LOOK NORTH A HORIZONTAL STATE OF MIND
THE ASSOCIATION OF NORTH NORWEGIAN VISUAL ARTISTS 1
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Published by: NNBK Š 2019 Editor: Ina Otzko Design: Hothorse Design Bureau Print: Litografia AS Editions: 1000 Supported by:
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ISBN: 978-82-93599-02-9
LOOK NORTH A HORIZONTAL STATE OF MIND
FOREWORD (07) NORTHERN WAYS OF LOOKING (09) Kjetil Røed
A HORIZONTAL STATE OF MIND (13) Ellen M. Sæthre-McGuirk
Eevahenna Aalto (18) Hugo Aasjord (20) Per Adde (22)
Marsil Andelov Al-Mahamid (24) Aleksander Johan Andreassen (26)
Are Andreassen (28) Trond Ansten (30) Bent Aune (32) Sissel Aurland (34) Eva Bakkeslett (36) Liv Bangsund (38) Trym Ivar Bergsmo (40)
Svein Arild Berntsen (42) Torill Bertelsen (44) Hedvig Biong (46) Ingela Birkeland (48) Sigrid Høyforsslett Bjørbæk (50)
Marianne Bjørnmyr (52) Toril Bonsaksen (54) Myriam Borst (56) Annelise Brun (58) Ingrid Cimmerbeck (60) Anne Grethe Mjønes Coldevin (62)
Christine Cynn & Valentin Manz (64) Oddvar I.N. Daren (66) Ivar Dillan (68) A K Dolven (70) Grethe I. Einarsen (72) Hanne Grete Einarsen (74)
Kari Elfstedt (76) Thor Erdahl (78) Lillian Erlandsen (80) Tor Esaissen (82) Hanne Lydia Opøien Figenschou (84) Tone Fjereide (86) Gro Folkan (88)
Sissel Fredriksen (90) Espen Gangvik (92) Maria Gradin (94) Inger J. Grytting (96) Anne Gundersen (98) Hege Gundersen (100) Emma Gunnarsson (102)
Cecilie Haaland (104) Grethe Hald (106) Brith Hennie Halvorsen (108) Christian-Ivar Hammerbeck (110) Ingunn Milly Hansen (112)
Kurt Edvin Blix Hansen (114) Eva Harr (116) Sylvia Henriksen (118) Yngve Henriksen (120) Sigfrid Hernes (122) Aino Hivand (124)
Ragnhild Adelheid Holten (126) Rakel Elice Huglen (128) Line Hvoslef (130)
Kjersti Isdal(132) Tove Hov Jacobsen (134) Bjørg Heggestad Jakhelln (136)
Vegard Johannessen (138) Gry-Hege Johansen (140) Rannveig Johansen (142)
Wenche Harriet Johansen (144) Hilde Hauan Johnsen (146) Jenny-Marie Johnsen (148) Irena Jovic (150) Aslaug Magdalena Juliussen (152) Ingjerd Hansen Juvik (154) Lars Erik Karlsen (156) Jurjan Kuli (158) Grete Andrea Kvaal (160)
Inger Blix Kvammen (162) Marit Ellisiv Landsend (164) Tine Surel Lange (166)
Bjørg Langseth (168) Simen Engen Larsen (170) Ingrid Larssen (172) Harald Lien (174) Ingeborg Annie Lindahl (176) Trygve Luktvasslimo (178) Ann-Cathrine Lundkvist (180) Cathinka Mæhlum (182) Anne Mariendal (184) Silvia Martinez (186)
Silke Mathe (188) Hans Ragnar Mathisen (190) Guri Moe (192) Dick Monshouwer (194) Mathis Nango (196) Eivind H. Natvig (198) Camilla R. Nicolaisen (200)
Hege Annestad Nilsen (202) Johanne Seines Nilsen (204) Harriet Normann (206) Geir Nustad (208) Inger Anne Nyaas (210) Ina Otzko (212) Solveig Ovanger (214) Torunn Ovanger (216) Jet Pascua (218) Hilde Skancke Pedersen (220)
Kirsten Skaar Pedersen (222) Synnøve Persen (224) Ari Pyörälä (226)
Irene Rasmussen (228) Agnes Reiersen (230) Ingunn Moen Reinsnes (232)
Peter Rust (234) Evelyn Scobie (236) Silja Skoglund (238) Marita Isobel Solberg (240) Phillipp Spillmann (242) Sissel Stangenes (244) Bjørn Tore Stavang (246)
Helle Storvik (248) Elisabet Alsos Strand (250) Agata Magdalena Sulikowska (252)
Arvid Sveen (254) Kristin Tårnes (256) Scott Thoe (258) Vebjørg Hagene Thoe (260)
Vemund Thoe (262) Espen Tollefsen (264) Gunnar Tollefsen (266) Siri Tollefsen (268) Margareth Troli (270) Espen Tversland (272) Elin Már Øyen Vister (274)
Grethe Winther-Svendsen (276) Åsne Wold (278) Kajsa Zetterquist (280) Ane Vigdis Øverås (282) Linn Rebekka Åmo (284)
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THE ASSOCIATION OF NORTH NORWEGIAN VISUAL ARTISTS The Association of North Norwegian Visual Artists (NNBK) is a regional organization for professional visual artists in Northern Norway under the national organization The Norwegian Visual Artists Association (NBK). NNBK’s long-term commitment is to promote and secure the professional, social, economic and non-profit interest of the visual artist from the three Northernmost counties; Nordland, Troms and Finnmark. The Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts, region Northern Norway (NKNN) is working to promote and support contemporary crafts in the region, nationally and internationally. NKNN’s main objective is to strengthen and professionalize the arenas for contemporary crafts and improve its members visibility in exhibitions and public space. The North Norwegian Art Centre (NNKS) is a regional centre for visual art, comprising the entire region of Northern Norway. While our administration, gallery and artist residency is located in Svolvær, Lofoten, NNKS carries out an extensive range of activities in the region, focusing on contemporary art and crafts. NNKS is owned by The Artist Associations of Northern Norway (NNBK and NKNN) and receives funds from Art Council Norway, the counties of Nordland, Troms and Finnmark and our host municipality Vågan.
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NORTHERN WAYS OF LOOKING The art writer John Berger claimed that the power of art doesn’t stop with the work but begins there, because art contains seeds for ways of looking, we didn’t know from before, which it cannot be reduced to the aesthetic alone. Art is not just something to look at, but something to look with. Through the particularities of art, we can teach ourselves to see power relations and how fragments are connected to the whole, both in the works themselves and in the world at large. Through art we can learn to see how women have been subjected to the male gaze, but also how minorities have been marginalized and how colonial aspirations are engraved in the smallest of things. All of these relations are perhaps looked upon attentively then, and what becomes visible in the artworks might in fact, not surface at all, Berger claims. “What has prompted me to write over the years is the hunch that something needs to be told and that, if I don’t try to tell it, it risks not being told,” he writes in one of his last books Confabulations (Penguin Books, 2016). I was thinking of Berger when I, some time ago, visited a museum in Tromsø where the boundaries between visual
Kjetil Røed
arts and ethnography was blurred. The items presented and the way they were staged in the museum didn’t seem to respect the common rules for how art should be shown. It was all mixed up, but not really as a rounded whole, as an installation or an elegant Gesamtkunstwerk. The artwork was no longer a separate sphere in this space, or maybe it wasn’t allowed to be, I thought, while considering closely a piece of flotsam gathered from the seaside somewhere, I think, in Spitsbergen. At first I thought it was an enormous stone reminiscent of those large rocks at Stonehenge, perhaps, but when I touched it (which was not allowed) I discovered that it weighed close to nothing. It was not stone at all, but Styrofoam (or something close to it). The work, if we can call it that, was in any other setting probably just garbage, waste, something not worth a glance. Here, however, in the spotlight of the museum, the sculptural qualities of the object became evident. Now, the idea of the readymade is nothing new, of course, but this object and several others like it in the show oscillated between art and non-art,
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the valuable and the worthless, in a much more explicit manner than Marcel Duchamp had ever achieved. There was nothing left of the exquisite intellectual gesture he made his trademark, where everyday objects went through a conceptual transformation through the magic of the art space. The ways of looking Berger talked about many years ago were pedagogical in nature, he claimed, but the optical apparatuses of art were not something already there we could unveil, a tool ready for use, but something we had to both experience and think through on our own before it could make us see. In the display at the museum there was, contrary to what we would expect, a clarity to be discovered in the blur; not because there were any new boundaries drawn, fresh and clear, but because the lack of distinctions demanded a radical reflection on the conceptual order of things. Yes, this was something different, something more, I thought, while pondering the never-ending fields of snow outside the museum and the sun that, at this time of the year, never stopped shining. Because that’s where the object had come from; the outside. The piece and its newly acquired sculptural form and painterly surface were put in a site where something more, something not anticipated, became visible. Where it was found and how the forces of nature had put its mark on something humans had discarded. The object was in its very form an accumulation of history. Not the big history of important events and famous men and woman, but the history of how something supposedly had been shaped
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by the processes in a particular place in the north of Norway. The shape and the history it brought with it was now, here, at the museum entwined in other histories of artworks and important objects we are supposed to look at and think about, even admire. When thinking about art from the Northern parts of our country I like to think of it, as Berger did, as tools for seeing, just as much as valuable objects or practices in themselves. Why do I mention this here? Well, first of all because the art from the Northern regions often are in a dialogue with places and spaces close to them, more so than the more cosmopolitan art further south. The enormous expanses of the landscape in the Northern parts of Norway seems to seep into the production and thinking about art there, and maybe it always has? I do not mean that nature and the midnight sun are transported into all artworks from the region, obviously not, but there is a more porous border between the clean insides of art of galleries, museums, “works� and collections and the open air outside, which make art from these geographies particularly interesting. The fact that the distinction between inside and outside is less articulated seems, to be sure, to keep the art in touch with its surroundings, the people and its history. In this context the distinction between the useful and the useless, the autonomous and the heteronomous might be helpful. While the artwork for the last hundred years has tended to reflect on itself, even in its site-specific and conceptual form,
works from the north tends to arise from a more firmly anchored dissonance. The sami terms duodji and dáidda are worth looking at here, because while duodji means craft, something which is shaped by use, somehow dáidda is commonly translated as “contemporary art”. It is not that simple, however, because while dáidda seems to approach the smooth and functionless ideals of autonomy in the art world, it still carries with it remnants of duodji. The tension between these terms tells a story of art practices which are not ready to leave functionality behind and start living in the smooth spaces of art around the international art world. The remnants of function and use are also remnants of practices, people, landscapes and histories anchored in the region; to me this is a good thing, because through this direct or indirect connection with human geography and ways of doing things we can get a glimpse of a way of seeing which might lead to clarity in our view of art elsewhere as well. But let us look a bit more at the general picture before we proceed with the site specificity of Northern art and art making. We have to ask ourselves, more directly, what the relation between a place and identity is. Are there any links that can be said to articulate directly or certain geographies and the people inhabiting it? This space of reflection and practice has always been a part of art; even more so before there was such a thing as “art” in our sense of the term. Before the seventeenth century and the emergence of the art institutions we all know today, the critic, the curator, the public museum, the art collector, the
auction house and the press, art had always served instrumental or ritual purposes. It had been a part of explicitly articulated relations and power and systems of belief. Art had, to put I short, served as a vehicle for reproduction of ideology or ways of living; of commitment to or belief in the state, the rich in charge, mosques and churches, or ritually, hunting and connection with the tribe or the family. But, at the same time, art had always also contained an element of enchantment, of fascination and wonder, which was the unofficial platform for any general public with access to the artworks. It is this power of art which binds us to an image, but also to a place and even to the geographies surrounding the site of the art. This is, I imagine, the reason why someone went to churches to look at works in awe and wonder, in the first place. Not just because they told them about the greatness of religion, not at all, perhaps, but because there was something in the artworks which went far beyond their intended us. A sort of transcendence, perhaps, or a feeling of meaning that could lend the onlooker a sense of consistency and offer experiences which could give a perspective on life. The dialogue between wonder, landscape and the people looking opens up a space which cannot really be reduced to a question of art only. We should risk thinking about this intersection more in terms of community and how certain art practices and artworks can work as combinatory devices; mediums which make people come together. Not in
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obligations towards one another, but in a sense of place and time, a here and now, to think more thoroughly about who we are and what we do. In short: what life is about and how we should go about with our daily business. The German thinker Walter Benjamin famously defined the artworks in the age of technical reproducibility as objects losing their aura; when they could be reproduced in extremis, or, which is the case with most contemporary art, move around in the abstract space of white cubes and museums, the works doesn’t only depart from the space and time of its original culture and production, but lose touch with any situations giving it meaning for a given community. It is worth considering the concept of aura when we speak of contemporary art in the North as well because today the ability to create bonds between individuals is perhaps one of the strongest aspects of art in our vulnerable and chaotic times. Contemporary Art from the North, viewed as a whole, is especially worth reflecting on when it comes to the communal and spatially anchored potential of art. While not every single work made in the region reflects this frame of mind, which would be an essentialism with no anchor in reality, most art from the North nevertheless resonate, as I have touched upon, with this connectedness. Maybe we could think of art from this region as a group of sketches for ways of seeing to once again draw on John Berger?
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We need, more than ever, experiences which grounds us, connects us to the people around us and the spaces and places we live in. Aura is found, I would argue, in works that break up the borders between the normalized conceptions of inside and outside, art and non-art, craft and visual arts, duodji and dĂĄidda. Aura is something that connects you to the thing, the place, and even the landscape surrounding you, because when boundaries are not obvious, or even gone, the adjacent reality comes seeping in. Aura, then, emerges in this context as an experience of art which does not belong necessarily in one category or the other, or which draws up a line where the place it is shown and the history and people dwelling there might become a part of what happens. We need that more than we need the self-sufficient concept of art as some separate reality. We need dissonance; not in itself but as an exposure of the thin veil art in reality is, connecting it with the people, the practices and the histories actually living close to it and giving life to it. If we can locate this way of seeing, it would, perhaps, not just be easier to understand clearly what art is really about, but why people have gathered around it in the past and still can gather around it, like a life giving fire in a snow-covered forest, once again. Who knows what will happen when we get together again with northern ways of looking at things.
A HORIZONTAL STATE OF MIND - You know, it’s not so vertical. -? - The art scene, up North. They aren’t very concerned about what happens here in Stockholm. The lines aren’t vertical up and down the country. Up North they are more horizontal. - Yeah, I know... It is the same for us. While discussing the Nordic art scenes, my Stockholm-based curator friend and I suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a periphery-center discussion. It became increasing clear to me, that while we were both active in our respective art scenes in Norway and Sweden, our perspectives were very different. They weren’t different in the sense that Norway and Sweden have different active artists and different centralized networks of museums, galleries, and such. Although, naturally, they are that, too. Rather, they were different in how we viewed our surroundings and in which direction we looked to sense the pulse of the rest of the art scene. By matter of factly stating that the Northern scene was more interested in looking left and right than down, my friend was inadvertently confirming that what your center is
Ellen M. Sæthre-McGuirk
and – naturally – what your periphery is, depends on where you are standing to begin with. Having worked in the North for over a decade and having become a part of the Northern Norwegian art scene as a curator, critic, and educator, I have become acutely aware of the horizontal nature of the Northern Norwegian art scene. The term horizontal nature or even, as I will use here, a horizontal state of mind can be confusing, so let me explain. The horizontal nature of the Northern art scenes means that they pay little heed to the verticalness of the geopolitical landscape of the Nordic countries. While Norway, Sweden, and Finland dominate the European map by their sheer geographical length, and while Iceland and Denmark, like punctuation marks, accentuate this by stretching the Nordic geographical presence even more, the art scenes within aren’t necessarily dependent on a relationship with their more southern capital cities. Rather, in Norway, the Northern Norwegian art scene is international and thriving on its own terms. Its networks
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span outwards to its neighboring countries and beyond, but also to main art hubs such as Berlin, London, and New York. At the same time, it is also down to earth, collaborative, interested in its publics, and intertwined in the fabric of daily life. I have always found this to be a striking characteristic of the Northern Norwegian art scene. But over the past four or five years, this characteristic seems to be getting more pronounced, distinct, and noticeable. Is this an effect of the maturing of the scene? I cannot be sure, but I do not think so. While the Northern Norwegian art scene has neither been dominated nor stimulated by main art institutions to the same extent as the other regions of Norway have, that does not mean that there haven’t been important institutions in the North, too. Art museums, galleries, associations, as well as permanent and temporary exhibition spaces lay speckled throughout the landscape. Also, while young artists have often seemed to prefer the international higher education art institutions or those in other Norwegian regions, that does not mean that important higher education art institutions have not been established and are thriving in the North. From artresearch-based to the very practical, you will find that both formal and nonformal educational offers are not only present, they play pivotal roles in further developing the art scene at the very coalface of a community. In some cases, it would even seem like the impression these individuals and offers have on communities is even more palpable than anywhere else, precisely because of the
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size of the communities in question. Furthermore, while artists do cluster in capital cities, that does not mean that other artists have not been tempted by the ample space, support, and visibility they can have in the North. In short, while the region obviously doesn’t have the same saturation of art institutions and artists as other regions, the sector is indeed established and has its own qualities to offer. Is this characteristic a direct result of the distances at play? Maybe. The curator Trond Borgen, who awarded the 2 nd Annual Northern Norwegian Critic’s Award at the 73 rd Annual Northern Norwegian Art Exhibition in Bodø, 26 th January 2019, pointed out in his awards speech that it was as far for him, living in the southern city Stavanger, to travel to Lofoten as it is for him to travel to Paris. Well if that is the case, drawing a circle with a radius the distance between Bodø and Paris, the Northern Norwegian perspective includes the majority of Europe, but also Greenland, some of Canada, and some of Russia, too. Restricting ourselves to the distance between Oslo and Bodø, however, it seems Sweden, Finland, and Russia are far closer to us than the rest of Norway. Yet, I believe that horizontalness and verticalness are not merely physical geographical affairs. They are – or become – distinctly states of mind. When one national contemporary art agency launched a Svalbard-based conference in 2016 titled Thinking at the Edge of the World, they touched upon the last threads of a way of thinking about the world that has been present in European history over the past 200 years.
To have an edge of the world, you not only need a center of the world, you also have to accept a dualistic view of the world. By defining an edge, you are defining a body, and you are thus also defining the presence of a center. A close and a far. A here and a there. An us and a them. Inevitably, one part would have preference over the other. For me, that conference title also brought about associations to the La Recherche expedition, a large French (and Scandinavian) expedition to the Northern parts of Europe between 1838 and 1840. The expedition journeyed to Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Northern Norway, and Svalbard, during which time the expedition scientists and artists conducted experiments, observations, and studies. From that expedition, the cultural-historical observations and writings by the French humanist Xavier Marmier, in Lettres sur le Nord (1840), where to challenge the existing superficial and biased understanding of the people of the North and their lives. One’s impression of a harsh and inhospitable environment is simply another’s daily surroundings. By accepting that life is merely different and not better or worse, the sense of prerogative, entitlement, and privilege that follow preference become washed out and rendered less prominent. La Recherche seems important here not only because Marmier wrote differently about the communities and people of the North. It is also important because these writings – and writings like them – exist. Through knowing that a different perspective exists, we can reflect on the effect of perspective, centers,
and edges. And as such, an act of meta-reflection on power structures, communication, and the structuring of our cultural lives can take place. Therefore, a horizontal state of mind is not the same as horizontalness as part of a horizontal-vertical dualistic point of view. One does not simply replace the other; that is, a horizontal perspective does not merely replace a vertical perspective. Rather, the horizontal state of mind in the Northern Norwegian art scene is a manifestation of the flat power structures and the strong presence of network as a means to structure the art community. Is it the art scene landscape that ultimately gave rise to this state of mind? Or has the North always preferred this way of working and structuring itself, thus supporting the type of landscape it is? I am not sure. But at the very least, it has become an expression of a willingness to communicate and exchange ideas and, therefore, to critically discuss and debate. It goes hand-in-hand with and is a reflection of – in lack of a better term – rootedness. Can we define rootedness? Rather than being deep-rooted and hard to change, rootedness implies a recognition of one’s past and physical surroundings. It implies an ability to look forward without losing touch with the rest of what defines one. And it implies the ability to carry one’s own community and identity with one, when arriving at new places, spaces, and communities. For the art scene, it would seem that finding cultural commonalities across national borders creates a basis for artistic exchange
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and fertile grounds for dialogues and deliberations. The emphasis on community and communication, on including and being present in the world with others, can affect the works produced just as it can affect the communities where artists live and work. Paradoxically, this rootedness does not restrict. Being freed from the dualism of center and periphery thinking, rootedness passes on a sense of selfconfidence and self-understanding that simultaneously supports critical thinking and dialogue with others. It allows for thinking sideways about things, together, and it creates a fruitful landscape for thought which is not bound by established physical, geographical affairs. In the international arena, these characteristics of rootedness have become precious life commodities. The uniqueness and distinctiveness of this horizontal state of mind have indeed become something to covet. I have to admit, these are cumbersome and fuzzy ideas. They require a mental leap, demanding that the reader steps out of his or her typical thought pattern. They are also based on that which would seem subtle and intangible indications, nearly indescribable traces in the landscape or tracks in the snow. Perhaps, that is why there are all the more enticing. The contemporary Northern Norwegian art scene exemplifies this rootedness and such a horizontal state of mind in many different ways. Clearly, it is reflected in the structures of the visual art sector in the North, and those
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structures also support its further existence. But it is also seen in the ways in which the scene refreshingly offers its own perspective to its international networks. I write networks, as opposed to network, because a horizontal state of mind recognizes the existence of a web of networks and also acknowledges the strength that can be found in that diversity. Increasingly, we see that Northern Norwegian artists are in direct dialogue with international trends, bringing with them their particular perspective to the discussion. Be it an interest in materials, an emphasis on technique and masterly skill, a rooted cultural perspective, a dialogue with nature, or a concern with art as research, the Northern Norwegian art scene can accommodate art and artists who are willing to push forward the advancement of their practice on their own terms. Trends such as an expanding multicultural perspective and an emphasis on materiality and craft are resourcefully played out through the work. This enormous freedom is an undeniable good, made available to the individuals of the art scene in the North. A horizontal state of mind and the scene that gives rise to it, though, is not without faults and weaknesses. Its strength can be found in how it is different from other art scenes, so naturally this is also where we can find its weaknesses. It is made strong by its networks and crisscrossing structures within; but its decentralized structure is only as strong as its weakest node. Its flat structure encourages collaboration and communication; but lacking a significant
amount of apex art institutions that can push it forward, the discussions and work can get stuck in time. Individual curators, artists, and art educators can play decisive roles in initiating change and bringing new projects to the fore; but in the long run these roles can be exhausting without sufficient surrounding support and fresh input. And last but not least, a horizontal state of mind emancipates the individual and their work; but with that emancipation comes the responsibility of continuous critical self-reflection and will to actively seek out opportunities for learning and dialogue. Don’t let yourself be fooled; it is considerably harder than it sounds. So, what does this mean for the future of the scene? That is the one question which remains unaddressed, and problematically so. Ultimately, I believe we have come to a crucial point in a longer history of the Northern Norwegian art scene. While, over the years, there have been significant waves of change brought on by major and minor modifications in national and regional cultural politics, and while there has been a generational shift in the greater art community, it is the cumulation of those waves that we are at the crest of now. Perchance it is a maturing of the scene, after all, that we are witnessing unfolding? If so, we may have many great things ahead of us – even though we certainly have a few more turbulent years to go.
