelming response for the inaugural Crystal Ruth Bell Residency. We received applications from over 250 artists from 62 different countries, representing an incredibly wide range of mediums and practices, and we had a very difficult choice to make in order to narrow it down to just one artist.

We shortlisted fifteen project proposals that captivated our imaginations and best reflected Crystal's aspirations for creative cultural exchange:

Catherine Sarah Young - Christiane Huber -  Emma Dixon - Fredman Barahona / Elyla Sinverguenza - Huong N ...

To honor the spirit and and life of our friend Crystal, Red Gate, together with China Residencies, is thrilled to announce the inauguration of the Crystal Ruth Bell Residency. 

Crystal loved helping great projects happen in China, and she herself had a very eclectic art practice that spanned video, photography, design, fashion, food and street art. For the inaugural residency in her memory, we'll choose an artist from any discipline who proposes to make something new, exciting, and that's never been done before in Beijing. There are no restrictions on the artists' mediums, age, nationality, ethnicity, gender, or an ...

China Residencies visited Beijing’s Institute for Provocation residency, located in a historic courtyard right in the center of the city’s old hutong alleyways, to speak with director Max Gerthel and residency cooridnator Sid Gulinck about architecture, public space and the importance of experimentation.

China Residencies: How did IFP get started?

Max Gerthel: Institute for Provocation grew out of its predecessor Theatre in Motion, a residency programme and culture exchange project focused on alternative performing arts founded by Belgian sinologist and dramaturge Els Silvrants-Barclay in 20 ...

This year marked the launch of China Residencies’ “Two to Three 二到三” program, which sends three Australian artists on funded residencies to partner organizations in second and third tier cities in China.  

We are proud to announce the three artists chosen for this year’s program: Iain Bonner, Jason Hendrik Hansma, and Astra Howard. Jason will be attending the Organhaus residency in Chongqing, Iain will be attending the TCG Nordica residency in Kunming, and Astra will be attending the Chinese European Art Center (CEAC) residency in Xiamen.  The artists selected for this opportunity will draw on their past experienc ...

Crystal Ruth Bell, China Residencies' founder, passed away on Sunday, August 10th, 2014. For over two and half years, Crystal lived with advanced skin cancer, but that didn't stop her in her efforts to open the world of China's opportunities to artists all across the globe.

In 2009, Crystal moved to Beijing and became director of the Red Gate Residency. I met her that fall, when I began an internship at Red Gate Gallery. Crystal was working on increasing the program's diversity, in terms of the artists' medium, age, backgrounds and country of origins. Crystal also loved maps. In her two years at Red Gate, she expanded the prog ...

We got the chance to interview Luo Fei, TCG Nordica's curator and residency program manager while in Kunming to talk about their mission of bridging cultures through artistic exchange:

China Residencies: How did you first get involved with TCG Nordica?
Luo Fei: I started here in 2006, and before that I worked at Lijiang Studio on art projects and the residency program with Jay Brown. After that I started at TCG Nordica as the gallery curator and then started to manage TCG's residency program for international and Chinese artists.

CR: When was TCG founded?
LF: Nordica started in 2000. We were one of the first galler ...

We caught up with Gordon Laurin, the founder and director of Where Where Art Space in Caochangdi, outside of Beijing, to talk about his young program:

China Residencies: Can you tell us the history of Where Where Space?
Gordon Laurin: Three years ago, I decided to relocate to Beijing. After doing one year of freelance curating and writing, I thought that it would be interesting to set up a project space for artists from all over the world to come and do a residency here. I also wanted to have a project space where we could host exhibitions for young, emerging Chinese artists, and other artists from the internation ...

Anna Glynn is an Australian artist working in painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, writing, music, sound, installation, film making, moving image, digital animation and theatre. She has built a lasting relationship with China over multiple residencies, exhibitions, and collaborations in China.

China Residencies:  What sparked your interest in China?

Anna Glynn:  I grew up on a farm in Melbourne on the Yarra River. The area was the site of historic gold mining in the 1800s – many of these miners were Chinese. As a child I created small archaeological digs at the bank of the Yarra River, discovering broken smoki ...