RESIDENCY

CURRENT

CURRENT

BARBARA PUTZ-PLECKO

June 2025

Barbara Putz-Plecko, currently in residence, is a visual artist and academic, based in Vienna, Austria. Her artistic projects are based on an artistically research-based approach, are set up in different media and operate in both analogue and digital fields. The focus is on an in-depth exploration of forms of being, dialogue, interaction, and silent traces.

She has been professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna for 26 years (until 2023) and head of both the Textile Department and the multimedia Department for Art and Communication Practices. A common focus of both departments was on contextual art practices and on the potentials and impact of artistic strategies in communities and systems.

As an artist and researcher, she has collaborated with many academic and non-academic institutions and grassroots organizations, and she has been supervisor and coordinator of numerous art projects not only in Europe but also in Africa, Asia and Central America. Her long term research focus is on inter-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural collaborative processes.

During her stay at NIROX, she will artistically explore the vision of the landscape garden and its cultural inscriptions and implications by journeys into the field. A connection to her earlier works could be established through the consideration of the "garden as body".

Her residency forms part of the ongoing Soil and Water programme, curated by Dr. Basak Senova and Prof. Johan Thom, in collaboration with the NIROX Foundation

CURRENT

STACEY OKPARAVERO

May - June 2025

Stacey Ejiroghene Okparavero, known professionally as Stacey Ravvero, is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist, writer, and cultural practitioner whose work spans painting, metal sculpture, poetry, film, and performance. Rooted in research and reflective practice, she explores environmental consciousness, human experience, and collective healing through immersive, multi-sensory works.

A graduate of the University of Lagos with a master’s in Art History and the Business of Contemporary Art from the University of Warwick, Ravvero draws from ecology, visual culture, and embodied knowledge—often engaging with “eco-liminal” spaces where memory, nature, and self meet. Her 2022 Berlin performance Ókakò r’Évu (Plant Womb)explored the healing symbolism of plant life.

She is the founder of Atelier Stacey Ravvero, a Lagos-based studio housing The Phoenix, a metal lab, and a permaculture garden. Her community-based projects—such as Une r’Ekpè (Song of the Soil) at the Goethe-Institut Lagos and The Earth Remembers at Alliance Française Lagos—emphasize participatory, environmental engagement.

Ravvero’s work fuses art, scholarship, and activism, positioning her as a vital voice in conversations on art and sustainability. Her pieces are held in collections worldwide.

RECENT

PAST

RESIDENCY SPACES AND SERVICES

COOLROOM

UPSTAIRS STUDIO

STUDIO

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WORKSHOP

LOUNGE/DINING

COTTAGE

LOUNGE

MUSIC ROOM / STUDIO

Accommodation consists of a two bedroom double-story house facing north overlooking the Sculpture Park, with a large double-volume studio, mezzanine work space, lounge, dining and entertainment facility. Adjoining the house is an open-fronted sculpture workshop and a second studio.

A separate self-contained 2-bedroom cottage facing west overlooks the water, sheltered from the afternoon sun by aged Bushwillows.

Residencies are fully serviced with meals prepared by Maria and her team in the house kitchen, good 'rural' wifi, and assistance with sourcing materials, building and making to good standards by our management, ground staff and resident carpenter.

A short walk across the lawns of the Park is the Coolroom Complex, a large multi-functional workshop/studio, a Screening Room with cinema seating, a small studio and curator’s office.

The Sculpture Parks’ 30 hectare garden is shared with the public on weekends and with pre-arranged visitors during the week. Residents’ privacy is protected, but it is in the nature of the Foundation’s purpose to encourage engagement.

The restaurant, ‘... And then there was fire’ is open to the public. Residents are encouraged to enjoy its active program of music, performance, culinary-school, yoga, talks, poetry, fashion and related activities; to be part of Bernardo and Manu’s passion for food and the exulted life we hope to bring to South Africans and visitors from afar.

RESIDENCY SPACES AND SERVICES