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EEVAHENNA AALTO
I was born and brought up in Helsinki, but have lived in Hammerfest for over 40 years. My education is from both Norway and Finland. I weave
and paint and my work focuses upon the relationship between contrasts especially the opposites of light and darkness. The fundamental
elements such as geometric forms, symbols and contrasts invite you to
consider something universal and eternal. However, what may seem like simple geometry often consists of many far more organic forms. There
is movement in every angle and arc. Many of my works can be seen as representations of moods and changes within the Arctic landscape.
eevahenna@gmail.com e-aalto.com 20
1) Mørketid
2009, Tapestry 208 x 182 cm
2) Mytisk landskap
2014, Tapestry 138 x 164 cm
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HUGO AASJORD
(b. 1955) Gravdal, Lofoten. Norwegian painter, sculptor, printmaker and musician. He grew up in the Lofoten islands and Steigen and comes from a family with long traditions in fishing, whaling and the fishing
industry. Hugo Aasjord broke with expectations when he at the age of 17 years was enrolled in Fachhocshule für Design in Münster, as the
youngest ever student. In the course of the last 40 years Aasjord has
held a number of exhibitions at home and abroad. He has had public art
commissions, worked as artistic consultant for public buildings and been an art teacher. Aasjord live on both sides of the Vestfjord: In Engeløya in Steigen where he has a private gallery and in Skrova in Lofoten. At the
latter, he has been working in recent years with his wife Mette Bolsøy to restore Aasjordbruket. The ambition is to transform the old fish factory into a gallery, restaurant and hotel. Several pages of Aasjord’s work
and family history is described in Morten A. Strøksne’s Havboka – eller Kunsten å fange en kjempehai fra en gummibåt på et stort hav gjennom fire årstider (Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean Through Four Seasons). The English
release is scheduled for Spring 2017. In German: Das Buch vom Meer.
(Brage Prize 2015, Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature 2015, published
in 26 countries). Hugo Aasjord has four children. His art is predominantly abstract, yet inspired by the coastal and marine areas, and the North Norwegian nature and light.
hugoaasjord@gmail.com hugoaasjord.com 22
1) Objekt i landskap
2018, Oil on canvas
2) Fragmenter
2015, Pencil
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PER ADDE
(b. 1926) Philipstad, Sweden. After art studies in Gothenburg, he
attended The Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm, 1955-60. Already as a student, he was drawn by the nature of Northern Sweden and for years
he spent time painting and interacting with the local Saami population.
Since the early sixties, he has lived and worked as an artist in Northern Norway. Both life and art express his intimate interaction with nature
and a lifelong togetherness with Saami people and their culture. He has gained national respect as spokesperson for Saami interest. Together
with his life companion Kajsa Zetterquist he earns deep respect for his
continued work in organizing the interests of artists. Through a multitude of exhibitions and public work Per Adde’s art accompanies thousands of
people in their everyday life. In 2013 Gallery Adde-Zetterquist, a gift from Nordland County Council, opened. Exhibited art is a reciprocal gift from the artists.
Most of all I want people to experience my paintings through direct
meetings – and that the paintings alone, without accompanying words
will make this happen. Nevertheless, once I did formulate that I still find both true and of importance:
The infinite variety in nature’s shapes and forms, the richness of life and movements give me impulses. Nature stand as a catalyst in my work, where I try to formulate my experiences and life expression in paintings with the artistic tools available. I make Delacroix words, with an important contemporary message to mine when he says
The day artists have lost their knowledge of and love for their tools of expression, then sterile theories takes over. Because when they no longer understand or manage to express their thought in colors and form then they will take to words and be grabbed by literature.
addezetterquistkunstgalleri.no 24
Minne
2011, Oil 150 x 130 cm
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MARSIL ANDELOV AL-MAHAMID
Marsil Andelov Al-Mahamid is a Tromsø based artist. Andelov
Al-Mahamid grew up in Yugoslavia born to a Syrian father and
Serbian mother. His long-term artistic research is about a topic of
“Remembrance”, connecting peace-building activities with both youth and adults through art, science and culture. He is also interested in socioeconomic issues such as poverty, desperation and economic fragility resulting from war and conflicts. Andelov Al-Mahamid has
had several art projects that focused on co-producing methods of
creating art pieces and spaces that are turned into socially engaged art. Andelov Al-Mahamid mainly works with handmade embroidery, video-performance and installation art.
Marsil Andelov Al-Mahamid graduated from Tromsø Academy of
Contemporary Art and Creative Writing in 2015. He also holds an MS
in business creation and entrepreneurship from UiT, a BS in industrial engineering and management from Belgrade University and a BS in
E-business from The University of Krusevac in Serbia. He is an active artist both in Norway and internationally.
marsilki@yahoo.com
marsilandjelovalmahamid.com 26
1) CARIN - Embroidery Workshop at the Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in Tromsø
2017, Photo by Marsil Andelov Al-Mahamid For this CARIN - embroidery workshop Marsil Andelov Al-Mahamid collaborated with UiT, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum and Tromsø International Week. To promote learning in the practices of integration, project CARIN is studied in the research project Cit-egration. Sustainable diverse cities: Innovation in Integration by UiT. Local refugees, immigrants, and long-time residents received guidance from Marsil Andelov Al-Mahamid on the use of embroidery art. In total, he organized 21 workshops at several different locations and cities in Northern Norway. ’CARIN’’ - embroidery workshops gathered around 300 people and created more then 200 finished embroideries. By sitting next to each other, the participants have the possibility to start conversations with each other and thereby make new friendships and connections. They play around with their ideas creating small sized embroideries. Sharing real life stories can be rough especially if they are about war,violence, marginalities and exclusions, social injustice, etc.
2) Embroidery Fence
2017, Photo by Marsil Andelov Al-Mahamid The project was a collaboration with Swedish artist Simon Grand Danielsson, Red Cross Kikinda and Kikinda refugee asylum center. The idea of the project was to create an installation made of wool thread and cotton fabric, together with refugee children. The installation was created on the fence in the refugee asylum center in Kikinda, Serbia.
27
ALEKSANDER JOHAN ANDREASSEN
Aleksander Johan Andreassen is a Norwegian visual artist and
filmmaker living in Oslo, Norway. He mainly works with film and
video installations where, through different methods, he explores perspectives on normality and belongingness. His work has
been included in exhibitions and film festivals nationally and
internationally, amongst others, AC Institute, New York, USA, The 63rd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Oberhausen,
Germany, 55th Gijón International Film Festival, Gijón, Spain, and
Encounters Festival 2014, Bristol, UK. His film Strim won the Golden
Chair for best Norwegian short film under The 40th Norwegian Short Film Festival in 2017. Aleksander received his master’s degree in fine art at Konstfack University College, Stockholm, Sweden.
aleksanderjohanandreassen@gmail.com aleksanderjohan.com 28
1) Undersyn / Vision Of Wonder 2018, Still from film
2) Undersyn / Vision Of Wonder
2017, Installation view, Bodø kunstforening
29
ARE ANDREASSEN
(b. 1957) Tromsø. Lives and works in Bodø/Fleinvæ. Educated at The Art Academy in Trondheim.
I have been working with graphics and the graphic expression since the early 1980s and over the years used a number of techniques from the metal etching’s slow aesthetics to today’s fast-paced digital media and print options.
In recent years, I have worked with digital media/printer in
collaboration with classic techniques. In the field of tension
between contemporary fast digital techniques and the ancient
aesthetics, new graphic spaces arise that are deeply rooted in the soul of the graphics, traditions and long historical lines.
areart@gmail.com 30
1) Masked Querini
Woodcarving, 2pl. + template printing From the series: “RØST N556”, consisting of 15 pieces of wood (motifs) 10 ex. 90 x 63 cm
2) RØST
Woodcarving + stencil print From the series: “RØST N556”, consisting of 15 pieces of wood carvings (motifs) 10 ex.
31
TROND ANSTEN
(b. 1984) Visual artist and biologist based in Tromsø. He received his
education from the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe (Germany), and previously studied biology and expedition guiding. With experience
from public management and a strong passion for hunting, fishing and harvesting, his focus is the relation between man and nature. Ansten works with film, installation, fermentation and performance art.
In his films a fish or an animal may often be the main protagonist. Each
frame is a sculptural composition in the landscape where a performative act is taking place. The goal to create visual poems of still, moving
images and in 2017 he received the Grand Price at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum for his filmatic language.
The project Tara Morhua together with Marita Isobel Solberg explores potential of our old friend, the Cod. The tools are science, fishing and mysticism to create performances and installations that recently has
been shown at The Arctic Arts Festival in Harstad, at Hålogaland Teater in Tromsø and at TTT in Mexico City.
Devil’s Apron is a relational project where Ansten together with Kåre Grundvåg are searching for a possible recipe to create an alcoholic beverage based upon seaweed. The challenges are the same as
production of third generation biofuel. Through old refining methods like ancient wild yeast of the North, mold from Japan and semipermeable
stomach-containers from Sámi tradition their on a journey to crack the code. The project explores the bar as an artistic site and has recently
been traveling to Arkhangelsk, Moscow, the Træna-Islands, Edinburgh,
Folkestone and Tokyo. This winter it will be shown at Barents Spektakel in Kirkenes.
trond.ansten@gmail.com devils-apron.com 32
1) 17 toner hvitt 2018, Film still 2) Another Man’s Floor 2018, Film still 3) Devil’s Apron - Harvest 2017, Film still 33
BENT AUNE
Born and lives in Andenes, Vesterålen. Educated in Bergen as a graphic artist. I work with a range of different techniques including drawing,
acrylic and oil painting but my main focus is watercolour, which I also
combine in colouring graphic prints. I also make installations, collecting
things from the seashore mostly. I work with and in my surroundings; the
nature and human impact on the nature, signs of human activity, houses, farming.
Have participated in several exhibitions in Norway and abroad and I
have previously taught fine art for many years. I have worked with the
topic «the aesthetic of cruelty» for instance in war scenes from Syria.
I find the pictures from these bombed cities interesting, beautiful and
aesthetic and have made a triptych W. A. R. Presented here is number three, executed in acrylic. Number one is in oil and number two is in
watercolour. I had to put in some humans just to show there is nothing beautiful about that aspect.
The other work presented here is a watercolour painting of a Redfish.
The type from my area, Aínnesauor is well known for its size and quality.
bent54@me.com 34
1) Grusomhetens estetikk III
2018, Acrylic (Part of a triptych) 100 x 100 cm
2) AÃnnesauor
2017, Watercolour 75 x 55 cm
35
SISSEL AURLAND
I was born and raised in Harstad under the mysterious Northern light, and now I live outside Oslo. My studio is located in Blaker Skanse in Akershus where I work as a visual artist, together with artists at KunstSkansen artist community.
Impression from our nature, with its lines and forms, are important for
me and my artwork expression. To give a physical expression to a feeling fascinates and excites me. I have a contemplating approach to my work,
where I look inwards in the creation process where I sense, feel and form the painting in a continuous growing process.
sissel@sisselaurland.no sisselaurland.no 36
1) Landskap I
2018, Monotype 35 x 35 cm
2) Nordlys V
2018, Monotype 35 x 35 cm
37
EVA BAKKESLETT
Eva Bakkeslett is an artist, filmmaker, curator and cultural activist
exploring potential for social change through gentle actions and subtle mindshifts. Her practice often combines film, participatory events
and workshops. She creates spaces and experiences that challenge
our thinking and unravel new narratives that bring our attention to the
patterns that connect us to the earth as a living organism. In her work she explores ways of reconnecting to our senses, to our non-human life partners and collaborators and to ancient, deeply rooted but
forgotten knowledge. Eva is particularly inspired by the process of
fermentation and explores how this can be a method for re-imagining sustainable human cultures. She inquires into how microbes can
inspire creative problem solving, collaboration and transformation to
find new ways to deal with the many challenges we are now facing in our world.
In her practice she frequently collaborates with others across
disciplines. She shows, lectures and performs her work worldwide
and her films have been screened in numerous film festivals and art events. Her award winning film Alchemy – the poetics of bread has been shown in exhibitions and film-festivals worldwide including
MoMA, New York. Her ruminations on bread as the art of the everyday
was celebrated in her event Companion festival of Bread in Dartington, UK and in numerous workshops and events and her work on
fermentation has manifest amongst others as the project Rømmekolle Revival, exhibited in various exhibitions in Norway.
Eva co-created and co-curated the interdisciplinary event Gentle
Actions at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo in 2010 and recently co-curated the program Repair for ROM for Art of Architecture in Oslo.
She has an MA in Art & Ecology from Dartington College of Art in England, and lives on Engeløya in North Norway. There she has
created an Artist Residency program and a guest studio, The Agency of Imagination, as a platform for aesthetic collaborations and enquiry founded in ecological and interconnected thinking and working.
evabakkeslett.com 38
1) Breath
HD video, 20 mins Breath is a film about the poetic journey of the air that surrounds us and flows through us constantly. It has been shown in numerous exhibitions and film festivals in Norway and abroad, including: North Norwegian Arts Society, Short Film Festival in Grimstad, Greenpoint Film Festival in Brooklyn NYC and Høstutstillingen in Oslo (Autumn Salon) in 2016.
2) Makkverk (Wormworks)
An insight into the making of the Earth with live video and sound transmission straight from the underworld. Makkverk consists of a zinc bucket with an inherent community of 10,000 (at least) compost worms of the type Eisenia fetida, which during the exhibition period transforms food and plant remains into soil, while singing their peculiar song. Zinc bucket with wooden lid 70 x 60 cm, mini camera with ultrared light, microphone attached to an amplifier and speakers. Live projection on the wall. Makkverk was part of my show Biodiversity – Bacterial cultures and extraterrestrial wormworks at Bodø Art Society, 2017.
39
LIV BANGSUND
Liv Bangsund uses her knowledge about how Northern Norwegian
sustainable societies were organized as inspiration for her art projects.
She develops projects where everyday-activism, climate change, urban
development and human relationships are key elements. Through active
participation and nontraditional use of art materials, she explores how art can contribute new knowledge production in society. Liv Bangsund holds a MA from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art and Creative Writing.
People’s Kitchen Tromsø: facebook.com/Tromsø-Folkekjøkken-PeoplesKitchen-Tromsø-843690995660254
livbangsund.com 40
1) Fra Kurant Nabolag
2016, Photo: Liv Bangsund
2) People’s Kitchen Tromsø flyer
Idea: Liv Bangsund, Design: Irene Rasmussen
41
TRYM IVAR BERGSMO
(b. 1962) Based in Harstad, North Norway. Through various approaches and projects, he tries to understand his own social, cultural and psychological connection to the world around and
within himself. Like most Westerners he is also restless and feels a need to belong to something. Through knowing his own history, he can also understand and know others.
His works are direct, they reflect the reality as he feel and experience
it. He try to create an order in existence. He is exploring the essence of the moment, the point between total chaos and sublime harmony. His
work is searching for items and moments that reflect the universal, inner psychological landscape. In these landscapes he finds his own identity.
Bergsmo has worked and lived in the arctic for more than 30 years. He is inspired by the lives of the people of the north, their landscape and their culture.
He has made several books and had exhibitions all across Europe. His
work is represented in national as well as international collections. He is also purchased by national companies and large public commissions. His images have been published around the world and he is currently taking on a few commercial assignments parallel to teaching his own workshops.
His main focus is always on his own projects and artwork as a
photographer. Currently working on new exhibitions, books and documentary projects.
trym@bergsmo.no
bergsmofineart.no bergsmo.no 42
# 12700 (untitled)
2017, Photography, gicleè print 50 x 70 cm
43
SVEIN ARILD BERNTSEN
(b. 1950) Stavanger. Educated: Illustrator and graphic designer / Educator in fine arts.
Organized artist since 1975, with debut in UKS Oslo, 1977. 42 years as professional and performing artist and art conveys.
Exhibitions: Høstutstillingen in Oslo, Vestlandsutstillingen and “Nord-
Norsken”. “Norwegian culture-days” in Berlin, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk.
Active as an executive exhibitor from 1975-2017. Last year, the artist was invited to do a “Crossover Project” in Kunming, China (art-performance with Chinese artists and musicians).
Embellishments/procurement: Regional and local public buildings. Embellishments in churches, Rogaland and Troms county.
Artistic characteristics: Berntsen’s art is often colorful and life affirming, expressive and lyrical. His coloristic motives often relates to dancing, natural tones and music.
Techniques: Acrylic on canvas and wooden materials. Art mediation: His art and music has been used therapeutically
within the healthcare field. Initiator of the artistic community and rural
development. He received the Culture price in Tranøy, 1988 and Lenvik municipality in 2016 for his cultural work.
Blues/music: Well known as artist Pappa-Svein. He has fronted several blues bands with his songs and harmonica. Also touring Svalbard in
the North to Macedonia in the South. In recent years he has played and
shown his art in several churches in Troms county. His engagement and blues music has built bridges between art and valuable experiences.
sabkunst@online.no 44
1) Nature-tone
2015, Acrylic on canvas 100 x 120 cm
2) Dance and passion
2015, Acrylic on canvas 99 x 80 cm
45
TORILL BERTELSEN
I am a woodworker. My passion is to make an interesting combination between different kinds of wood. Sometimes I can use more than ten
different kinds in one work. The different colors and lightness/darkness in my wooden materials is my palette. I have developed my own inlay
technique of Marquetry, “Intarsia”. I make the materials 4 mm before I use my contour saw.
I have made several commissions in the Northern part of Norway, and
one separate travelling exhibition. In the last 30 years I have been living in the Coastal region of Helgeland with my workshop in Sømna.
The aesthetic and decorative is central in describing my work, but important for me is also the aspect of use.
bertel2@online.no
torillbertelsen.com 46
1) World Wide Wings
(52 Birds), Brønnøysundregistrene Different woods
2) Møtested (Meeting point)
Fauske videregående skole Different woods
47
HEDVIG BIONG
(b. 1985) Harestua, Norway. Visual artist working with photography,
performance, painting and installation. Master in Contemporary Art from Tromsø Academy of Arts, a BFA from the Department of Photography at
The National Academy of Arts, Bergen, and a BFA in Art History from The University of Bergen.
The art work often evolves from encounters with reality and a fascination with its unexplainable wonders, human experiences related to the
landscape and geological processes. How the human experience of time becomes a symbol impermanence, in relation to the durability of the landscape.
Through her practice she explores how reality can be represented and interpreted in art works, and further on how time materialize differently in painting, performance and photography. Works often appears from personal encounters, with a social anthropological approach as an entrance point for creation.
In addition to her own practice, she is involved in various artistic
collaborations: KAAL, The Ocean Unseen and Kevin or Harry. Together with Pablo Castilla has she founded the historical photographic studio EL LABORATORIO in a cave in Sacromonte, Granada. The studio is
focused on pioneer photography techniques such as wet plate collodion, ambrotypes and ferrotypes.
hedvigbiong@gmail.com hedvigbiong.com 48
1) Ferrotype
9 x 12 cm
2) Ambrotype
13 x 18 cm
49
INGELA BIRKELAND
(b. 1944) Sundsvall, Sweden. Art Education: Konstfackskolan in
Stockholm, Sweden, 1962-1966. Visual artist debut: UKS, Oslo, Norway, 1978.
The core of my motivation is a longing for the ultimate expression.
I start my process with a theme or concept, which I work on for a long
period to visually realise. I “listen” for the artwork’s form, structure and colours and start to build the composition.
During the last 18 years I have used two types of materials: Acrylic paint on watercolour paper – for collages, and Batik dyed, laminated cotton fabric – for collages, folded reliefs, sculptures and structures of the laminated material in strips.
ingela.birkeland@online.no ingela-birkeland.com 50
Focus
2018, Relief/structure of batik dyed and laminated cotton fabric in twisted strips 53 x 53 cm
51
SIGRID HØYFORSSLETT BJØRBÆK
In my artistic practice I work with blown glass objects, treating
their surfaces with engraving, sandblasting and other abrasion techniques. I explore the perception of glass as a material
and often combine a strict form with organic illusion. Glass is said to be an amorphous material, both liquid and fixed. I’m interested in transitions and transformations and play with
the idea of a material undergoing continuous change, both symbolically and associatively.
