We are delighted to announce the 2022 ONCA Barge residency programme, supported by Enjoolata Foundation!

Over the coming year, we will offer four artists working in a diverse range of art forms space and time on board the ONCA Barge. Resident practitioners will be supported to make and share environmentally-focused work that is interesting, accessible and socially relevant.

The Barge is a precious community arts hub in an area of high deprivation. Huge thanks to Enjoolata for offering ONCA the means to create new relationships with artists from within and beyond the local area, to build community links and capacity locally, and to help us offer a vibrant programme of free accessible art and creative activities for participants of all ages in East Brighton.

Our first resident is Paccha Turner Chuji, an emerging Brighton-based artist whose work explores ontological debates such as the nature of human-nonhuman relationships and the socio-historical constructions of our understandings of the world; especially from the perspective of her Kichwa Amazonian Indigenous identity and culture. She uses art as a bridge between the physical and the spiritual, and as a space that allows the subconscious realm to speak for and to reveal itself. The interconnection between all forms of existence, and the challenging of hegemonic ideas of the rational in contrast to the relational, are some of the fields that she navigates and explores, both within her artistic and non artistic work. 

One of the later residencies will be offered in partnership with Fabrica and The Living Coast – the selected artist will use the time to focus on an aspect of The Living Coast. Watch our social media channels for artist calls.

Image credit: Paccha Turner Chuji

Image description: A painting of a forest scene in rainbow colours, otherworldly and psychedelic.