Ny/ne (Wax/ Wane) and Krets (Circles) consists of blown glass balls which, after cooling, have been subjected to sawing, engraving and sanding. The balls appear to have both an
interior room and an exterior surface that changes appearance in relation to the viewer’s movement.
bruket@bruketglass.com 52
1) Ny/ne (Wax/Wane) 2016
2) Krets (Circles) 2018
53
MARIANNE BJØRNMYR
(b. 1986) Lives and works in Bodø, Norway. In her practice she works with research based photography that concerns our perception
of the photograph’s approach to reality. Through theoretical and
practical experimentation Marianne explores phenomena and visual
representation, where the photograph’s role in conveying objects and surroundings is set up against our understanding, interpretation and generated perception of imagery.
Marianne’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally
including Høstutstillingen: Den Nordnorske Kunstutstilling, Daniel Blau, London, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin and Aldama Fabre Gallery,
Bilbao. She has published the books ‘An Authentic Relation’, ‘Beneath
the Salt’ and ‘Shadows/Echoes’, and participated at photobook shows
including Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Roma and Vienna. Marianne holds an MA in Photography from London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
Marianne founded Atelier NOUA in Bodø in 2017, together with fellow artist Dan Mariner.
m.bjornmyr@gmail.com mariannebjornmyr.com noua.no 54
An Authentic Relation 2016-2018
55
TORIL BONSAKSEN
(b. 1973) Metal artist based in Sandnessjøen. She has an MFA in
Jewellery, Sculpture and Metal Art from The National Academy of Arts in Oslo. She works mainly with metal; both sculpture, objects and jewelry. Several of her works have been purchased by the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, private collectors, municipal and public institutions.
By focusing on old and reused materials, she wants to create works that allow reflection around topics that occupy her.
“I collect old, rusty, patinated and worn objects. These are my gems; full of stories of dreams, everyday life and lived life.”
torilbons@gmail.com 56
1) Daily bread (Daglige brød)
2018, Soldering, cutlery, silver, wood 33 x 53 x 5 cm
2) Exhausted (Sliten)
2017, Welding, stainless steel cutlery, steel angles, concrete 110 x 95 x 95 cm
57
MYRIAM BORST
Born in Scheveningen in Holland. Educated in Rotterdam at The Willem
de Kooning Academy. Landed on a tiny deserted island ‘Storskjærvøya’ in Vesterålen in the North of Norway where she has works and lives for over 25 years.
Still impressed and inspired by her everyday surrounding, from the inner to the far out landscape aiming to connect with the essence of nature.
Using various media to communicate what lays between the known and
unknown dimensions she transforms feelings, thoughts and memories in colors, sounds and shapes to come closer to it.
The metaphor of the Earth as a spaceship traveling through space as
a self contained system, dependent on its own vulnerable supplies of
natural resources was a thought and term by Richard Buckminster Fuller in 1895. He had already the thought that we are not going to be able to
operate our spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as one and our fate as common, it has to be everybody or nobody. Like a grand and miraculous spaceship, I see our planet sailing trough the universe of time and for a brief moment we have been among its many passengers. The element space has a comprehensive
understanding. Everything arises out of space, exists in the space and resumes in that space.
myriamborst.com 58
1) Installation ‘Geodesy’
2017, An Ode to Richard Buckminster Fuller
2) Spaceship Earth
2017, Mixed media 200 x 100 cm
59
ANNELISE BRUN
(b. 1966) Tromsø. My higher Art education is from the Netherlands with a Diploma from Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam in 1991. Today I live
and work in Tromsø as a visual artist. I have taken part in several group
and solo exhibitions, commission work, art teaching and represented in public art collections.
In search of identity and a sense of belonging brought me into the Art World. The intimacy and immediacy in drawing fascinate me where I
sense, feel and form the drawing in a continuous growing and building process. Fragments emerge and interlace, seeking new dimensions
and perspectives. With charcoal, graphite and pastel I can work more
profoundly, and create a stronger interaction between texture and line. The drawings presented here are from a recent commission work
completed in 2018 for a new faculty building for Medicine and Health Studies (MH2) at the University in Tromsø. I have named the work
Homeostasis as a reference to all the biological processes that create stability and health in our bodies, but can also refer to harmony in
psychology and spirituality. The work covers the outside wall of an
auditorium on Floors 7 and 8, and is visible from both the interior and
exterior of the building. The work was created on site using soft pastels on the birch-veneer panels.
abrun66@yahoo.no annelisebrun.com
publicartnorway.org/kunstverk/homeostasis 60
Homeostasis
2018, Soft pastels on birch veneer panels Faculty building for Medicine and Health Studies (MH2), University in Tromsø Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik/KORO
61
INGRID CIMMERBECK
Art/ceramic education from England and Sweden. Moved to Bodø, Norway in 1979 and started my own ceramic studio. I work with
stoneware for electric kiln and raku firing in open air. Most of my pieces are meant for walls such as reliefs and collages.
I have had several solo exhibitions and have been engaged for several public commissions.
ingrid.cimmerbeck@gmail.com 62
Det laver ned (Coming from above)
2018, Ceramic collage. Stoneware and raku Purchased by Bodø Kommune, The Marriage room
63
ANNE GRETHE MJØNES COLDEVIN
Anne Grethe is an artist who was born and bred in Narvik, Norway.
Presently she is living in Bodø, Norway. She has an education from the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Oslo. Anne Grethe expresses herself mainly through her work in forms of paintings and photographs but
sometimes, when creativity demands it, she also uses other forms of
art to express herself; the diversity of life, moments, humor, contrasts
and imagination also plays an important role in her art. She is currently working on a collaborative project with a Peruvian author and a local musician.
In this catalogue, Anne Grethe showcases two of her photographs from 2018. “Noe bortenfor”, is about longing for something that is not yet
experienced. “I øyeblikket”, is about catching an event at the moment.
annegrethemc@yahoo.no 64
1) Noe bortenfor 2018, Photo
2) I øyeblikket
2018, Photo
65
CHRISTINE CYNN & VALENTIN MANZ
The ICE-9 mission
Ice-9 is a media arts organisation with a mission to nurture visions of a sustainable and just future. These visions are socially inclusive and anchored in evidence-based research. How do we do it?
We use participatory media and art to create positive feedback loops
between science, art, and education (especially through storytelling &
storymaking). Ice-9 currently produces podcasts, video presentations,
short films, feature films, media campaigns, live events, youth workshops, and AR/VR story experiences. See our platform to imagine the lives of the future on helloX.me What’s the strategy?
Our strategy is collaborative and embedded in new communication culture and technology. We apply a multidisciplinary approach,
combining knowledge from different disciplines and penetrating through
all levels of society. Ice-9 presents Arctic topics and themes on different
levels, we present an alternative strategy for outreach activities related to Arctic studies, not only for researchers, but the wider public. Ice-9 makes knowledge sustainable. Who’s on the team?
Ice-9 is a group of artists, writers, storytellers, filmmakers, and researchers. Based in Northern Norway, Ice-9 was founded in
2014 by Christine Cynn (artist/filmmaker) & Valentin Manz (artist/ art psychotherapist). The core team includes Ann Eileen Lennert
(environmental anthropologist), Anneli Stiberg (visual anthropologist/ producer), and Marina Borovaya (entrepreneur/photographer). helloX.me Can stories shape our future? We think so.
hello X is a story laboratory to collectively imagine X, a young woman 50
years into the future. The first season of hello X asks how human impacts on the Arctic ecosystem (think: climate change, pollution, industrial food production) might affect food webs and food culture for X in 2068.
You can contribute to the first cycle of X short stories by going to the
WRITE page. Listen to the PODCASTS to meet scientists, artists, and
other special guests, review your contributions, and dig into the present day stories that inform our evolving visions of X. Go to MEET to read featured story ideas, debate issues with our creative and scientific
teams, and propose new story games. This is a laboratory with live
experiments, and lots of potential surprises, so subscribe to the hello
X NEWSLETTER to keep up-to-date on new developments and receive invitations to live events (both online and away-from-keyboard).
helloX@ice-9.no hellox.me 66
GEIRDODO
2018, Collage, Valentin Manz Patron saint of extinct birds in the church of Neoaves circa 2068. Hunted to extinction. The 2 last geirfugl/great auk were killed on 3.June 1844 on Eldey (Iceland). The last accepted dodo sighting was in 1662 by shipwrecked mariner Volker Evertsz on Amber Island (Mauritius).
67
ODDVAR I.N. DAREN
I work across a wide range of expressions and materials and let the ideas rule the means!
oddvar@trans-art.no oddvarindaren.no 68
1) Kile
1985, Værøy In partnership with Lars Paalgard and Terje Munthe
2) Søyle
2018, Trondheim, Mirror polished steel 8,5 m
69
IVAR DILLAN
(b. 1939) Bodø, where he lives and works. He studied music at the
University of Oslo. Ivar Dillan paints in a modernist tradition and his paintings have an expressionist idiom. The colors, movement and
dynamics between lines and surfaces hold strong references to music. Dillan is interested in the performers and the immediate atmosphere of a concert venue and how to express this in a picturesque and characteristic way.
Dillan has exhibited extensively and is purchased by several public and private institutions, such as the Arctic Art museum and Norrbottens Museum in LuleĂĽ.
idillan@outlook.com dillan.no 70
1) Cello og bratsj Acrylic 50 x 50 cm
2) Barokktrio
Acrylic 50 x 60 cm
3) Ad-libitum
Acrylic 50 x 60 cm
71
AK DOLVEN
A K Dolven lives and works in Oslo and Lofoten, Norway. Her work
alternates between the monumental and the minimal, the universal
and the intimate, resonating with concepts and structures beyond the
confines of any particular piece. Interpersonal relations and interactions are central to her practice, and many of her performance-based works involve collaborations with other people.
A K Dolven has exhibited extensively internationally at a wide range of institutions, biennials and galleries including: Kunsthalle Bern;
Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; IKON Gallery, Birmingham; Platform China,
Beijing; The National Museum of Art, Oslo; KIASMA, Helsinki; Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø; CCC Tours, France and Louisiana Museum of
Modern Art. Her work is included in over thirty international private and
public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, the Hoffmann Collection and Sammlung Goetz in Germany.
ak@akdolven.com akdolven.com 72
1) A Other Teenager
16 m x 1 m video projection 2 channel audio 31 min 31 seconds
2) Hitting the sky with snow on my shoulder II 2018, Oil on aluminum 31,4 x 31,4 cm
73
GRETHE I. EINARSEN
Grethe Irene Einarsen works photo-based with images and installation. The works are in the borderland between the documentary and the staged photography. With the Northern Norwegian landscape as a
backdrop in her pictures, the human alienation is a recurrent theme. Einarsens themes deals with everyday issues as well as universal, existential questions.
Grethe Irene Einarsen majored in photography from National Academy og Art and Design in Bergen. After graduating she has based herself in Narvik, worked with exhibitions and commissions nationally and
internationally. She has been a member of the chair in NNBK (North
Norwegian Art Association) and was head of the jury in NNBK. She has attended juried exhibitions and received several scholarships, among other a State 3 year working grant.
gretheeinarsen.no 74
At school
2018, Commission for Nye Harstad School/KORO Print on Aluminum 240 x 480 cm Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik
75
HANNE GRETE EINARSEN
(b. 1966) I live and work in Snefjord, a small Sami coastal village in Müsøy municipality in West Finnmark. I was educated at the Fine Art Academy of Vestlandet (VKA), where I specialized in woodcut. After I had a lifethreatening spinal cord injury in 2013, I had to find new methods and techniques to express myself in my art.
As a Norwegian-Sami artist, all my art is created in a landscape
consisting of eight seasons: winter - winter spring - spring - spring
summer - summer - fall summer - fall - autumn winter. The different seasons have specific tasks, as well as different events, colors and stories. The stories bear the touch of my presence in the seasons,
and therefore they are personal and often unique. Thus each has its
own artistic expression; like a painting, a drawing, a graphic sheet or
an installation. Some works are created in connection with exhibitions, where they are made directly for the exhibition space as part of the overall project.
As I meet with other people, parts of their life story find its way into my artistic world. It may be a pattern, a crochet cloth, maybe a word or a
phrase; yes, really anything that impresses me. They are all braided into the whole as expressed in my art.
snefjordprinsessa.no 76
1) Kyss/Kiss
2018, Trestaur/bjørkestaur/rice paper/lino/print 400 x 280 x 250 cm
2) Den Kalde Vinden/The Cold Wind 2018, Print/lino 32 x 33 cm
77
KARI ELFSTEDT
Kari Elfstedt works in many fields within the Arts. She has a diploma from The Art Academy of Arts and Crafts, Oslo, 1972 and a post education as an Art Creative Curator at The Art Academy in Bergen, 2006. She is an experienced Costume designer working for Feature films and
received the Amanda Award in 1990. She is a Textile Artist, has curated exhibitions, is an Art Consultant for KORO (the Norwegian Public Art
commissioning body) and has completed several commissions herself
as an Artist. She is now mainly working with large sculptured textiles and costumes inspired by the Japanese Shibori tradition. She co-Directs
an Art Project and AIR program, ABH 66°N, Helgeland (Norway) with Ina Otzko. Chairman of Norwegian Arts and Crafts, Northern Norway 20102014.
My works are three-dimensional objects, costumes and textiles for wall installations. My recent works are inspired by Japanese
Shibori techniques. In my projects I use wool and silk as materials
experimenting with new methods of reservation in this color technique.
The unpredictable outcome, which is controlled by the way the material is basted, folded, pleated and dyed is a challenging process. I work
with rhythmic repetition of lines and patterns and based upon my own experiences of the materials behavior, I try to find the right balance
between the predictable and unpredictable. Wool and silk are challenging materials to work with in color processing, but provide interesting and beautiful results with soft and smooth transitions.
My inspiration can be a conceptual idea as well as a challenging
technique where I am aiming to challenge myself as well as the audience through confrontations of theme, material and craft.
karielf@online.no karielfstedt.com 78
1) The Ocean
135 x 232 cm
2) Red Sisters
92 x 130 x 20 cm
79
THOR ERDAHL
I am a painter and graphic artist, and have also worked tridimensional
with decoration, installations and my own art projects. I live and work in KabelvĂĽg. I am interested in shapes from nature and in the people and the history of Northern Norway.
Stepping back from the detail allows you to see the whole. Traveling gives you an opportunity to reach the necessary distance.
I have participated in several exhibition in Norway and abroad. Many
times in Russia, Poland, East and West Germany, Sweden, France and USA.
thor@lillekabelvaag.no
facebook.com/lillekabelvaag 80
1) Havet i havet II
2018, Oil/tempera on canvas 50 x 90 cm
2) Havet i havet
2018, Oil/tempera on canvas 100 x 100 cm
81
LILLIAN ERLANDSEN
(b. 1950) Tromsø. Lived most of her life in “Ironworks town” Mo i Rana. She is a textile artist and is specialized in weaving through her study at the National Arts and Crafts School in Oslo.
She has researched old Norwegian textile traditions and is the
author of the book on weaving “Fellåklær”, a knowledge she uses as
inspiration in her artistic career. In her textiles she breaks tradition and replacing nets with different types of metal thread that she finishes in different ways.
The metal has its own energy and she has achieved a distinctive character in the art without losing the character of the traditional technique. Her works have been left to nature and the textiles
exposed to the natural elements so they rust. Lillian’s art brings out the beauty of the perishable.
lillian.erlandsen@gmail.com 82
Gullfaks
2016, Cotton/linen, brass, brass wire 110 x 90 cm
83
TOR ESAISSEN
(b. 1936) Trondheim. He started his art degree at the art school in
Trondheim, 1951 and continued at The State Academy of Craft and Art
Industry in Oslo, The National Art Academy, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, and finally at The Academie des Beaux-Arts in par the academic year 1959/60. He has had numerous solo shows and is
purchased by Trondheim Art Society and the Norwegian Cultural Council and at the Forenede Livs bygg in the square Trondheim. In 1986 he
moved to Svolvær and in 1992, he decided that Sørvågen was the place he would stay and work the rest of his life.
-What kind of artist are you? “You could say that I try to be a fellow
human being. When I start on a picture I have rarely an idea. I just start the process and see what comes out of it. The fact is that we are all
born artists. All are curious, and should create something out of what
they discover. That’s what is art. Through my art I try to understand more
about life. Images are everything, not just what you see. I have to say that oil painting is the one closest to me. But you know, I can’t afford to buy
canvas and colors all the time so I explore other materials and work with other techniques. The other processes always adds something new to my oil paintings.”
84
Tor Esaissen
Photo: Eivind Natvig
85
HANNE LYDIA OPØIEN FIGENSCHOU
Hanne Lydia Opøien Figenschou was born in Trondheim and grew up in Tromsø. She now lives and works in Oslo and Tromsø. She studied at Nordland Art and Film School, Kabelvåg, Trondheim
Academy of Fine Art and The University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. Her works explore themes of gender and
identity through the mediums of drawing, text and video, expressing a recurrent interest in the blatant and public versus the intimate. Text is employed in installations with narrative themes, as prose in the video works called Videoprosa, poetry collected in books
or in performance. This approach has been employed for several exhibitions where the books manifest themselves as sculptural objects in the exhibition space, last seen at The Menopause Collection, solo show, Gallery 69, Oslo, 2017. The publication
was titled Etterskjelv/ Aftershocks, containing 29 poems. The
publication is provided free of charge to visitors and exists as an
object to take home from the exhibition. This can be perceived as
inclusive, but also as obtrusive. In her work, she examines aspects of communication or the absence of dialogue. She has examined
violence in close relations, particularly the after-effects of violence. In her previous drawings, the masked self-portrait has been a
recurring theme with reference to the strategies various cultures
employ for expressing identity through covering or uncovering the body. The approach can be seen as expressing the need to claim
ownership of the self-portrait, which throughout art history has been the dominion of men. This culminated in the solo show SELFIES at
Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall in 2013. In contrast to the visual language of previous work, in recent works the style has been toned down to
create a sober distance. The approach represents a continuation of the portrait/self-portrait where the subject’s absence tells a story through the attributes of objects and the absence leaves room
for interpretation. The images originate in snapshots taken with a
smartphone, the immediate is brought out through time-consuming draughtsmanship and scaling that effectively creates a distance to the digital starting point.
Figenschou has had a large number of exhibitions and won several awards, among them The Weideman award, The Håkon Bleken
award and the jury award at Nordnorsken. In 2015 she received a
ten-year Working Grant from The Norwegian Arts Council. Her works have been purchased by the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, North Norwegian Museum of Art, Sparebank1 Art
Foundation, North of Norway, the municipalities of Trondheim and
Oslo, Trondheim Museum of Art among others. She was head of The Norwegian Drawing Association for a period of five years ending
in 2013 and have had other positions in boards and in art political context, also as the member of the board in NNBK in 2014/15.
hannelydia@gmail.com hannelydia.com 86
Cacadou
2017, Coloured pencil on black paper 197 x 152 cm
87
TONE FJEREIDE
Tone Fjereide, grew up in Tromsø and lives and works in Oslo. She
graduated from Håndverk og kunstindustriskolen, Institute of Textile,
Oslo, 1998 (KHIO) and holds a Master’s program in Project Management from BI, Oslo, 2007. She is a member of NBK, NNBK.
She has been working as a producer, curator and project manager for
various art projects, as an art consultant for Oslo municipality and has produced several commissioned works.
Fjereide is one of the founders and co-owner of The International Artist Center Can Serrat in El Bruc located near Barcelona, Spain since 1989.
The present works are mono prints on cotton paper. The technique uses used milk cartoons which are cut into forms and used as print plates.
These is formal issues like colors, shapes, rhythm, in-betweens, different paper, sizes, and making a composition. Tone works with different
materials and mediums such as printing on textile, painting, graphic printing and installations. It often starts with materials.
tofjer@gmail.com 88
1) Untitled
Mono print on cotton paper 24 x 30 cm
2) Untitled
Mono print on cotton paper 55 x 40 cm
89
GRO FOLKAN
(b. 1949) Oslo, Norway. Lives between Oslo and Tromsø. She studied
art at National Art Academy in Oslo and has had 28 solo exhibitions in leading galleries in Norway and abroad.
Folkan’s works have been purchased by The Norwegian National Gallery, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo, National Bank of Norway,
national universities, institutions and offices. Her first exhibition this year is an invited solo exhibition at Manhattan 6-24 February, 2019
grofolkan.no 90
1) Snu ikke ryggen til (Don’t turn the back to it)
2017, Acrylic, interference color, metal dust, rust 150 x 90 cm
2) Hva slags linjer er det under frøets kapsel? (What kind of lines under the seed’s capsule) 2017, Acrylic, copper, aluminium, oxidized silver 160 x 120 cm
91
SISSEL FREDRIKSEN
Sissel Fredriksen lives and works in Tromsø, Norway. She studied at
The National Collage of Art and Design, and The National Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen, Norway. She works with drawing.
In the pictures “A story from a nearby place” the drawing resemble
pages from a book or a magazine. The pages show fragments of two
different communication systems – text and image. The text is visual but blurred out and not possible to read. The pictures are the only
information source and show insignificant places nearby. It is about
what you emphasize and give meaning, and what you need to add to
complement a story. It’s about what you see and what you do not see. And it is about the nature you pass by.
She has exhibited at Oppland Kunstsenter, Telemarksgalleriet,
Tegnerforbundet, Galleri Nordnorge, Haugesund Kunstforrening, Tromsø kunstforening, Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter, Nordnorsk
Kunstmuseum, Unge Kunstnernes Samfunn, Høstutstillingen,
Oslo. Collections: Sparebanken 1 Nord-Norge kunststiftelse, Troms Fylkeskommune, St. Olavs Hospital. In 2014 she received 10-year working grant from The Government Grants for Artist.
sisselfr@broadpark.no sisselfredriksen.com 92
A story from a nearby place 1-4 Drawing 114 x 76 cm
93
ESPEN GANGVIK
Espen Gangvik is a Norwegian artist and curator born in Tromsø in 1958. Gangvik studied at The Academy of Fine Art in Trondheim from 1980 to 1984.
Gangvik is noted as an artist that from a constructivist perspective works between reality and virtuality. His sculptures - often performed in metal or other materials that give a sense of possessing mass and a fixed form - is based on the manipulation of space using geometry and mathematics as the basic tool. Prof. Øivind Storm Bjerke, 2000 In the early 90’s Gangvik pioneered the utilisation of computer-assisted calculations and 3D printing for designing and producing sculptural
objects. At the exhibition Electra ‘96 at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter 1996,
he presented Compustructions, the first Norwegian fully digital-produced sculpture project.
In 2002 Gangvik founded the non-profit organisation - TEKS - Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre - which aim to facilitate the production and
dissemination of art that utilise new technologies and scientific insights. He is currently the general manager of the foundation. TEKS is the
founder and producer of the Trondheim international biennial for art and technology, Meta.Morf.
Espen Gangvik has from 1984 participated in numerous group exhibitions at home and abroad. He is represented in several public collections and as such purchased by The Arts Council Norway, The National Gallery
and The Museum of Contemporary Art. He has since 1986 carried out
a number of major commissions, including The National Monument of Freedom - Trinigon - (1995 - 2005) in Narvik.
espen@gangvik.no gangvik.no teks.no
metamorf.no 94
1) ‘Transcube’ series
2003, Copper (Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum) 30 x 30 x 30 cm
2) ‘Trans-ice’ series
2007-2017, Copper, steel, plants, cooling unit 170 x 60 x 60 cm
95
MARIA GRADIN
Visual artist using photography as media. “Throughout her work as an artist Maria Gradin has sustained a deep interest in Northern regions. She has traveled in Alaska, Russia, and Greenland, but also in the Northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and
Finland. In a long series of site-specific projects she has centrally
focused on threatened sub-Arctic cultures, where hunting and fishing are the only bases of life, and the population is dependent upon interpreting or “reading” nature. These are places where inherited traditions are
maintained, and nature is experienced as inspired, animated, possessed
of a soul. The severe living conditions reveal the fragile interplay between human beings and nature. Using place, ways of life, and mythology
as points of origin, she attempts to bring out submerged narratives of identity. She raises up knowledge bound in tradition as a contrast to a mechanized vision of nature; she points to the multitude of riches lost through processes of change. Possibilities of living in harmony
with nature become diminished, affecting ways of living and modes of thought. Nevertheless, describing misery is not Gradin’s way of
proceeding. She leads our awareness toward what deserves attention and care.
More recently Gradin has studied the social behavior of birds as an
image of powerful climate changes and pressure from the dominant
culture. The project “Før alt forsvinner (Before Everything Disappears)”
has origins in a collaboration between Maria Gradin, Vibeke Steinsholm, visual artist and birdkeeper (eiders) at Vega, and Rawdna Carita Eira,
Sami poet with a background in reindeer management at Helgeland. Together they explore the island culture in the north and the relation
between nature and culture, with particular emphasis on the relation between humans and birds.”
Janeke Meyer Utne, Art historian and curator, 2018
kmariagr@online.no mariagradin.com 96
Digital print on Japanese handmade paper 65 x 92 cm
97
INGER J. GRYTTING
Inger Johanne Grytting’s media is graphite drawings and oil paintings. The main element in her work is the repetitive, horizontal, parallel line. With an 8B Faber Castell pencil she layers horizontal lines in dense
columns, and builds the drawings by repeating the gesture over and over again. No lines are the same, because the hand’s movement is imperfect.
Born in Svolvær, she moved to New York City in 1972. From the beginning she responded to the reductive expressions of artists like Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt, and Brice Marden. Her artistic roots are Norwegian, and her practice is American, or rather international.
Recent exhibitions: “Light Lines, The Art of Jan Groth, Inger Johanne Grytting and Thomas Pihl” Scandinavia House, New York (2018).
The Vigeland Museum, Oslo (2017) Oslo kunstforening (2016), Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø (2015).
Her work is included in private and public collections, among them
Stavanger Kunstmuseum, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, The Art Collection of Oslo Municipality, The Erling Neby Collection, Oslo, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, and SpareBank 1 Nord Norge’s Kunststiftelse.
grytting@gmail.com 98
1) T_6_2010
2010, Pencil on paper 56.5 x 76 cm
2) T_19_2017
2017, Pencil on paper 76.5 x 77 cm
99
ANNE GUNDERSEN
I am an Artist living in the Northern part of Norway, in the countryside, just below the Artic Circle. I live in the middle of a fjord landscape by five fjords.
My work is reflected of who I am and where I live. The nature, the
wilderness and the houses that I find in the area inspires me a lot. For the last 10 years my work has been camera-based with expressions put together of my own photos. I try in each piece to reflect my identity and my cultural background, and to capture what I find essential in what I see and what I experience around me.
In the last two years, I have found a new exciting path in my photo art, where I work with people. I try to express a deeper sense and mode that I find inside each and every one of them.
annegundersen444@hotmail.com annegundersen.com 100
1) Aftenbrann i Nord
2018, Photo collage Printed on acid-free 300g matte cotton paper/silk matte photo paper
2) Jag vil ha et hus vid havet
2018, Photo collage Printed on acid-free 300g matte cotton paper/silk matte photo paper
101
HEGE GUNDERSEN
I am a visual artist, based in Bodø. Animals and nature are recurrent subjects. I choose environmental issues to be my themes and drawing is my particular specialty.
I have an Arts Degree from Bergen University and I work in a broad register of expressions, from drawing and painting to sculpture, photography and performance, text and textiles. My artistic
background is founded in the conceptual tradition. It includes a
thorough knowledge of the materials and techniques required in
imagery and visual media. Themes that I explore, may be human
relations to nature, our use of resources, as well as environmental and climate issues.
In this context, I am particularly concerned with the vulnerable and
endangered species of the Arctic, such as polar bears, wolves and whales, but I also immerse myself among the more domesticated species, such as dogs, wild sheep and goats. I use animals as
catalysts to describe emotions and turmoil, and I regard their mythical and mythological characteristics as very significant.
A part from being an artist, I also teach art subjects, for instance, at the local university and schools.
gundersen.hege@gmail.com Instagram: gundersen.hege 102
uFesk
2016, Internally illuminated sculpture The skin is made of layers of coloured plastic on a wire skeleton, sewn together with fishing lines and displayed with ambient deepwater sounds. In memory of childhood, I wanted to make a fish sculpture from plastic waste, which in turn comes from a very valuable resource. The expression “ufesk�, means a type of fish people thought they could not eat, usually for the wrong reasons. Photo: Anders Lea Karlskaas
103
EMMA GUNNARSSON
(b. 1978) Ystad, Sweden. She was educated at The Bergen
National Academy of The Arts in Bergen, Norway and at The
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark. Today she lives and works in the Northern part of Norway. Emma Gunnarsson works primarily with photography and
printmaking that often has the photo as a starting point. She makes use of different combinations of material to achieve different expressions.
She has found inspiration from the long and recurring stays in Northern Norway. In Finnmark, a series of deserted telegraph stations tell a story about communications of the past. The
theme of navigation and communication then emerged in the photo project ”Fardvagar”.
“Through the camera lens she searches for places in nature where the movement of life passes silently. She is touched by the traces of civilization, the barren landscape and the
desolation, where decay and mystery are intermingled with the feeling of post-romanticism and still life. The encounter with
nature becomes like a journey in all directions, both the inner and outer landscape.”
“Motström” is a series of photograms that she initiated in 2016. The source of creation for the project comes from finding and collecting objects that had been washed up from the sea. In this project she has worked with the photo process called
cyanotope. Cyanotype is one of the earliest photo processes and was invented in 1842 by Sir John Herschel.
“Water, motion, noise, a depth beyond the shore, a place filled
with hidden powers and romantic undertones. There is a deeper motion in the force that arises when waves pull something or someone down below the water depth.”
emma.gunnarsson@gmail.com 104
1) Motström
2016, Cyanotype
2) Färdvägar 70°55’08”N, 27°48’39”Ø # III 2016, Fine art digital print
105
CECILIE HAALAND
Lives and works in HenningsvĂŚr, Lofoten. Educated as a potter, owner of the gallery Engelskmannbrygga.
In addition to the design and craft development, which involves both
throwing and molding processes, her work involves a combination of photography and ceramics.
Anchored in traditional craftsmanship, she makes her own ceramic
cameras. She photographs with these cameras, and transfers images with different liquid emulsion on ceramic surfaces in the darkroom.
Through the ongoing project Phottery she explores the relationship
between three-dimensional objects and the two-dimensional surface. There are common features in analogue photography and ceramics,
while it is often a large span between three-dimensional objects and two-dimensional surfaces.
Presenting both objects and photos together has been consistent in
many of the exhibitions she has participated in over the last years, both in Norway and abroad.
post@ceciliehaaland.no ceciliehaaland.no
engelskmannsbrygga.no 106
Stilleben
2018, Collection of wheel thrown porcelain vases, b/w photography, porcelain clothespins
107
GRETHE HALD
(b. 1954) Oslo. Lives in Vestfold. Graduated from Statens Håndverksog Kunstindustriskole SHKS in 1978, and further educated at Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen, KHIB, as a curator.
She works both as an artist, curator and art consultant through KORO. As an artist, drawing and printmaking are her main techniques, with her own studio since 1983: coal/graphite/pastel, woodcut/wood engraving,
lino, etching, drypoint and photopolymer. Grethe has always lived by the sea, which is often reflected in her motives. And also by her ancestors history from Fleinvær and the Gildeskål mainland. Grethe’s travels to
Nordland where she prepares her work, give results in her art, dominated by details from the landscape, with fish and birds.
Her diploma in woodcut from SHKS in 1978 was made at Kjerringøy, with motives inspired by old fairytales from Nordland. Literature is another source of inspiration, poetry and sentences that can start a whole
process of work. Her political engagement is also present in some works, as in the woodcut «After us», about the future of Vesterålen and Lofoten in the oil age.
In 1999-2000, Grethe Hald was one of ten artists in the SKINN-exhibition «Bildet og eventyret», in Harstad during Festspillene in Nord-Norge. The exhibition travelled for one year in Nordland, Troms and Finnmark. She
also takes part in international printmaking events, for example in Egypt, Bulgaria, and Japan and the Douro Annual and Global Print Biennials in
Portugal in 2017/2018/2020 and Sweden and Latvia in 2019. Grethe Hald is represented in the collection of The Queen Sonja Art Stable. She is a
member of NBK: BOA, NNBK, BKIB, and Fynen graphic artists in Odense.
grethehald@gmail.com 108
1) CETORHINUS
2018, Woodcut/chine collé, artist’s proof 136 x 34 cm
2) PASIFIC
2015, Photopolymer/drypoint 12 x 17 cm
109
BRITH HENNIE HALVORSEN
(b. 1963) Lives and works in Tromsø. Graduated from The National
College of Arts and Craft School in Oslo, Institute of Textile, MA 1990. Halvorsen has always had a keen fascination for wool as a material in her works of art. She works with wool in many forms and shapes, from the very raw, untreated fibers to material that she herself has processed.
She uses different techniques to bring out the unique texture and artistic
qualities of wool. Among her works are both large tactile installations that truly changes the atmosphere, and smaller wall hanged pieces.
She plays with organic forms in a geometrical framework, focusing on
the embracing and warming identity that wool inherits. In a chaotic and
hectic world, she brings out those quiet moments of contemplation and
reflection through her work. All in the safe and welcoming world of wool.
paveggen@gmail.com 110
1) RÃ… (RAW)
2009, Raw wool 240 x 240 cm
2) SPINNING OF LIFE
2009, Wool, sound installation D. 120 cm
111
CHRISTIANIVAR HAMMERBECK
Born in Germany, lives in Northern Norway on the Lofoten archipelago since 1985.
Hammerbeck is a watercolourist, his subject is the landscape
and the light north of the Arctic Circle. His watercolours give an impression of the landscape’s character in a unique personal
manner. Painted on dry paper, sometimes in combination with
crayons, his subjects correspond in a special way with the Nordic landscape.
His works have been exhibited in more than 100 exhibitions.
ivarbeck@hotmail.com hammerbeck-art.eu 112
1) Inspiration
2017, Watercolour
2) Lofoten
2018, Watercolour
113
INGUNN MILLY HANSEN
I am a textile artist who lives and works in Bodø, working mainly with weaving. My work relates to textile tradition in various ways. I have a
strong interest in the material and texture which often results in abstract textile works.
The work “Bølgelengder” uses the sea as a theme and the traditional dyeing technique where warp threads are bound and dyed before
weaving. The work consists of six woven and dyed length of nylon threads, synthetically made material which is first and foremost associated with industrial processes.
ingunnmillyhansen@gmail.com ingunnmilly.no 114
Wavelengths
2018, Weaving and dyeing technique Ikat 310 x 280 cm
115
KURT EDVIN BLIX HANSEN
(b. 1952) Lives and works in Beiarn in Nordland. Educated at The
Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim by John Anton Risan and Georg Suttner (1973- 1978).
He has had a number of solo exhibitions and participated in many
projects such as “Track of Time” Hellristing in Beiarn (also made a film) and Trash sculpture during the Festival of Northern Norway.
An artist’s life is a journey, an exhibition is a port where you stop and
see what you have done. There is a connection between life and art. The inspiration comes from exposing themselves to different environments. Art comes out of moving in the landscape. Being an artist is about
getting hold of a lot of keys, and opening up spaces in itself. Until you enter the innermost room.
I work in the borderland with the abstract, from the completely non-
figurative to the figurative. I’ve made some comments where I’ve used the title, with the past into the future. The sail, the sailboat is the most
intelligent humanity has done to move. The wheel was of course a great thing. But, in a larger perspective, it is the interaction with nature that is essential. To extract power from nature without polluting is our future.
kurtedvin@blixhansen.no 116
1) Polarnatt, Belgica 145 x 155 cm
2) Polar Suite
145 x 155 cm
117
EVA HARR
I have a contemplating approach to my work, where natures cycle always is my focus. The different moods of day and night; the moon with its powerful symbolism and influence in our lives.
The symbols I use in my pictures are often universal and strongly loaded.
In times where nature is threatened on so many levels, it is natural for me to have a reaction and an unrest towards this, but without losing hope! Not to be nostalgic, but to express a state I believe that we need.
Meditations and quiet moments, reminders of our common connection in nature. My abandoned houses and landscapes mirror our time of unrest, with references to both decay and belonging.
A house is a face; maybe the most comforting symbol that we know,
especially when we call it “home�. I have to seek behind my motives, feel the skeleton, and be able to convey. It is important for me to interpret, instead of reproduce the landscape.
evaharr@hotmail.com 118
En annen tid
2015, Lithography
119
SYLVIA HENRIKSEN
Lives and works in KabelvĂĽg, Lofoten. She studied jewellery in Oslo
and holds a degree in art and design from London. In her practice, she combines producing recycled crafts in her studio gallery and working with art projects.
In her work, she explores interactions between used textiles and found objects. She is concerned with human traces and the ways materials and goods are left behind us. Identity, value, consumption, pollution
and change are examined. Both history and future perspectives affect
her work. Asking questions about our safety in relation to world politics is inevitable. How do we deal with the worlds challenge as single individuals?
syhenr@gmail.com rundtogrundt.no 120
1) Safe
2016, Life jacket, sequences, embroidery thread 50 x 50 x 22 cm
2) Reflection
2018, Vintage lamp, embroidery ring, reused textiles, sewing thread 50 x 2 x 45 cm
121
YNGVE HENRIKSEN
I constantly try to expand my horizon, both in the visual arts, and in
painting as a language. It is a question of surprise: to meet myself and the nature that surrounds me. To have the courage to look back, and
at the same time face forward. To integrate all this at the same time;
the meeting between the inner and the outer, physical landscape that
surrounds me, and to see the things I know well in a new way, from the outside.
This is where the images materialize, as a symbiosis between lived life
and the Lofoten landscape that has always created a contour around my life. Simultaneously rough and tender. That, and the light, the surprising,
blue light that flows in, filling the polar night. This is what my pictures are all about.
yngve@yngvehenriksen.no yngvehenriksen.no
facebook.com/yngvehenriksenart 122
Untitled
2016-2018, Tempera/oil on canvas 160 x 140 cm
123
SIGFRID HERNES
Sigfrid Hernes is born in Voss and lives and works in Alta, Finnmark.
She was educated at The Art Academy in Bergen, Oslo and Dresden.
Hernes work with photography and drawing, often in a large scale. Her
work are represented in several collections: RiddoDottarMuseat, Samiske samlinger, Karasjok; Sparebank 1 Nord-Norges kunststiftelse, Tromsø; Johan Strays Stiftelse, Oslo; Galleri Van Bau, Vestfossen; Nordnorsk
kunstmuseum, Tromsø; Altaposten, Alta; Alta kunstforening, Alta; Norsk
kulturråd; Museet for samtidskunst, Oslo. Porsanger kommune, Kirkenes. She is an art consultant and curator for KORO (Norway Public Art). Hernes has received numerous grants, in 2013, a Five Year Working Grant from The Norwegian Art Council.
sigf-her@online.no sigfridhernes.no 124
1) I
2017, Drawing on paper 90 x 160 cm
2) I see you
2017, Drawing on paper 150 x 120 cm
125
AINO HIVAND
Aino Hivand is born in Bugøyfjord in East Finmark, Norway.
Sami culture, myths and shamanism was a part of her upbringing and
everyday life. Today she lives and works in Kautokeino and in Northern Sweden. She expresses herself both abstract and expressionistic.
Aino Hivand has held a number of separate exhibitions and has been
represented at collective exhibitions in Sápmi, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, Lithuania, Gambia and The Netherlands. Hivand has received several scholarships and prizes for her artworks. She has also written
and illustrated three children’s books and a picture book translated to Sami and Finnish.
Her distinctive artistic qualities are created through light transparent
brush strokes. Colors and motifs change character in the light they are in and evokes a dreamlike effects where forces and opposites meet in an aesthetic and beautiful way.
“I draw inspiration from staying in magnificent landscapes where the
horizon is endless, and brings a sense of eternity, where one becomes small within the bigger” says Aino.
Motivation to create also comes from the artist’s communication with
nature and natural power, and meditation travels inward but also beyond to other dimensions.
These energies opens her artistic senses and fill her inner space with consciousness and harmony.
ah@ainohivand.com ainohivand.com 126
1) Untitled
2015, Acrylic on canvas 50 x 50 cm
2) Untitled
2015, Acrylic on canvas 50 x 50 cm
127
RAGNHILD ADELHEID HOLTEN
Ragnhild Adelheid Holten paints in the Northern part of Norway, inspired by the sub Arctic’s changing seasons.
My work is a study of painterly processes where the painting occurs in a dynamic balance between liberated action and intellectual scrutiny.
The result is an abstract understanding of figurative elements from the Northern Norwegian landscape which I am exposed to daily.
Colour is of spiritual importance in my work. I manipulate hue and nuance until I achieve a strong resonance with the emotions and perceptions that I want to convey in my painting.
The common ground of my paintings are the observed variations
in nature. The impulses are ranging from the sensing of underlying
processes and structures, to the observation of visual form, phenomena, ambience and season. These elements are brought to play in the visual field of the canvas.
The Greek concept Meraki, meaning; The essence of oneself poured into ones work. This is of great importance to me.
adholten@gmail.com adholten.no 128
1) On the Beach
2018, Oil on canvas 120 x 100 cm
2) Ferd- Where Are They Going 2018, Oil on canvas 150 x 120 cm
129
RAKEL ELICE HUGLEN
(b. 1979) Visual artist based in Longyearbyen (Spitsbergen) since 2015.
rhuglen@gmail.com rakelhuglen.no 130
1) Fragmenter III
2017, Textile print on linen
2) Fragmenter IV – Mona, in memoriam 2017, Textile print on cotton
131
LINE HVOSLEF
(b. 1965) Stockholm. Hvoslef lives and works in Bergen and in Steigen, where she runs the Tare Steigen AIR. Her main focus has been in
painting, but the last years she has also been working with large sound installations and video in collaboration with composers.
Her landscapes can be seen as both figurative and nonfigurative. She tries to describe a world between nature and technology by combining organic an artificial elements.
The paintings describes places, sceneries or landscapes. Often in a surrealistic manner.
Technically, it is either oil on canvas, mixed technique on wood and
paper, large wall paintings, or video and audio walls. In her videos she
makes animations based on here own paintings and prints. In her large
“audio walls” she integrate small “instruments”, speakers and led lights into her visual world.
Her works has been exhibited widely and are represented in private and public collections and also as public art. She has received numerous
grants and prizes, in 2015 a Ten Year Working Grant from The Norwegian Council.
line@hvoslef.no hvoslef.no 132
1) Wall painting, public commission
2018, Acrylic on concrete. Part of a stairway, Fjell Lokalmedisinske Senter
2) Landscape
2018, Oil stick and linoleum on canvas 60 x 80 cm
133
KJERSTI ISDAL
(b. 1972) Painter, illustrator and graphic artist. She is from Nordhordland in western Norway, and has lived and worked for several years in the Lofoten Islands. She is a graduate of visual communication at The
Bergen University, Academy of the Arts. In addition to visual arts, Kjersti also has education in landscape management. In her work, she is
concerned with how people shape the landscape and how the landscape forms the people. She works with techniques in painting, drawing, graphics, ceramics and has illustrated several books.
kisdal@hotmail.com kjerstiisdal.no 134
1) Spring breeze
2018, Acrylic on canvas
2) Summer storm
2018, Acrylic on canvas
135
TOVE HOV JACOBSEN
Tove Hov Jacobsen is an artist living in Sortland, VesterĂĽlen. Here she runs her own gallery, Lihallen kulturgĂĽrd. She feels she is living in a
fairytale; the natural surrounding here is a great inspiration to her work. Her colours are very bright; layer upon layer of paint make them sing and vibrate. She uses acrylic and oil, and she also produces graphics. Tove
has had many exhibitions around the country, and she has also delivered works of art to schools, hotels and hospitals.
You can see more of her paintings in addition to her lovely home and
gallery. During summertime you can also have coffee and cheesecake on the terrace or inside the home.
post@lihallen.no lihallen.no 136
1) Flower field
90 x 90 cm
2) Summer happiness 70 x 70 cm
137
BJØRG HEGGSTAD JAKHELLN
Born in Horten, lives and works in Bodø. “I work with geometrical abstractions in my paintings. Minimalistic
compositions, colour, form and texture are what my work is about. Titles may spur the viewer’s own reflections as to content and meaning.”
Heggestad Jakhelln studied at Edinburgh Collage of Art (1959-63) and holds a degree in History of Art from The University of Bergen (Cand. philol. 6 years, 1992).
bjorg-hj@online.no bjorgjakhelln.no 138
Towards spring
2014, Oil on canvas 100 x 130 cm
139
VEGARD JOHANNESSEN
Glass artist based in Bodø. He has a background in wooden boat building and carpentry, and his interest in form and function has always been an important part of his life
and craft. In his work with glass and wood, he focuses on
developing his body of work through curiosity and an acute attention to detail.
Vegard has his education from The National School of Glass in Orrefors, Sweden and runs the studio and showroom, Bruket, with glass artist Sigrid Høyforsslett Bjørbæk.
bruket@bruketglass.com bruketglass.com 140
Osean 2015
141
GRY-HEGE JOHANSEN
«Pushing on the darkness…» Å skyve på mørket I am working with black and white drawings where I want to connect the fragility of the plants to my own life. For me this is a journey. The
anatomy of plants is different from mine but what we have in common is
that we are alive for a set period of time. I am inspired by this theory and have chosen to explore certain aspects that humans and plants have in common. Plant and algae create the oxygen that we breath in, and
depend on, while humans exhale carbon dioxide that plants depend on, making our relationship symbiotic.
A theme Linné focuses on is that plants are similar to animals and therefore also to us, humans.
gh-jo@online.no 142
Pushing on the darkness... Å skyve på mørket 2018, Drawings
143
RANNVEIG JOHANSEN
(b. 1967) Tromsø. Lives in the countryside outside Tromsø. Educated at Nordland Art and Film school, The National College of Art and Design,
Oslo and Hochschule der Kunste, Berlin. Works primarily with drawing, painting and monotype. Inspired by animals and their unspoken language.
rannveig.johansen@hotmail.com rannveigjohansen.webnode.com 144
1) Untitled
2017, Monotype on drawing paper 30 x 40 cm
2) Brødre
2018, Textile, charcoal and acrylic on canvas 40 x 50 cm
145
WENCHE HARRIET JOHANSEN
(b. 1947) Bodø. Lives and works in Rognan/Saltdal. I work with 3D objects in mixed media and drawing.
Mixed media: welding and blacksmithing, melting glass, and paper. Drawing: pencils, watercolour pencils, charcoal and soft pastels. I often combine paperwork and glass with iron; welding and
blacksmithing. To fight materials with resistance is a challenge and it is important to enhance the object’s message using different materials.
I am now working towards a Summer exhibition, 2019 in Silvermuseet/ Arjoplog kunstforening.
The sumerian myth “Inana” is my main inspiration. Old symbols, old myths/fairytales and museums will always inspire me.
I run my own gallery connected to my workshop, Galleri Lille Snebakken.
wenche.h.johansen@gmail.com 146
1) Mannsmaske
Glass mask cast in black float glass with wrought iron assembly
2) Kvinnemaske
Glass mask cast in black float glass with wrought iron assembly
147
HILDE HAUAN JOHNSEN
Hilde Hauan invites viewers to enter a realm of luminosity and
transparency. She creates installations comprised of intricate bundles of thin fiber optic cables. The optical fibers have a glass core conducting light along their length.
Hilde Hauan is an artist based in Bergen and Tromsø. She has her studio in Bergen for time being, where she works with art in public spaces and solo exhibitions. She works with textile techniques in the range from
the old textile traditions to new technology. She has been professor at
The Art academy in Bergen for 13 years and is now professor II at Sami University Collage in Kautokeino.
SPRANG, version Osterøy, is made especially for the old Gjerstad-barn
at Osterøy Museum, (a hours drive north of Bergen) and is a site-specific fiberoptic light and sound installation based on transitions, or leaps
(sprang); the tones in between and the threads in between, where sound and light are tied together and create a sparkling experience in an old space for life and work. The art installation can be experienced at the museum until august 2021.
SPRANG is made in collaboration with sound artist Maia Urstad. They have collaborated since 2007 on a great number of fiber optic sound installations.
hildehauanjohnsen@gmail.com hildehauanjohnsen.no
vimeo.com/252869664 148
SPRANG, version Osterøy
2018, Sprang technique and sound
149
JENNY-MARIE JOHNSEN
I study the impression that comes towards me When I observe nature I see it as if for the first time. (b. 1960) Vardø. Lives and works in Tromsø. She was educated at Gerlesborgsskolan Stockholm, 1981-1983 and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen, 1985-1992.
On the 21st of August, 2017, Jenny-Marie Johnsen photographed a total solar eclipse as viewed from Wyoming, USA. During a
total eclipse, it is possible to see the protuberances, the gas
explosions on the sun, which create Northern lights in the Earth’s magnetic field.
In the series SOLAR FLARES – TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE 2018, two celestial areas meet in a cosmic union; Northern lights
formations from the Arctic combined with the solar eclipse in The United States. The pictures are part of the exhibition SPACETIME
2018, exploring both inner and outer spaces, shown in The Arctic Cathedral, Tromsø.
Jenny-Marie Johnsen received the Norwegian state’s ten years
grant in 2015. In 2018 she represented Norway in the exhibition, The Interplay between the local and the global, at The Nordic
Contemporary Art Center in Xiamen, China. In October 2019 she is invited to represent Norway for the exhibition, Interactivity – Playful Imagination, 2019 in Xiamen.
j-m.johnsen@online.no
jennymariejohnsen.com 150
1) SOLAR FLARES, TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE DIAMOND RING II 2018
2) SOLAR FLARES, TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE DIAMOND RING III 2018
151
IRENA JOVIC
My background is from a Norwegian mother and a Bosnian Serb father. My production is mainly thematic threefold: Nordland, Spitsbergen and human depictions. The Northern part of Norway has been my base for color studies through both sketches and paintings. Through legends about the mountains’ origin of Leka in the South, along the coast of
Helgeland and Lofoten up North, the adventure has accompanied me by foot and at sea. The motives are many and the region’s scenery
magnificent. As an extension of this, the desire to investigate the role of the human in nature as well as the management of this, I became interested in the archipelago Spitsbergen.
I first visited the archipelago Spitsbergen in April 2005. After this stay, I have often returned. These journeys have had my interest for the
nature and the culture in the archipelago as a starting point. I have
found inspiration for my work through a dive into the polar history’s
many depictions, combined with the nature’s many contrasts. From the first moment I was fascinated by the atmosphere and the light
there. Spitsbergen nature has much in common with minimalism. The
landscape is reduced in shape and it is the light that creates contrasts.
Mountains and ice formations are geometric shapes. It is also its sobriety and wildness and its brutality that has attracted me, and the fact that there are few women who have painted Spitsbergen.
post@explorenordland.no irenajovic.com 152
1) Lilliehook, Spitsbergen 2013, Oil on canvas 72 x 135 cm
2) Esmarkbreen, Spitsbergen 2013, Oil on canvas 80 x 135 cm
153
ASLAUG MAGDALENA JULIUSSEN
Lives and works in Tromsø. One can trace references to both transiency and death in my work, but the most significant element is a fascination with the world of materials that surround us. My work uses actual
objects from everyday life that are transformed into abstract stories. I
draw upon my personal experiences to inspire the expression. My life
centers around Northern Norway/SĂĄpmi however I try to capture culture at large as I project that which is most familiar.
aslaug.juliussen@gmail.com aslaug.juliussen.com 154
1) OvdagiehtaKuvlla/ForehandSphere
2005, Mixed media (reindeer antler and hair, hide, glue)
2) Multiple Stitches – sight in sewing
2016, Mixed media (linen fabric, embroidery, horsehair, reindeer bone, metal wire)
3) Exhibition, Give it Time
Galleri F15, Moss, 2018 Photos: Istvan Virag
155
INGJERD HANSEN JUVIK
Since 1997, I have been living in Patagonia, Argentina, but my drawings speak about the nature I grew up with.
ingjerdster@gmail.com ingjerd.com.ar 156
1) Tre Vise Aper
2017, Synthetic coal on white paper 140 Ă— 43 cm Photo: Tam de Vanssay
2) Snegle
2018, 0,7 mm press pencil on white paper
157
LARS ERIK KARLSEN
(b. 1948) When studying painting at SHKS in Oslo (1969-73), one of
the teachers introduced me to woodcut printing. I fell in love with this technique at once, and have ever since worked with it. Working with
woodcut printing means you have to simplify form and colour. It’s exciting for me to try out the possibilities within the limitations of the technique.
Every print I make starts as a painting on paper. From here I can pick the colours and make each different plate. It feels like making an accord of colours, tuning every one till I get the expression feeling right. I do all the carving and printing in my studio in SvolvĂŚr.
Paper came to Europe around year 1000. Gutenberg invented book printing and the artist started to make book illustrations soon after. Trying to work in this tradition and make it work in our time is very interesting and pleasing.
lars-ek@online.no
LarsErikKarlsen.no 158
1) In Cod we trust
2016, Woodcut 34 x 45 cm
2) Den portugisiske døra 2018, Woodcut 37 x 31 cm
159
JURJAN KUIL
Jurjan Kuil lives and works in Berger, Norway. Kuil’s practice involves painting, photography, drawing and video.
He has an art education from The Netherlands and Norway and moved to Norway in 1983 where he studied at The Art Academy in Oslo (1983
-1986). Head of the painting department at The Art School in KabelvĂĽg (1986-1990).
Jurjan Kuil has participated in many collective exhibitions and has had solo exhibitions both in The Netherlands, Norway and Germany.
jurjan@online.no
jurjankuil.wordpress.com 160
1) Horizon 01
2014, Photo 70 x 50 cm
2) Islandic structures 2013, Photo 100 x 100 cm
161
GRETE ANDREA KVAAL
Tromsø is my hometown, where I still live and work. Photography has
been the way I express myself artistically. Most of my work consists of analog black and white photographs, although in the last few years I
have explored color and digital photography. My art projects often form thematic series spanning long periods of time.
I tend to assume the role of a non-intrusive observer. Only to a small
extent will I direct and influence my objects. I try to stay in contact with
both people and nature while I observe and facilitate, and visualize what is not easily seen. I want my pictures to touch and lead to reflections, new knowledge and expanding perspectives.
My current project is based on photographs from the years 1986 to 1993. During this period I worked with the female Sami reindeer herder, Karen Anna Logje Gaup, and documented her daily tasks. This project was
realized through exhibitions and multimedia, both here in Norway and
abroad from 1988 to 1998, and in the book Karen Anna og hennes siida, 2001.
“The world is changing constantly, and such pictures will be important for posterity.” These are the words of Karen Anna when I met her and
took my first photographs. There have been many changes since then, and this is the reason why I wish to continue working with the project I
started in 1986. Karen Anna has now become 80 years old, but she is still active as a reindeer herder and just as committed to her animals. She
has a strong desire to convey her knowledge and experience to future generations.
Her thoughts and reflections, along with my 30 year old photographs, will raise new questions and tell new stories.
grete.kvaal@gmail.com greteandreakvaal.no 162
Karen Anna Logje Gaup, inside the reindeer corral, Maursund, September 1989 163
INGER BLIX KVAMMEN
Inger Blix Kvammen lives and works in the town of Kirkenes, a place
at the heart of the Barents region and a border area nestled between
Russia and Finland in the North-Eastern most tip of Norway. Her work deals with topics such as migration and cultural exchange across
borders. Her last three projects are a result of travelling to the Nenets
Autonomous Ukrug in North-West Russia and to cities and villages in the South Caucasus, a border area between Turkey and Armenia.
Her three latest projects, from the series MEMORY ARCHIVES, deal
mostly with indigenous cultures. Impressions, that are traded in objects and photography, differentiate themselves by being stronger and more
vivid than renderings or imagery of daily life and culture in different types of societies. Each work reproduces impressions that form compound stories. The sum of big and small events, experiences and meetings, along with everyday knowledge, becomes an important part of the
exhibit’s didactics and content, where one can ask existential questions: «Who am I?», «Why am I who I am?», «Where do I come from?», «Where am I going?».
In the project TUNDRA ARCHIVES, Blix Kvammen takes hold of and
distinguishes the nomadic people’s nations in North-West Russia; The
possibilities of this culture in the near future, their role as cultural bearers as well as women’s role in the continuation of cultural heritage and belonging, are issues that are affected.
Blix Kvammen has developed a unique method of using textile
techniques such as crochet, weaving and metal embroidery that
conceptually combines decorative shapes, like necklaces or bracelets, with stories and symbolic elements.
Blix Kvammen is a member of the Sami Artists’ Union (Samisk
Kunstnerforbund), The Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts (Norske Kunsthåndverkere) and The Association of Norwegian Visual Artists (Norske Billedkunstnere).
Over the years, Inger Blix Kvammen has held a number of central
and regional positions in artists’ organisations and in arts and culture
institutions nationally. She was one of the founders of the collective of
producers and curators called Pikene på Broen who, in 2001, formed the
cultural company behind the annual art festival, Barents Spektakel, along with the artist in residence program, BAR International. In 2017, Pikene
på Broen established Terminal B; an exhibition, workshop and dialogue
room in the centre of Kirkenes. Since 2001, Blix Kvammen has worked for Pikene på Broen in a part-time position as curator and senior adviser. Inger Blix Kvammen has had a number of exhibitions at home and
abroad. She has the Norwegian State Grant for artists, senior grant.
Her work has been acquired by The North Norwegian Art Museum, The
Sami Parliament, Sami Collections, Arts Council Norway, The Sparebank Foundation and several other public and private bodies.
iblix@online.no
ingerblixkvammen.net 164
1) ROOTED 2
Memory object. Crochet, sewing, 925 silver, part of harness for reindeers
2) I AM TUNDRA
Photo, text in Nenets language 100 x 100 cm
165
MARIT ELLISIV LANDSEND
(b. 1959) Valdres. Lived and worked in Tromsø since 1991.
My higher art education is from SHKS in Oslo, with a diploma in 1984. My search for a secure place for myself, brought me to art. The plasticity
and flexibility of clay has always been attractive to me. Glazing and firing, the process of transformation is joyful, painful and mysterious.
I have taken part in several exhibitions, both solo and group shows.
I have taught art on many levels, from cultural schools to art academies and several projects initiated for school classes and for elders.
Marit.Ellisiv.Landsend@gmail.com maritlandsend.no 166
The place where I was born
2018, Modelled, Raku fired Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik
167
TINE SUREL LANGE
(b. 1989) VesterĂĽlen. Composer and sound artist working with the
surrounding world, both thematically and as materials. In reimagining
the concept of “listening�, she helps people recognise sounds they have otherwise forgotten about or of which they were unaware. Her works
are imbued with the personal hope that people will achieve increased empathy for the surrounding world through listening.
She works with challenging our psychological categorisation of sound and belongs to a new generation of artists and composers who work
with 3D audio, immersive and surrounding sound. Her works take form as experimental chamber music, electro acoustic sound, installation, performance and audiovisual works.
tinesurel@gmail.com tinesurel.com 168
1) celloLYDinstallasjon
2018, Sound installation, Four discarded and broken cellos suspended by metal wires in traditional fish drying racks - creating a new interactive sound installation instrument in the Lofoten Islands during the peak tourist season.
2) We can’t save the world
2017, Sound installation, Organic sound - from destruction of sacred pine forests while creating arenas for the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics - played in a forest of metal foil. Part of the group exhibition “Montage is a Heartbeat”, Cultural Complex Haengwhatang, Seoul, South Korea.
169
BJĂ˜RG LANGSETH
(b. 1948) Fauske. I am a painter and a graphic artist, and live in the Northern part of Norway. I have participated in several exhibitions
in Norway and abroad. In my pictures I try to express the feeling of existence.
bjorglangseth2013@gmail.com 170
1) Life is a dance on horses Woodcut 39 x 64 cm
2) Horse rides
2018, Drawing and dry pastel 82 x 62 cm
171
SIMEN ENGEN LARSEN
(b. 1983) Grew up in KabelvĂĽg, Lofoten. Educated at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and Iceland University of the Arts. Based in Oslo, working
with archives of images, the act of remembering and the implications
of perception, often through the techniques of drawing and collage on paper.
simenengen@yahoo.no
simenengenlarsen.com 172
1) Wake
Photo print of drawing and collage in glass vitrine 113 x 129 x 15 cm
2) Arms
2018, Drawing and collage 16 x 14,5 cm
173
INGRID LARSSEN
Since 1987 Larssen has worked with jewellery and objects using various
techniques and materials. For the past eighteen years, textiles have been her primary art medium. She has explored and experimented with an old embroidery technique called smocking (waffle stitching). Large collar
necklaces made of silk and freshwater pearls. Floating, hovering objects inspired by sea life.
Decoration “Room for everyone” for the new Nordland Hospital
Vesterålen in 2014 and “Travel kb176” for Melbu School in 2016 were
executed in wool and sea urchins. In 2018 she was invited for the first Homo Faber Biennial in Venezia. Throughout her art career, she has
been committed to tradition and innovation. She has experience as an
art consultant, curator and project manager. She was awarded and has received Norway’s guaranteed income for artists since 2011.
ingridlarssen62@gmail.com ingridlarssen.no 174
We reap what we sow
2018, Smocking on silk 80 x 19 x 30 cm
175
HARALD LIEN
(b. 1966)
Paintings and drawings
Lien66@icloud.com 176
The tea party
2017, Oil on wood 55 x 75 cm
177
INGEBORG ANNIE LINDAHL
(b. 1981) An interdisciplinary artist living in Harstad, Northern Norway.
She received her Master Degree from The Bergen National Academy of the Arts (2012) and BFA Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art (2010). Lindahl is mainly working site-specific in several mediums, she has
been most noted for her large scale chalk drawings and installations. Lindahl’s artistic method combines the outcome from field trips and
personal experience of the place. When Lindahl started working with chalk, she was drawn by impermanence and thoughts for expulsion.
She has used chalk in several different shapes; as marble, plaster and
pigment, playing with the idea of mankind as a early stage of becoming mineral. Lindahl’s work is in many ways performance based, where she is portraying the landscape in a romantic and dramatic manner. Her
material substantiates a manifestation of change, both in how knowledge is made and how nature is in a constant state of transformation. Lindahl
is interested in the landscape of echoes in the sphere of human thought, and explore culture and value in our time in relation to nature.
Lindahl has exhibited in venues including Anchorage Museum, Alaska, NordNorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø, The National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta, Amy Li Gallery, Beijing, Museum of Nonconformist Art, St.
Petersburg, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary art, Copenhagen, Stiftelsen 3,14 Bergen, Galleri NordNorge, Harstad. Lindahl is a board member of Arctic Arts Festival, Northern Norway. Of curatorial
projects ILIOS (Harstad 2017), Sabotage (Innvik, 2014), odds (Odda, 2012) and Ut I min hage (Harstad, 2011) can be mentioned.
ingeborgannie@gmail.com ingeborgannie.com 178
Livsløgn – Trollveggen
2018, Untreated crayon Made on site for the Autumn Exhibition 131, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo
179
TRYGVE LUKTVASSLIMO
(b. 1978) Based on Valberg in Lofoten where he makes films based on his own scripts, poems and novels, and his self-
composed music. His work bears a striking visual connection
to TV and cinema, and grapples with complexities like faith and self-worship.
In 2016 Trygve Luktvasslimo completed A Life With no Echo,
a three-part film about the prophetical pop star Thor, starring
Luktvasslimo as Thor. The trilogy traces Thor’s trajectory from being struck by a bolt of lightning that completely singed off his sense of self-limitation, to ending up alone on top of a volcano in a far-away desert. Short film Leirdue/Clay
Pigeon from 2018 is about a sole shipwreck survivor who’s
on TV to be interviewed. Upcoming Shallow Water Blackout is Luktvasslimo’s first feature-length filmatic work and will
premiere as part of Lofoten International Art Festival 2019. In Shallow Water Blackout luxury cruise ship The World veers off course after its captain’s misjudgment. After impaling a
group of kayaking tourists, and ramming into a fish farm, The
World capsizes, leaving a few survivors in a sea of dead. Each character is related in their way to the debate on climate
change, you’ll have your climate utopian, the religious, climate
sceptics and denialists, climate ignorants, climate warriors and eco liberals.
Luktvasslimo has worked with a number of renowned actors as well as amateurs. He owns and runs film studio Lukt which coproduces Shallow Water Blackout with Portuguese/Slovenian Stenar Projects.
Luktvasslimo holds an MFA in Visual Art from Malmö Art
Academy (2006) and exhibits and screens internationally: Oslo kunstforening (solo), 2020; Lofoten International Art
Festival, 2019; Mudstone (novel, A Published Event), 2019; KUIR Bogotá, 2017; North Norway Art Centre (solo), 2016;
Festspillutstillingen, 2015; De Appel Arts Centre, 2015; Tromsø International Film Festival, 2015 (At Kurant); Contemporary Art
Centre Vilnius, 2014; W17/Kunstnernes Hus, 2014; Petter Dass Museum (solo), 2014; Ze Dos Bois, Lisboa, 2014/2013; Sami Centre for Contemporary Art/Luleå Konsthall, 2013; Loose Holes - Portuguese Festival of queer Performance, 2013;
Persbo Studio (solo), 2012; Clockwork Gallery Berlin, 2012;
Tromsø kunstforening, 2012; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen
2011; HAU 1 Berlin, 2009; Pavilion Unicredit, Bucharest, 2009; Galleri Signal, 2008 & 2004; Henie Onstad Art Centre, 2004.
trygve.l@gmail.com closertomore.com 180
1) Deputy Mayor of the city of Bodø, Synne Bjørbæk as TV hostess Synne in Clay Pigeon 2018
2) Theodor Fagervik Wold as Tony in Closer to More 2016
2) Benjamin Hov Golas as Azaar in Clay Pigeon 2018
181
ANNCATHRINE TINE LUNDKVIST
Grew up in Solna, Stockholm. She has lived and worked in Lofoten,
Northern Norway since 1979. She works primarily with painting, graphics and sound.
I use nature as support and as a channel for the painting. I abstract
and simplify, this to reach a concentration on the painterly and visual
issues. The image is formed between shifts from the light to the dark, for simplicity and monumental strength.
tine.lundkvist@gmail.com tinelundkvist.com 182
1) Untitled 1
Acrylic paint 100 x 130 cm
2) Untitled 2
Acrylic paint 30 x 35 cm
183
CATHINKA MÆHLUM
(b. 1974) Worked as an glass artist since 1996. The Nordic landscape is a
given source of inspiration. Impressions that she finds in nature are often interpreted and recreated in pretty glass objects.
She is schooled at The Kosta Boda Glass School, The Kingdom of
Glass in Sweden. She has also one year at Glass and Ceramic School
in Bornholm, Denmark. After school she attended as an apprentice with Jan Erik Ritzman and Sve Åke Carlsson, at Transjö Hytta in Sweden for
3 years. She opened her own studio near Trondheim in 2007. Today she
runs a new studio which she set up two years ago in the North in Lofoten Islands in Norway.
Cathinka’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
mail@cathinka.com lofotenglass.com 184
The fishing net
2018, Sculptured glass, connected with wire In this project I have made 6000 glass rings by hand, which has been assembled into a fishing net as a symbol of our ecological network.
185
ANNE MARIENDAL
I’m an artist predominantly working with paint media. I began my practice exploring portraits and evocative landscapes, and in later years turned
my attention to abstraction. I use photography as a way to create a visual diary, and the images in this series are born from this method.
home@live.no 186
1) Profiles 1
2013, From Berlin
2) Profiles Night
2013, From Berlin
3) Profiles 2
2013, From Berlin
187
SILVIA ELIANA MARTINEZ
Silvia Martinez holds a college degree in architecture (1997). Born in
Argentina, she lived and studied in Canada from 1973 to 2001. In 2001, She moved to Tromsø (Norway). Since 2003, she has been living in
Tromso. She is also the founder of Prima Ink, a printmaking atelier in Tromsø.
As a life long immigrant woman artist born in Argentina, raised in
Canada and living in Norway, I try to stimulate the relationship between identity, art and territory. My work is based on information originating from distinct cultural systems. It tells a story of immigration and the
effects of cultural interaction. Trained in architecture, my practice is
now based in multimedia. It includes painting, photography, printmaking and installation work. A female subject is often represented interacting with a landscape amidst naive symbols, primary colors or black and
white. As part of the immigration process, learning to discriminate (new) cultural codes, words and signs involves looking twice and many more
times. Similarly, I have been repeating symbols, colors, and movements for years. Adapting to a new culture also means integrating norms
containing at times paradoxical modes of expression. These are found in my work in tensions between order and chaos, and constraint and
freedom. For that reason, my subject’s bodies are sites of tensions, but also of significant pleasure.
This creative exploration on the theme of immigration is an opportunity
to question our relationship between the self and the other, and the ways we bridge over differences on the land we share.
kabuska@gmail.com silviaem.com 188
1) Personage 01
2015, Mixed media
2) Personage 02
2015, Mixed media
189
SILKE MATHE
“I’ve known Silke Mathe’s pictures of people, mostly women, for many
years from the Great Art Exhibition in the Haus der Kunst Munich. The individual, the images of humanity as well as the portrait are amongst
other themes her main concern. The people portrayed in her paintings felt familiar to me in a curious way from the very beginning, as if they
were family I hadn’t seen in years. Unlike photographs straight out of the family album however, they weren’t distant reminders of far away times and persons, but felt close and intimate. Silke Mathe was born 1968. She started her artistic training first in Nijmegen (Netherlands) as an
intern at the Atelier Bittenbinder. Then she went on to attend the Neue
Kunstschule in Zurich. She studied painting under Prof J. Grutzke at The
Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg from 1995 to 2001, completing it with distinction as honour student of the master class” Reinhard Fritz.
Since graduating in 2001, her work has been shown in many exhibitions in Germany and in many other countries and was the winner of the Art prize of City Kulmbach “Frankische Kunstpreis” (2016), Art prize NN-
Kunstpreis: “Sonderpreis der Nürnberger Nachrichten” (2012), Art prize
NN-Kunstpreis: “2. Preis der Nürnberger Nachrichten” (2007) and Prize from “Danner Institution of Arts” (1996, 1998, 2000).
In 2018 her picture “Elly og Dronningen” was included in the 72nd
Nordnorske Art Exhibition. In 2016 she moved from Germany to Norway. “I paint what I can’t say with words; if I could say it, I would not paint it.” Silke Mathe “Although there are people in her realistic way of painting, her work includes impressive landscape painting or impressions of other
countries and regions created after she visited them. For instance, the
pictures she painted of Norway depicting the characteristically colourful timber houses at the water are magnificent. Her painting of the US are
impressive as well. Silke Mathe paints landscapes like the Mojave Desert in the North-East of Los Angeles using themes Europeans immediately
associate with North America thanks to their representation in the media. Silke Mathe examines the image of the world and humanity the media
paint for us. Her paintings suggest photographic accuracy at first, but her colour scheme gives away an intense subjectivity. She makes the motif, the landscapes and the people she portrays her own only through the means her painting offer her.” Reinhard Fritz
“Silke Mathe prefers to paint live models. This requires time, “sessions” lasting several hours, often over weeks. She appreciate it if somebody can find the time for this, for painting, for her! And if you see the time
for art not as “ wasted time”. She can talk with her model and find out
background information. This is how her characteristic pictures of people are created. In her pictures Silke Mathe presents the person as a unique individual being. She gives him back his individuality.”
Anke Schlecht - Art historian – Institute fur Moderne Kunst
mail@silke-mathe.de silke-mathe.de 190
Elli og Dronningen
2016, Oil on canvas 130 x 100 cm
191
HANS RAGNAR MATHISEN
(b. 1945) Áhkanjárga/Narvik. I was heading for an interesting and peaceful time after the end of the 2nd World War. I had contracted TB at an early
age and spent all together 10 years in hospitals. Already here my creative abilities were an issue, as were also my ethnicity. Being a Sámi child
was no joke in an non-Sámi environment, I was the damned “Finn-onge” (Lapp-kid), even before I understood why they harassed. Like most my
age, we have had to conquer our inflicted fears and inferiority complexes. Creativity proved a way out.
My professional career started when two of my watercolour paintings
were accepted at The Regional Art Exhibition in 1969, and a year later at The National Art Exhibition in 1970, a year ahead of the commencement
of my proper art education in Oslo, which lasted until 1979 as a graduate of The Art Academy, followed by extensive travels combining art studies with activities and networking among indigenous people I met on the
way. I had my first solo exhibition not in a city or town, as was the norm, but in the country’s Northernmost and poorest area in the Sámi village
of Guovdageaidnu Eastertime 1975, one reason being I had roots there. Since then until now I have been working with a variety of expressions,
like drawing, painting, graphic art, installations and have specialized in
making maps with Indigenous names, decorations and informative texts. A recent highpoint was the participation in Documenta 14 both in Athens and in Kassel.
kevipro@online.no
keviselie-hansragnarmathisen.net 192
1) So this is Life, just like a Flower? 2007, Oil on canvas 40 x 80 cm
2) Let us meet in the Forest! 2007, Oil on canvas 40 x 80 cm
3) Chinese girl
2009, Acrylic on HahnemĂźhle paper 63,8 x 48,1 cm
193
GURI MOE
I come from Rørvik in Vikna, and I have lived in Bodø for nearly 38 years. My education is from The National College of Art and Design (Interior
architecture and furniture design) and SLFO Art Teachers Education in Oslo.
I work with watercolour, photo, textile and other materials. Lately I have mainly been occupied with embroidery and print/paint on textile. I feel a strong connection to nature and get inspiration from its contrasts
and changes through the year. It’s exciting to explore various rooms and spaces and to see how people relate to each other and to their surroundings.
gurimoe@combitel.no
nnks/kunstnere/guri-moe 194
1) PĂĽ tur med pappa
Textile paint on silk
2) Oppvekst
Screen print/etching on silk
195
DICK MONSHOUWER
(b. 1955) Dordrecht, The Netherlands. I work with jewellery, painting, mixed media and drawing. In my jewellery and drawings I’m occupied by the diversity of forms
that we can see in the vegetation around us, like seaweed, tree branches and leaves. I also make landscape paintings.
I have my a Gallery and workshop where I present my own work. Gallery Dick Monshouwer, 8493 Risøyhamn, Norway.
galleri@artdickmonshouwer.com galleridickmonshouwer.com 196
1) Brooch - “Kvist�
925 silver, 585 gold, copper, landscape agate, aventurin, lapis, acrylic 7.5 x 7.5 x 2.5 cm
2) Drawing
Pastel/charcoal on paper 53 x 46 cm
197
MATHIS NANGO
(b. 1950) Kautokeino. Lives in Volda. Studied art at Telemark University
College. He established his studio in 1987, and has worked there since, and presents solo exhibitions at least once a year. He has worked with
public commissions and participated in numerous group exhibitions at home and abroad.
“Throughout my artistic career, I have aimed at conveying aesthetic experiences.
I work in an expressive tradition. My work is created through a poetic
approach, where objects and processes are metaphors for something one can not put into words. This quest for expression is therefore
important influences in my work. Colours become a kind of catalyst, when I try to formulate my life experiences and feeling of life through my work.
I believe that the strength of my paintings are to be found in the interplay between the poetically sensual and the figurative imagery.
I strive for balance between the abstract and the figurative, and I’m
constantly searching for expressions where the artistic manifestation is dissolved in countless visual experiences. I hope that the viewers can experience something new every time they meet my paintings.”
mathisnango@yahoo.no 198
Young
2017, Acrylic/oil on canvas 100 X 120 cm
199
EIVIND H. NATVIG
(b. 1978) Visual artist based in Northern Norway. Following years of
editorial work, both at home and abroad, he has concentrated more and more of his energy on personal narratives, resulting in monographs and
exhibitions in galleries and museums such as Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Deichtorhallen House of Photography, Nobels Peace Center and Perspektivet Museum.
“You Are Here Now” (Tartaruga Press) emerged from an extended road
trip during a period of self-imposed homelessness. Natvig lived on the
couches of strangers throughout Norway creating a project riddled with juxtapositions.
During his next major project “Come, for all is now ready,” Natvig
witnessed the circle of life play out in small islands societies scattered across arctic Norway. The work bears a distinct visual expression
occupying a space somewhere between documentary photography and
chanted verse. A voice not unlike the prayers of the outlying faithful which the project seeks to chronicle.
Natvig sees photography as a means of discovering new points of view and a tool for conveying the experiences common to all humankind.
At the core of his last body of work, “Today I am a human,” one finds a strong social and political conscience through examining a century of involuntary migration in the Middle East.
His ruminations on the human condition provide a poetic testament on how profound and astonishing ordinary life can be.
Currently Natvig is working on a project in the Middle East and one in his adopted island home of Lofoten.
mail@ehn.no ehn.no 200
1) Ylva
2017, Archival inkjet on cotton paper, ed.3+ap 100 x 150 cm
2) Berit
2011, Archival inkjet print on cotton paper, ed.3+ap 100 x 150 cm Both works are part of the project “In one hundred years all is forgotten�
201
CAMILLA R. NICOLAISEN
(b. 1988) Artist from Lofoten Islands who is currently based in Tromsø.
She is a member of several artist initiated groups, and also one of the founders of Tromsø’s Open Out Festival, an annual art festival with a
focus on queer perspectives. She obtained her Bachelor’s in Ceramic
from The Bergen Academy of Art and Design and her Master’s Degree in Contemporary Art at Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art.
Camilla’s artistic practice involves the use of ceramic structures,
sound art, herbal remedies, drawings and installations with natural materials. Her work points out to the necessity of going beyond
the dichotomy of nature vs. culture, and enquires into how habitual knowledge can survive in the future of a globalized world. She is
exploring our surroundings and the rituals connected to them which we engage in.
Through her art, she points to the silent interconnectedness that
exists both consciously and unconsciously in our existences. Her main interests in recent years have been herbal medicine and traditions associated with this, food conservation in relation to weather and
landscape, and the various symbiotic relationships with other beings
that humans are involved in. Her works are often the result of collected materials outside of her control through interactions with crows,
seagulls, people and weather. These are fragile processes based on long-term observation and presence.
More generally, she seeks to challenge the dominant narratives linked to colonization, gender norms and consumerism.
fjellkrekling@gmail.com camillanicolaisen.com 202
2) Smokery
2012-ongoing, Object, installation, performance Documentation photo: Humle Rosenkvist
1) Seagull signals - “Let’s protect the nature together”
2018-ongoing, Film, publication, drawing, mixed media Still from “Let’s protect the nature together”, video, 6 min
203
HEGE ANNESTAD NILSEN
(b. 1966) Works with photography, video sound and installations.
She lives and works in Alta, in the most Northern part of Norway.
Annestad Nilsen has had many exhibitions in Norway and abroad.
My work is based on the close relationships we surround ourselves with. The people we are with, the places we spend our days in and the things that are important to us. Each one has their story to tell, as all humans have.
In my work you will find part of my story, merged with the history of
others. The usual becomes magical and all the stories become legends. Redefining the North is from the project Change, Pollution and environment in the Northern areas.
Annestad Nilsen was educated at NTNU/ Norwegian University of
Science and Technology, Trondheim Academy of Fine Art (MFA) Faculty of Architecture and Design and University of Bergen, Art History.
hege.annestad.nilsen@gmail.com annestad.no 204
Montsjegorsk I & II
2012/2019, Russia, Photography/installation from the project: Redefine the areas in the North
205
JOHANNE SEINES NILSEN
Photographer, Master of Arts and teacher Johanne Seines Nilsen
creates a contemporary expression working with historical photographic processes such as wet plate collodion photography (1851): I am seeking to break away from the primary technology in our time to work slower, manually and in constant dialogue with the materiality in the images. Inspired by social, environmental and cultural tendencies in our time, her images, texts and lectures has given an introduction to the term of “Slow photography�.
Johanne lives and works in the Lofoten islands. She got married last year and changed her name to Nilsen.
I AM is a project where she worked with the disease of dementia as
subject matter in collaboration with the Norwegian National Association of Public Health. Seines Nilsen started approaching the subject by
working as a nursing assistant, then moved in to the nursing home with her camera and mobile darkroom for a few months. She worked very
closely with the people living in the nursing home, their families and the people working there.
mail@johannesvendsen.com johannesvendsen.com 206
1) I am series 3
2013, Wet plate collodion photography
2) I am series 2
2013, Wet plate collodion photography
207
HARRIET NORMANN
The use of certain materials, such as wood and ashes, forms the basis
for the expression of her ideas. The same objects are often worked in a variety of ways, as variations on a theme.
Lately, everyday objects as symbols to articulate collective experiences, have become increasingly important to her.
This work is a bed base, approx. 100 years old. Normann found it on an
old North Norwegian fish farm. It shows the struggle for life. They had to use what was at hand, in this example, different strings and ropes. The
beauty lies in the way it is mended, carefully, and with a lot of creativity. It also displays a knowledge about the skill of how a bed base is made. She has her education from Akershus College, Form and Design, KabelvĂĽg Art School and Falmouth College of Arts, UK.
She has attended several exhibitions and received different grants.
harrita15@gmail.com 208
Sleep well
Found bed base, 100 years old, homemade 170 x 45 x 70 cm
209
GEIR NUSTAD
The Norwegian artist Geir Nustad makes unique sculptures in glass.
Each object is hand blown by himself. He sees his work as reflections, objects that depict change over time. His main source of inspiration
is the Norwegian nature and the mountains around Tromsø with their extreme elements which reflect the difference between winter and
summer, dark and light. And similar to the world we live in, Geir has
through his work, observed how people react to one another, looking at our relationship amongst strangers.
To give the exterior of his glass work more expression, he has, over time, developed a technique in which the traditional gloss of the glass is
replaced by an exterior reminiscent of stone, pottery and metal. The
radiant interior with its remaining typical glass qualities ensures a stark contrast with the rough exterior.
The work of Geir Nustad is and remains exciting and fascinating as
he is always looking for new innovations. He is an artist who is always
experimenting with the dividing lines of craftsmanship, technique and the fine arts.
geir.nustad@gmail.com geirnustad.com 210
1) Reflections
2018, Freehand blown and mirrored glass, texture treatment on the outside
2) Wave – latte
2018, Freehand blown glass, filigree on the inside and texture treatment on the outside
211
INGER ANNE NYAAS
I work with textiles and other materials related to textile art, from silk organza to old used cotton fabrics printed with different techniques.
In some of the pieces I use materials recognizable from the consumer culture, such as plastic bags, bubble wrap with bottle caps and milk
cartons. I explore the possibilities of the material, rework and transform the original function and give them new meanings. References to the
environment, nature, heritage, textile techniques, ceramic tiles and old
woven blankets are some of the associations one can link to these works.
inger.anne.nyaas@hotmail.com lillekabelvaag.no 212
Laatikko
2016, Bottoms of milk cartons sewn together with plant colored wool. Installed on an old wood tool 162 x 176 cm
213
INA OTZKO
Born in Sandnessjøen, lives and works in Northern Norway & Southern Italy. She holds a dual Master’s from the Image and Communication
(2004) and Fine Art (2007) programs at Goldsmiths College in London and an additional Master’s degree in Sound Studies (2012) from Berlin University of Arts, UdK. Otzko was the first recipient of Twendeprisen/ Twende Art Award in 2018. Her works are exhibited internationally
including representations in Art Fairs: Paris Photo, London Art Fair and Cosmoscow. She participates frequently in Residency Programs in Norway and abroad.
Ina Otzko’s oeuvre presents contemplations on the human condition and behavior and is influenced by philosophy, mysticism and symbolism.
Otzko is an interdisciplinary artist and a nomadic soul. Her inspiration
is drawn from her extensive journeys set against research of mankind’s encounter with time and space. Through practical and theoretical
processes she investigates the complexity between memory and
experience, reality and representation, human behaviour and spiritual
ecology. She moves between employing analogue and digital technology, an exchange which offers alternative ways of reflecting upon time and the juxtaposition of our (dis)connected existence.
post@inaotzko.net inaotzko.net 214
1) Leviathan
2015, 78 Polaroids from the crater of the dormant Volcano Solfatara, Pozzuoli, Italy
Tetrahedron (Trust)
2018, Sculpture. Copper tubes/plywood 149 x 149 x 149 cm Installation view from the exhibition I am here can you feel it? Bodø kunstforening, 2018
2) Mutatio (Pietà)
2007/2018, Edition 5+1AP 104 x 85 cm “Nonviolence is the only way of resolving our differences. Preservation of life, human and nonhuman, in all its astonishing diversity and beauty… another world is possible” Ecology of Consciousness, Ralph Metzner. PHD
215
SOLVEIG OVANGER
Solveig Ovanger is an autodidact artist. She qualified for membership in Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts in 1980 and The Association of Norwegian Visual Artists in 2016. She has previously worked with
functional objects in leather and fish skin. During the last decade she has turned her attention to sculptures and installations wherein she
explores both the material, and its associative and visual qualities. The focus have lately been on fish as raw material and inspiration. Solveig
Ovanger has had solo exhibitions at North Norwegian Art Centre, Tromsø Art Centre, Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum, Hedmark Art Centre and
Gallery of Northern Norway. She has participated in several group and
touring exhibitions in Scandinavia, Russia and Iceland. She has received numerous national grants for artists.
solveig.ovanger@online.no solveigovanger.no 216
1) HEMISPHERE II
2015, Fish skin (saithe) 60 X 60 X 35 cm Photo: Solveig Ovanger
2) FLOW
2014/2015, Fish skin (cod and saithe) 250 x 250 x 6 cm Photo: Heidi Hallseth
3) HEMISPHERE I
2012, Fish skin (saithe) 90 x 90 x 40 cm Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik
217
TORUNN OVANGER
Watercolour is my favourite painting medium. I apply numerous thin
glazes of transparent colours and work my way slowly towards a result. I keep the glazes very delicate in order not to lessen the transparent nature of the medium. I don’t focus primarily on the motive. I seek to recreate the atmosphere in an experience. It is the ethereal room of
colours and light that interests me. I am drawn towards large, limited
palette surfaces, where nuances play, creating space and light. I often seek motives by observing the twilight nature. The arctic, dark winter often reflects sophisticated, deep blue and mauve nuances.
Painting an untouched landscape is for me a journey to the depth of our perceptions.
otorunn@gmail.com torunnovanger.com 218
1) Winter
Watercolour
2) Summer night Watercolour
219
JET PASCUA
Born in Manila, The Philippines, Jet Pascua studied painting at the
University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts. He studied further at The Royal Academy of the Arts in Oslo, and finished his Master in Fine Arts at The National Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen. He is currently a fellow within the Norwegian Artistic Research Program. He is also the
founder of Small Projects, an artist run space he started in Manila and currently located in Tromsø.
Liminality, migration, memory, remembering and forgetting, and re-writing of histories are recurring themes in his work. He uses historical events
both public or personal, as references and material in work and research. His artistic production are attempts at understanding the past to make sense of the present.
Jet Pascua lives in Tromsø and works in Tromsø and Manila.
jetpascua@gmail.com jetpascua.com 220
1) The Others
2018, Multimedia installation. Galvanized roof sheets, wood, lights and sound
2) Hendiatris
2018, Three channel video installation
221
HILDE SKANCKE PEDERSEN
Born in Hammerfest, coastal Northern Norway in 1953. She lives in the
Sami village Kautokeino in the highland of the most Northern county in
Norway, Finnmark. Hilde is of Sami and Norwegian origin. Her identity is sometimes reflected in her work.
She is educated at The University College of Art in Oslo, and has studied creative writing at The University in Tromsø.
Hilde worked for many years as a scenographer and costume designer
for the stage, films and television before venturing into the world of visual art. Her experience from theatre work lead to her to writing, and several
of her plays have been produced. She has worked with performance both as a writer and a performer.
Her visual art, often semi abstract, is mainly influenced by the barren, vulnerable nature of her home county. She mostly works with mixed media, laminations, photo, and installations. Her work has been exhibited/performed both in Norway and abroad.
Her most renowned work is her commissioned art project for the Sami Parliament building in Karasjok, Norway. Hilde also works as a curator.
hilde.skape@gmail.com 222
1) Eana
2016, Video, 5 min 20 sec
2) Terreng
2017, Mixed media 70 x 40 cm
223
KIRSTEN SKAAR PEDERSEN
(b. 1947) Tønsberg. Lives and works in Bodø. Has lived in the Northern part of Norway for more than 45 years.
Holds a diploma from The National College of Arts and Crafts in Oslo, SHKS, (now KHIO), in Pedagogy from Teachers College in Notodden,
SLFN, and an education in History of Art from the University of Bergen, UIB.
Works with textile art, painting, drawing and graphic art.
skaarpedersen@yahoo.no 224
1) U.T. 1.
2017, Serigraphy, hand-colored with acrylic 60 x 60 cm
2) U.T.
2018, Serigraphy, hand-colored with acrylic 51 x 38 cm
225
SYNNØVE PERSEN
I work with painting and poetry. In my abstract paintings the Northern
landscape is present through my use of colour, line, air and space. This landscape also mirrors my poetic texts, mainly published in Northern
Sami, my mother tongue, the language that gives me ultimate space for poetic expression. My poems are translated into Norwegian, Finnish,
Estonian, Icelandic, English, Spanish and even a few into Armenian and Chinese.
Poet, visual artist, organizer, critic, translator, lecturer, debater, cultural and political activist, living in Finnmark, the Northernmost county of Norway, with borders to Russia and Finland.
Twice nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. In 2006,
recipient of the Sami Council Literature Prize and in 2000, the recipient of the Biret Elle Memorial Prize. Represented in various anthologies in
several languages, also published two sound books and participated in many festivals performing poetry, alone or together with musicians.
Educated as visual artist at The Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, moving soon thereafter back to Sápmi, as a founding member of the Sami
Artists’ Group 1978–83. Participated in numerous exhibitions, in the
Nordic countries, in Europe and with indigenous artists in Venezuela
and Canada, beside numerous solo exhibitions. Received the Guarantee Revenue 2004-2017 from the Norwegian State as a visual artist.
In 2017 participated in Documenta14 at The National Museum of
Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece. In 2018 awarded Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav and the 2018 Honorary Prize of the Arts Council Norway.
Has worked with unionising Sami artists and as such a founder of both the Sami Artists Association and the Sami Writers Association in 1979. Holding positions of trust in Sami and Norwegian artists organizations and worked for the establishing of institutions for Sami Art, as an Art School, Sami Center for Contemporary Art and a Sami Art Museum.
synnove.persen@gmail.com synnovepersen.no 226
Atlantis
2017, Acrylic 100 x 100 cm Photo: Marvin Pope
227
ARI PYĂ–RĂ„LĂ„
All my life I have had a big interest in art and crafts. Having graduated
as a stonecutter and silversmith, I have a huge interest in all materials around me. For me, every material has the potential to be turned into
jewellery. New materials inspire me and make my imagination fly. Nature, the human condition, a song or a text can ignite a new idea. Keeping my creative process as open as possible, I let each material speak to me
and suggest the form it wants to take. Sometimes I play with my chosen
materials and force them, misuse them to create an absurd piece. This is a great way of creating something I did not dream of. Structure, colours, hiding the origin of the material under the construction of jewellery and the mixing of materials are my passions.
ari@koruari.net koruari.net 228
1) Omnipresent
2015, Brooch. Mixed technique. wood, silver, acrylic paint 13,5 x 7 x 3,5 cm
2) POP
2017, Brooch. Silver, reindeer leather, thread 8,5 x 6 x 4,5 cm
229
IRENE RASMUSSEN
Lives and works in Tromsø. Educated in Florence, The North
Norwegian Art and Film School in Lofoten and The Art academy in Trondheim.
Artistic Approach: Projects within various formats and materials,
from objects to site-specific conceptual installations. I approach
projects with the ambition to express something about the site and the context. My work is often influenced by environmental, political issues.
irerasmussen@gmail.com
irenerasmussen.weebly.com 230
Geoshapes / SammenslĂĽing Mixed Media 60 x 85 cm
Geoshapes/SammenslĂĽing is based on postwar houses from the rebuilding of Northern Norway after the second world war and how the geopolitical context affects identity or loss of identity.
231
AGNES REIERSEN
I live and work in Bodø, where I have my own studio. The abstract art
has always fascinated me. When I paint, I mostly use acrylic as material. My works emerges through different methods, like intuition, fabulation or testing. Tracks from the coats underneath are important elements. I search for a long time to find the right color and often ends up by
softening them, making them earthened. By using the soft and organic charcoal in my drawings, I feel in a way attached to my work.
I get inspired by many things, like the natures endless variation of
shapes, lights and colors, old manmade tools, casual occurrences, architecture, textiles.
My works are represented at The Council of Bodø, The Galleries of Art
Association in Svolvær and Hadsel, The County of Finnmark, The Bank
of Nordland (today DNB). I have participated in several group exhibitions
such as The Exhibition of The 200th Anniversary of Bodø, “Nordnorsken”, The Triennial of North Norway, Contemporary Art Exhibition of North
Norway, “Desemberutstillingen” in Bodø, “A History of Conflict- A Future of Hope” in Kentucky. I have had several solo exhibitions, mainly at different Art Societies in North Norway.
agnes.reiersen@gmail.com 232
1) Side by side
2016, Acrylic on canvas 100 x 100 cm
2) Chain of thoughts
2015, Acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 cm
233
INGUNN MOEN REINSNES
In Vesterülen, where I live, and during travels I have taken in the Northern regions- Northern Russia, Iceland and Spitzbergen - I find inspiration for painting the nature’s essence and being, which is also found inherent
in humans. I listen to nature and try to communicate this to the canvas. This is really a Zen Buddhist exercise more than pure re-creation/ representation of nature.
I have roots in both the Sea Sami and the ethnic Norwegian population of VesterĂĽlen and Steigen. Both of these groups have lived here and
they were dependent on what they could glean from nature. Through
assimilation of the Sami people and the Norwegians, the Sami culture has lost out to the Norwegian.
As a parallel to this nearly lost culture, I see human dominance over
nature as a losing prospect because of the greed. To acquire material wealth. This is possibly our last chance to prevent this injustice
perpetrated on the Sami culture and against nature itself. As an artist
from the periphery, I have duty and a desire to make this point through my art.
ingunnjmr@hotmail.com
123hjemmeside.no/reinsnes 234
1) Vàrri
2018, Oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm
2) Æ ror aleina
2018, Oil on canvas 80 x 100 cm
235
PETER RUST
I am educated as a classical goldsmith. This craftsmanship is the basis
for my work. But quite early I started to explore the three-dimensionality of the ring. I pushed it so far that the rings became wearable sculptures which can be worn on a finger or stand alone as an object.
With those works I focus on the greatness in smallness, the tension
between materials, proportions, dynamics and statics. At the same time they are visualizations of impressions, thoughts or perceptions. This sometimes can be obvious but mostly quite hidden.
peterrust@trollnet.no
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1) # 152
Ring/small sculpture. Silver, mother of pearl 4,1 x 5,0 x 3,4 cm
2) #136
Ring/small sculpture. Silver 4,7 x 4,0 x 2,2 cm
237
EVELYN SCOBIE
(b. 1943) Lives and works in Bodø, Evelyn has been working as a
professional artist all her career. In the summer of 2018 she had a solo exhibition at Stormen kunst. The exhibition was called “I dag, I går, I morgen”.
The exhibition shows a wide spectrum of artistic creativity with great
variation in technique and expression. The exhibition shows the whole picture throughout her long career.
“I dag, i går, i morgen” shows politically, charged fabrics from the seventies.
Woven fabrics from one’s own sheep, where the wool is cut, spun, dyed and woven. The exhibition show more abstract image woven paper
with Japanese paper yarn from the nineties and non figurative prints on
wooden plates and custom made paper. The exhibition also show again
politically charged sculptures that Evelyn has produced for the exhibition. Evelyn’s new conceptual work was placed outside Stormen’s main
entrance in Bodø. The work shows a triangle, a square and a round shape and symbolizes the exhibition’s name. “Today, yesterday and tomorrow”. The round shape is filled with composted soil and Bjerkenga
kindergarten was there to plant potatoes. They had grown high for the
opening of the exhibition, and harvested later on by the same children.
The square shape consists of used plastic buckles that are compressed to recycle into new material. The like sided triangular form consists of over one hundred year old peat from Nordarnøy and plexiglass.
e-scobie@online.no 238
Photos: Aslak Juell Kristensen
239
SILJA SKOGLUND
Silja Skoglund started blowing glass in 1994 and since then she has been exploring this wonderful material full time.
In 2002 she initiated and founded the glass studio, Blüst in Tromsø and is the artistic leader and head of workshop. The workshop is keeping a production line and they also make special projects such as lighting, installations, and sculptures.
Silja Skoglund has been studying hot sculpting since 2013 with masters, Jiri Pacinek, Rob Stern and Karen Willenbrink.
In 2018 Silja Skoglund was an invited artist at the International Glass Symposium in Novy Bor, Czeck Republik.
silja@blaast.no blaast.no 240
1) Gullegget
Blown glass
2) Blå skål
Blown glass
241
MARITA ISOBEL SOLBERG
Musician and visual artist, working with sound, performance and
installation art. In addition to her master’s degree from Oslo National
Academy of the Arts (2007), she has been singing and exploring different musical genres ever since childhood and has an art sound project called MmmMaras. Solberg is originally from Manndalen in Troms, she has a
base in Tromsø, Norway, but lives a nomadic life on the Norwegian and international art scene.
Over the years, she’s done guest performances and residencies in
places like The Watermill Center in New York, Art/Life Institute in NY, The Performance Studio in London, TTT in Mexico City, The Arctic
Hideaway in Fleinvær and Pushkinskaya in St. Petersburg. With her
strong connection with the Northern Norwegian part of the country, she has been in charge of the fictional Sámi Daiddamusea in the award
winning museum performance of RiddoDuottarMuseat and Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in 2017. In recent years, she has been very active as a performance artist and has participated in a number of projects and cooperation.
misobel@gmail.com
maritaisobelsolberg.virb.com 242
MMMMaRaS
2018, Photo: Tina Derakshan
243
PHILIPP SPILLMANN
I am rooted in a traditional Swiss goldsmith education. That’s the
foundation of my artistic work. My passion for the craftsmanship has stayed on while I am challenging the role of conventional jewellery,
stretching its boundaries into object, sculpture and installation. Recently I have also worked with entirely sculptural objects without a wearable dimension. My work contains various materials, including garbage,
abandoned objects and precious metals. It has been a playful journey to explore the shapeability of unknown materials and combine them with
familiar elements or metals. A long term fascination for the dynamics of graffiti and cartoons is often unavoidable. Serious reflections visualized
in a humorous expression can be seen as a contrast‌ on the other hand, humour can be pretty serious.
I have participated in national and international exhibitions and my
works are represented in the collections of The National Museum of Art,
Architecture and Design in Oslo and KODE - The Art Museums of Bergen.
spillmann786@hotmail.com
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1) Skudd (Shoot)
2017, 33 sculptures. Rifle cartridges and reindeer antler found on Finnmarksvidda, silver, lead, constructed, riveted
2) Sjøpølse (Sea sausage)
2017, Object with brooch. Discarded plastic fishing devise (garnring) found at the seashore of Lofoten in Northern Norway, hi-macs, silver, steel needle, carved, constructed
245
SISSEL STANGENES
(b. 1951) Rødven. Works with printmaking, painting and other techniques, traditional and experimentally. Sissel Stangenes is a graduate of The
Academy of Fine Arts in VKA Bergen, Norway, SHKD in Bergen, Norway and Academie Minerva, Groningen, Netherlands. She is a member of
The Association of Norwegian Visual Artists, member of Association of Norwegian Graphic Artists and a member of Association Visual Artist North Norway.
She is represented in national and private collections and in various other art projects. She has created several art projects for children and youth.
Sissel Stangenes lives and works on the West Coast of Norway, and has established her own Art Centre and Gallery in Hustad in Romsdal, right by the sea.
sistan@online.no
sisselstangenes.com 246
1) AKNATONS HYMNE
2017, Work on paper/different techniques ø 100 cm
2) MIDNIGHT SUN
2017, Monotypes/acrylic on canvas 80 x 100 cm
247
BJØRN TORE STAVANG
The works of Bjørn Tore Stavang are comments on the viewers’ own
perceptual expectations. The imaginary blends into the real world in
an illusionist manner, and often consists of different forms of detailed fragmentation. This can be seen as an allegory for a world situation
where information, knowledge and values are constantly changing. The
illusion is to be convincing up to a certain point, where the viewer has to reconsider and think twice.
Bjørn Tore Stavang is educated at Camberwell College of Arts, London
and Strykejernet Art School, Oslo. He has completed several public art projects, solo shows and workshops. He lives and work in Kabelvåg, Lofoten.
btstavang@hotmail.com btstavang.no 248
1) WAS IST LOS?
2018, Public art project, Kunstpark Tranøy. Aluminium sculpture, 2 aluminium photo prints 220 x 105 x 67 cm
2) Indignant Frame 1
2017, Acrylic/oil/canvas 110 x 110 cm
249
HELLE STORVIK
Born in Vesterålen. Lives in Oslo. Graduated from Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Academy of Fine Art in 2002. Works with video, photo and drawing.
My wish has been to use art to accentuate issues that I am passionate
about. I have done this through relating personal stories and experiences - my own and others. (eg. “Are we still here?” 2010-2015 on Sami culture in Vesterålen*)
Recently I have lived through an experience that has changed my
perspectives. I have felt gratitude for my life, but now this gratitude is even stronger. I allow myself to feel the joy about almost everything.
Everyday life. Raindrops on the windshield while one is caught in traffic
jams. Being near and present in the moment. These images are present moments.
*A collaboration with the artists: Rune Johansen, Mari Boine and Åslaug Krokann Berg. Åslaug and I made the film “Er vi her ennå?” (Are we still here?) together. The film can be seen here: https://filmarkivet.no
helle_storvik@hotmail.com 250
1) The tree
2019, Photo 90 x 90 cm
2) Frida
2019, Photo 90 x 90 cm
251
ELISABET ALSOS STRAND
Born in Mo i Rana and lives in Trondheim. She holds a MFA from
The Bergen Academy of Art and Design and was awarded a PhD in Art from The Matejko Art Academy of Krakow, Poland. Her main media is printmaking and artists’ books.
“In my work, I try to depict nature’s mood and merge with it emotionally.
I would like to help the viewer to contemplate the infinity and spirituality
in nature. I am influenced by Eastern art and printing techniques, and the handmade Japanese paper is essential for my woodblock prints, mainly printed by hand with watercolours. I leave parts of the image empty,
or open, and these areas are as important as the printed forms in the image.”
Strand has participated in numerous exhibitions in Norway and abroad and was awarded Kunstklubben Prize 2006 at The National Annual
Autumn Exhibition in Oslo. Her works are presented in public and private collections in Norway and abroad and she has been assigned several public art commissions. She is the initiator and coordinator of several international collaborations and exhibitions.
post@elisabet.no elisabet.no 252
Reflections
2018, Woodblock printing, artist’s book 28 x 460 cm
253
AGATA MAGDALENA SULIKOWSKA
(b. 1982) Poland. Lives and works in Northern Norway and Poland.
She completed her university studies at The Academy of Fine Arts Wladyslaw Strzeminski in Łodz, Poland, at The Faculty of Visual
Education. In 2007 she received a diploma in the painting studio
of prof. Ryszard Hunger and traditional graphic technique studio of prof. Tomasz Chojnacki.
2008/09, she belonged to the Irish group “Battery Heights Art Group” in Athlone in Ireland and since 2015 she has been a
member of Nord-Norske Bildende Kunstnere (NNBK) in Norway.
She has taken part in numerous exhibitions in Poland and abroad. The subject matter of her paintings from recent years oscillates around friendship, music and pleasure. Some of them present
ethnographic scenes concerning everyday life of people of different cultures (“Peruvian Lady Selling Carpets in Pisac-Peru”, “Peruvian
Passengers”). In her work, she also raises topics related to politics “Amazigh (Berber) - People Manifesting in Madrid”, that was
donated to The University of Tromso, Faculty of Peace and Conflict Transformation (MPCT) in 2018. Most of the works have been
inspired by her recent cycling trips around Europe, Latin America, Africa, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and Balkans Peninsula and life on emigration. The theme that connects them is the lives of
people in their social and cultural environments. By participating in them, she try to convey the feelings of a person from the
outside, “immersing” herself in a foreign reality. In her paintings,
Sulikowska try to convey empathy for the viewer and stimulate the
viewer’s imagination, treating it as the necessary preconditions for interaction with the surrounding world and the people living in this world. Thus, she uses art to establish relationships with others,
sharing her impressions in the form of painting and encouraging
recipients to make such contact. Since 2017 she has collaborated with musician Sebastian Siekielewski (Poland) and Nathanael Gustin (France).
agatasulikowska@hotmail.com agatasulikowska.com
artdoxa.com/agatasulikowska 254
1) The Last Supper
2017, Acrylic on canvas 60 x 80 cm
2) Ten People in One Room Drinking Beer 2018, Acrylic and oil on canvas 80 x 40 cm
255
ARVID SVEEN
(b. 1944) Visual artist, photographer and graphic designer. His art has been acquired by The National Museum of Art, Architecture
and Design, The North Norwegian Museum of Art, Arts Council Norway, Kemi Museum of Art (Finland), Kulttuurihistoriallinen Museo (Finland), RiddoDuottarMuseat - Sámi Art Division, Sparebank 1 - Nord-Norges
Kunststiftelse. As a graphic designer, he has created 52 coats of arms for Norwegian municipalities.
Arvid Sveen is often working with thematic series over longer time spans. Some projects include: Rock Carvings
Photos, drawings and text about the rock carvings of Jiepmaluokta/Alta. Book published in Norwegian, English, German and French 1996-2001. Mythical Landscapes
Black and white photos and text about sami sacrificial sites and sami
mythology. Book, 2003. Exhibitions in Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark 2003-2007.
Horizons/Frozen Horizon
Photos: square images where sea and sky play equal parts. Frozen
Horizon is from the ice covered Arctic ocean. Exhibitions in Norway, Denmark, Faroe Island, Finland 2000-2012. Tinden, portraits
Photos and video of the most central mountain of Tromsø; Tromsdalstind, the same changing image through three years. Book, 2006. Exhibitions in Norway, Finland, Denmark 2006-2012. Northern Discoveries
Documentary photos of objects alongside 28.000 km of road of Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia 2007-2012. A contemporary
archeologic investigation of things and their meaning. Work in progress. Blåmannen
Photos: portraits of the mountain Blåmannen (1044 m) with and without planes lifting off from Tromsø Airport, or in other contexts. Work in progress.
arvid.sveen@gmail.com arvidsveen.com 256
1) The shadow of Blåmannen (2)
Kaldfjorden, April 2010. Photography
2) The shadow of Blåmannen
Kaldfjorden, September 2003. Photography
257
KRISTIN TÅRNES
(b. 1985) Lives and works in Tromsø, Norway. Tårnes holds a Master of
Fine Art from Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts, with parts of her degree from Kunsthochschule Weisensee in Berlin and Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City. Her work has been included in group exhibitions including SPRING/BREAK Art Show (New York, USA), Nordnorsk
Kunstnersenter (Svolvær, Norway), RAM galleri (Oslo, Norway), Kunsthall Stavanger and Havremagasinet (Boden, Sweden). She was one of the initiators of the studio collective TKF-loftet in the same building as
Tromsø kunstforening, she has been involved in the artist run space
Kurant for several years and she is now a member of the board of The North Norwegian Art Museum.
Her work is research-based and usually connected to one specific place. She is interested in investigating the history and development of these
places through artistic methods. Her long term projects result in narrative films and/or social events and publications, sometimes in collaboration with other artists. The stories told are a bit like associations where
one thought leads to another, and tells weird, forgotten and seemingly insignificant stories together with more obvious narratives.
The short film “(over)tro” is filmed at the site of the Ä’vv Skolt Sami
Museum in Neiden, Finnmark. The museum was finished in 2009, but did not open until 2017. Some claim that the reason for the problems
is that they have not asked the spirits under the soil for permission to build, whilst others say that this custom of asking these spirits is not
an Eastern Sami one. Tårnes tells fragments of stories and ponderings
about the building, the place and the supernatural. Should you always ask for permission, even if you don’t believe – just in case you are wrong?
kristin.tarnes@gmail.com kristintarnes.net 258
(over)tro
2016, Video 3:48 min
259
SCOTT THOE
An Norwegian-American artist, I have lived and worked for the past 40
years in the Lofoten Islands, where I also manage Galleri 2 with my artist wife Vebjørg Hagene T. My education is in Art and Literature; Harvard, U. of Washington, College of Art, Berkley, Art Academy in Cracow, Poland (MA, MFA, PhD).
I thrive in a small island environment, where I commune with the gulls
and common folk. For years, I have strived to bring art out of the sterile
context of the gallery and onto the street. I do this primarily in three ways – through publishing an art calendar every year, lecturing and making
public art on building facades. I have also worked with peace projects for years in East Europe, especially in Poland and in Russia, doing public art
and lecturing at universities in the belief that cultural exchanges between East and West are the best form of diplomacy. I was fortunate to be
allowed as the first foreigner to speak in the Russian Duma in Russian on my “Bridge of Peace” project – a proposed arch on the Polish-German
border, using thousands of the tanks outlined for destruction under the CFE Disarmament Treaty on Conventional Weapons. My paintings are in the collections of the national galleries of both Poland and Russia (Syktyvkar, Warsaw, Gdansk).
scott2@online.no 260
1) Philharmonia
2016, Stone relief, Russia
2) Family of Man
2013, Stone relief, Norway
261
VEBJØRG HAGENE THOE
Born in Fredrikstad and lived in Lofoten the last 40 years. Vebjørg spent her childhood years in Tanganyika with her missionary family. This
background has been important for her education and artistic practice. She studied textile art at The Academy in Krakow, where she had her first international shows, and has done numerous projects in Africa, collaborating with local artists.
She also was a board member for Tanzania Culture Trust Fund for three years, representing the European donor countries, which also gave her an inside view of the history of colonialism and contemporary culture. Her last show “OPIUM” addresses these matters, where the mixture
of violence and religion is the essence. Through weavings, photos and installations Hagene Thoe questions the stories from the holy books, also exposing personal history. She often works with her composer
friends Tuomo Haapala and Marie Selander, who make original music for the installations.
Through her “Galleri 2” in Stamsund, Hagene Thoe curates exhibitions with internationally recognized artists, also hosting shows for The
National Museum for Art, Design and Arcitecture in Norway. She was
active in the establishing of “Kunstkvarteret Lofoten”in 2008, an artist
collective at Leknes, with a successful Artist in Residence programme.
vebjorg@online.no
vebjorg.hagene.thoe.no 262
1) Isaac
2018, Installation with lights 120 x 80 x 65 cm
2) Diamond girls
2017, Cyanotype photo on fabric, fragment 110 x 380 cm
263
VEMUND THOE
(b. 1980) Lofoten. Lives and works in Tromsø. He works mainly with
painting, photography, video and writing. He has his artistic education from Kunstakademiet in Trondheim, and Statens Kunstakademi, Oslo,
as well as a master’s degree from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. He was part of an artistic research program at
Goldmiths College, London, before moving back to Norway in 2007. In
2012 he went to Spitsbergen on the research vessel RS Helmer Hansen, which inspired a series of arctic paintings, two of which are included in the book Svalbard Life (Paul Wassmann, Rudi Caeyers).
vthoe@yahoo.no
instagram.com/vthoe 264
1) Parkgata 14
2018, Photo Variable dimensions available
2) The Squid and the submarine
2018, Acrylic on canvas (installation view with son) 100 x 120 cm
3) Polar bear
2012, Oil on canvas 80 x 100 cm
265
ESPEN TOLLEFSEN
Oslo-based photographer that also has a connection to Andøya in
Vesterålen where he has a studio and is a part of an artist run gallery.
The landscapes of Vesterålen have a strong presence in Tollfesens work. The minutely observed and interpreted landscape appears repeatedly in his oeuvre. The sense of seeing ’the great in the small and the small in the great’ gives an entry into the reading of his photography.
In his large scale work on glass, Tollefsen is concerned with the sense of a landscape, the appreciation of weather and the feeling of light. Further layers are created through the translation of these details and motifs onto glass, using printing techniques combined with traditional craft skills such as sandblasting and hand enamelling.
Flying Pine is a series of photographic collages where Tollefsen takes a
myriad of close-up images of pine trees and reassembles them in order
to disrupt conventional one-point perspective. In the reconfigured tree (or object) that thus emerges, Tollefsen also examines the idea of vantage
point – what is up and what is down? – leaving the viewer with a sense of weightlessness.
Die Farben der Schöpfung is a photographic decoration project for the church of St Konrad in Berlin, for which Tollefsen made new works of
stained glass. The starting point here is the perception of a landscape, with minute details again being blown up to larger formats to create a
space for new interpretations. By combining new printing techniques and older crafts such as sandblasting and enamel painting to transfer these details and motifs to the glass, Tollefsen manages to create even more layers and even more interpretations.
post@espentollefsen.no espentollefsen.no 266
1) Flying pine
2018, Photocollage, C-print
2) Die Farben der Schรถpfung 2014, Work on glass
267
GUNNAR TOLLEFSEN
He has been called a late modernist. For the pictures of Gunnar Tollefsen clearly display similarities with European modernists such as George Braque, Maurice Estève, and other painters of the so-called Parisian
school. Tollefsen has resolutely painted within the modernist tradition
for many decades, living in Sortland in Northern Norway and also staying intermittently at his remote childhood home in Nøss on Andøya in order
to paint there. He has in other words painted his pictures more or less in seclusion from the rest of the art world. But as the art historian Gunnar
Danbolt astutely noted during his lecture at the My Landscape exhibition
in Bodø in 2016: “Art is created from art and is never created in isolation.” In order to show the currency of Tollefsen’s art and to promote a variety
of perspectives, the exhibition invited selected artists from succeeding
generations to create works that entered into a dialogue with Tollefsen’s own works.
Against all odds, the young Tollefsen, who comes from a village where
agriculture and fishing were the primary ways of making a living, became a pioneer by being one of the first Northern Norwegian artists to train as
an artist. His student years at The National Academy of Art in Oslo in the early 1960s were influenced by among others Åge Storstein, who was
Tollefsen’s professor. It was a matter of discovering the eternal laws of
art. What was central was not the imagery and subject matter itself but the formal and geometric.
It is not just academic art that has influenced Tollefsen’s career, however. An underlying element is his background as a craftsman, stemming both from his time as a painting apprentice and from courses in decorative
painting. Perhaps that is why the tactile and the sensory are particularly present in his surfaces. Tollefsen’s respect for craftsmanship is also
evident in his wood sculptures and reliefs, where it is clear that he has also been inspired by other sources than European modernism.
Nature and the landscape that he lives in have clearly played a major
role in Tollefsen’s artistic career. Nevertheless, his approach has been far removed from what perhaps is typically associated with Northern Norwegian depictions of natural landscapes. Tollefsen does not
romanticize but uses nature more as a basis for formal explorations,
which range from relatively dry and subdued reproductions to playful
experiments. What many of these works have in common is their close proximity to the depicted scenes: rather than presenting grand vistas,
Tollefsen’s paintings usually provide the spectator with an up-close view, whether of a spruce forest or of what one sees when looking straight down at the seashore.
Translated from the North Norwegian Art Centre’s presentation of Gunnar Tollefsen.
atelier-noss.com 268
1) Blue mirroring
Acrylic on canvas 107 x 98 cm
2) Red mirroring
Acrylic on canvas 87 x 97 cm
269
SIRI TOLLEFSEN
(b 1968) Sortland. Lives and works in the village Nøss, on the west coast of Andøya, Vesterålen. Educated at Bergen Academy of Art and Design and Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Graduated in 1998.
Works with digital graphic art and textile art and design. Surroundings
and nature in Vesterålen is the starting point and base from where she finds inspiration for her own visual world.
Nøss is also the location of the artist run gallery, Atelier Nøss, where she is a member.
siri_tollefsen@hotmail.com siritollefsen.no
atelier-noss.com 270
1) Coffee Bird
2018, Digital graphic art
2) Summer Collector
2018, Digital graphic art
271
MARGARETH TROLI
(b. 1978) Beiarn. Margareth has been working with the medium of
glass since 1998, often combining digital production and traditional making processes. She holds a Ph.D. funded by the Arts and
Humanity Research Council UK (AHRC) for her research and technical development of Waterjet-cut glass (2011). Having spent most of her
adult life living and studying in the UK, she decided to move back to her home valley in 2015, when settling down to have her own family.
She has received numerous prizes, awards and scholarships for her
artworks and participated in international exhibitions and design fairs, such as SOFA New York, (USA) The British Glass Biennale (UK,) 100% Design, (UK), Designers Block, (UK), Coburg Glass Prize Exhibition, (DE) and Design Mart (UK). She has also exhibited at The House of Commons in The British Parliament.
Troli’s artwork can be found in the collections of The Broadfield House Glass Museum (UK), which holds one of the largest collections of
Glass Art in the UK and The Ernsting Stiftung Glass Museum (DE).
Her research has been presented at art and technical conferences in Europe.
Her fascination with the use of glass as a material continues. It
has many qualities, such as reflecting or absorbing light, it can be translucent, transparent and opaque. Glass can be manipulated
in many ways which has led her to explore several techniques of
glassmaking from casting, fusing, glassblowing and other hot-making techniques, but most notable is her use of digital processes such
as waterjet cutting, where she is in control of the digital process by
programming and running the waterjet machine. Most often she works
within the studio glass field, but her glass and lighting sculpture Aurora Syntax is situated in the public domain.
margareth.troli@gmail.com margarethtroli.com 272
Aurora Syntax
2014, Public Art Project, Permanent Glass & Light installation in the foyer of Kulturfabrikken Culture Center, Sortland, Northern Norway. Hot glass, 140 LED-Light, Glass Cylinders
273
ESPEN TVERSLAND
My work is concerned with our environment and the part that we are
playing in its alteration i.e. the Anthropocene. In my art I expresses my
thoughts and emotions about drives in human spirit. Mankind’s brilliant discoveries and achievements against the cost and consequences of them through history, culture and an uncertain future.
My artwork is made from my imagination, studying and visual memory
after making trips to explore landscapes of the North, which is also part of my home.
I completed my art education at Statens Kunstakademi, Oslo, 2002. I
employ wilderness treks, drawing, photography, printmaking, installation, objects, sound, animation and video.
tversland@gmail.com vimeo.com/tversland 274
1) Svida
2018, Woodblock print, printed by artist 56 x 86 cm
2) Withinnan
2018, Part of the installation in the exhibition Withinnan
3) Digital video animation
2018, Mesophase 1 or 4 screen 8 channel soundtrack, 4.30 min, vimeo.com/303465939 2018, Ignorance is the parent of fear, stereo sound, 7.10min 2018, Withinnan, stereo sound 7.28 min, vimeo.com/166563972
275
ELIN MÁR ØYEN VISTER
(b. 1976) Artist and composer based on Røst, Nordland. With a broad
audio and music background (DJ, producer, field recordings and radio), Elin Már works within several artistic disciplines. The work is occupied
with listening as artistic practice and as a way to compose, sense and
experience the world. Two of the ongoing artistic research projects are Soundscape Røst and Deconstructing Norwegianness.
The preference is to work site-specific and survey local ecology, history, ethnography, infrastructure and so forth. By listening to the ocean, the sky, birds, mountains, buildings and people’s oral and written stories, Øyen Vister seek to include both the human and the non-human, the
spoken and the untold, in the nature-cultures we live in. Her work breaks with Western hegemonic narratives that have placed the human being in the center, and instead focuses on landscape’s innate stories and knowledge.
elin.vister@gmail.com elinmar.com 276
1) Gievlien mujttalis mujttale / The History of the circle recounts Act #1
Installation still (Eco-Visionaries, Bildmuseet, Umeå/Ubmeje 2018) 8 channel sound work created by Elin Már Øyen Vister in collaboration with yoiker Katarina Barruk (Sábmie/SE) Speaker hats are sawn and painted by Eline McGeorge (NO) Sound mixed by Nils Johansson (SE/Ballerina Studio) and Elin Már Speaker stands designed by Elin Már and built by John Arvid Johnskareng (NO/Sápmi)
2) Gievlien mujttalis mujttale / The History of the circle recounts Act # 1
Performance still (Umeå/Ubmeje 2018) Elin Már Øyen Visters performance took place in the city of Ubmeje/Umeå (Vesterbotten /SE) and along the Ume River/Ubmejen Jiännuo towards Bildmuseet and tells the story of how the three forn-norse Norns, Urd, Skuld and Verdande are woken up from a more than 1000 year old deep sleep. They were trolled into this deep sleep when Catholic Christianity was forced upon the Sámi and Norse poluations of the North. As they awaken they realize the devastation that colonialisation, industrialisation, epistemicide and the ongoing ecological crisis has caused upon Sápmi and the land. They begin chanting to try and call forth the three Sámi goddesses Sáráhkká, Juoksákká and Uksáhkkáto. They Norns wish to ask for forgiveness, future unity and help in an attempt to rescue Earth. Concept: Elin Már Øyen Vister (Norway) in collaboration with Katarina Barruk (Sápmi/Sweden), Natali Abrahamsen Garner (Norway) and Sara-Helén Persson (Sápmi/Sweden) Joiker: Katarina Barruk and Sara-Helén Persson Singer: Natali Abrahamsen Garner and Elin Mar Øyen Vister Choreography: Marianne Skjeldal (Norway) in collaboration with Elin Mar Øyen Vister (Norway) Costume: Tokyo Twins - Anne Ødegård (Norway) and Simon Daniel Tegnander (Norway) The piece is a comment on the forthcoming truth and reconciliation process between the Sami and the Norwegian state. It asks: How can a state that still insists upon denying sovereignity to Sápmi and continues it´s neo-colonial repression of Sámi rights to land and rights, take part in a reconciliation process? The performance works with the situatedness of the Ubmejen Jiännuo /Ume River, both past present and future. Connecting it to the Ubme/Ume Sámi history, horizontal movements from Ubmeje across the constructed national borders over to the “Norwegian” side. Elin Már Øyen Vister created the performance The History of the Circle Recounts for Rum for Performance, with support from Bildmuseet, NBK and OCA - Office for Contemporary Art Norway.
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GRETHE WINTHERSVENDSEN
“OBLIVION” It all starts somewhere. We are part of a long chain, a family, a time, a story. We touch and we are touched, and everything makes an impression on us. Mentally, physically and socially.
As young children, we ask where we come from, and of course, the
answers are as diverse as the people we originate. Sculpted by people
we came from, the cultures we live in, and the environment that sets the norm for our living.
All events, all pleasures and encounters - good and bad, all love and all
sorrow will form and define us. In our own picture of ourselves and others. We adapt to try and fit in whilst trying to endure not quite finding your place in an ever changing life.
One day we can look back through life on earth and realise what contributed to the person we have become.
Coastal culture is a thing that characterizes me, it’s my culture - this is where I come from. And where I belong. The boats, the sea, the song
and all the sentimental music. All the longing, the hope and all the strong
women. Anxiety and fear for the wind, and fear for boats that may not find a harbor. But the love and joy it brings will always affect me and be the backdrop to my life. A stage that my life is set on.
For generations, the men have been sailors, fishermen whom travelled
abroad - do we take care of the values of our culture, or will it fade away? My parents gave me the most important thing someone has given me: LIFE.
In the flood of all experiences and life stories, I will find myself developing into the person I will become. Things are always changing, I’m not the
same today as I was 20-30 years ago, or yesterday. I’m going my own way.
I hear and I see, I draw expression out of my head and hands, into
my materials. I see their tracks, they appear on a regular basis and everything is intertwined and traceable. Everything starts somewhere. It must not be forgotten.
grewint@icloud.com grethewinther.no 278
VĂĽrlengsel
2018, Porcelain Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik
BĂĽtform
2018, Porcelain Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik
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ÅSNE WOLD
I live and work in Kabelvåg in Lofoten. Here I have my own studio
where I work with painting, mainly in techniques of acrylic and oil. My
art education is from The Art Academy in Trondheim, and Vestlandets Art Academy in Bergen. I have had several exhibitions, both solo and
together with other artists. I am concerned with several kinds of motifs and themes in my paintings. Humans, and human life is the subject
of numerous images. “Livsfriser”, friezes of life, to borrow from Edvard
Munch. The painting “Life flame” in the catalog is one of these images. I
often use color expressively, and will show the many states and emotions in the human life. Poetry and imagination are important in my art. I play with colors, lines and contrasts towards expression. The people in my pictures are often in motion; they dance, float, travel. I have worked for several years with dance as a motive in the images, often from
disco/nightlife environment where people dance. I try to look beyond the naturalistic, and find the magic and poetic expression in these landscapes.
An artistic vision I have is that the images can seize life’s innermost essence and power.
I want to produce images like glowing jewels, concentrates so that those who see the pictures have an experience that touches and creates recognition and clarity.
atelierwold@gmail.com atelierwold.no 280
1) Life flame
2016, Oil on canvas 70 x 130 cm
2) Fanfare
2018 Acrylic and oil on canvas 50 x 50 cm Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik
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KAJSA ZETTERQUIST
(b. 1936) Arvika. After studies at different art schools, she spent 1957–63 at The Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm. Kajsa
Zetterquist is profoundly inspired by rhythm and its presence
in the human body and in music. Her paintings, mostly acrylic, often receives public and collegial acclaims as representing
gifts of life force. Kajsa Zetterquist moved to Northern Norway
in the sixties where she resides with her partner, Per Adde. She
is honoured both nationally and regionally for her contribution to organizing artists and establishing regional public art centers in
Northern Norway. She was central in the development of the first
art school in Nordland County. Her public art enlightens everyday life of people in public institutions all over Norway, as do her
paintings through national and international exhibitions. She and her husband received “Gallery Adde–Zetterquist” as a gift from
Nordland County. The gallery opened in 2013, with a permanent exhibition donated from the artists.
Early in life, I gained insights and earned experiences from the multifaceted essence of art, the wonders of poetry, the poetic moment. Recognizing that all art stem from the same source, a rhythm that resonance the heart. I also experienced, in a
determining way that real art will always be both working with what exist outside the limits of time – as visual art, poetry or music.
The innermost qualities the visual, expressed through the powers of form, colour, surface and volumes, can be released through the work of art and its liberating power. This touches timeless
expressions, spontaneously accessible and challenging in one and same moment. Such experiences could find parallels in humans’ encounters with nature – a first and direct confrontation opens channels through which a deeper, poetic and more meditative understanding can grow.
addezetterquistkunstgalleri.no 282
Til Felicia
2016, Acrylic 150 x 80 cm
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ANE ØVERÅS
Visual artist from Oslo, who has lives and works in Kjerringøy outside
Bodø since 2003. Øverås was educated primarily as a carpenter and then as a visual artist at SHKS (Statens Håndverks- og Kunstindustri Skole i Oslo) in drawing and modelling, and at Ecole de Beaux Arts
de Brest and Quimper with a DNSEP (Diplôme National Superieure d’Expression Plastique).
Øverås works are site-related including sculpture, installations and sitespecific works, usually related to man and the body. She uses various
techniques and expressions to reach out to all the senses and she also incorporates film and sound if necessary.
She has exhibited nationally and internationally and have had several larger site related exhibitions in Norway. Øverås is the initiator of
“Kjerringøy Land Art Biennial”, which was funded in 2007. She has
curated and organized the biennial and related exhibitions and seminars at Bodø kunstforening. Since 2011, Øverås has also run an art-in-nature workshops for children, BarneLabben.
She also works with art dissemination and holds workshops and teaches at “Den Kulturelle Skolesekk” Øverås is a member of Fig, NBK, NBF and NNBK.
kjerringoylandart.com aneoveraas 284
1) Hommage au Modelage
Interactive installation. Div. materials and techniques with sound Approx. 5 x 5 m The work refers to the sculptor as a modeler. Now all my teachers within the field of figurative modeling are dead. With this installation, I tried to make people enter the installed workshop, use the clay and work after the model during the exhibition period.
2) The tree
Div. materials Approx. 12 x 2 m It consists of a tree trunk where small objects from nature are fitted into the trunk covered and with epoxy. The crown of the tree is cleaned and oiled. Underneath, elements cast from the tree with the bark in different materials. On the tree trunk you can see small animals from several places in the world. The lower part of the trunk represents the sea and so on up to the air where we find insects and in between seeds and other small creeping insects.The cast of the trunk on the floor is iron-patinated plaster, like a shadow. Under the tree the branches are cast in different materials, bronze, aluminum, plaster and products from oil production.
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LINN REBEKKA ÅMO
The exhibitions title: “I’m sure I would have let you in” (from the
Norwegian “Jeg ville nok sluppet deg inn”), at first may sound poetic but its meaning could also be literal. To me it speaks to who you let in, for
friendship, mentally, sexually and politically. What physical and mental
spaces do we have within us? What do we seek from those we let in, and in what ways? What do we need from others? Where are our limits? Do we need boundaries? The preparations for these works started with a
stay at an artist residency in Murmansk, through the project AiR Barents, a three year long collaboration project seeing artists from the North of
Norway and the Russian North West crossing the shared border. Later I went on to a similar stay in the South of Sweden where I continued the
work in textiles that started in Russia. My works play on stories told about hierarchical mechanisms between people. The landscapes in these
works span both informal and formal systems that we find in different groups of people. I examine roles and positions, rank, distribution of
power and prestige. I use shapes and colour to emphasize and clarify
social constructs that in different ways place people in relation to one another in the landscape. In these textile works I map out and shape
social landscapes in abstract forms, structures and colours that interact. I go deep into the material and explore texture and structures. My works revolve around the relationship between the rational and instinctive, between culture and nature, tradition and the present. It is about a meeting between everyday actions and the past.
linnrebekka@yahoo.no linnrebekkaamo.com 286
Jeg ville nok sluppet deg inn
2017, Bodø kunstforening
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