Participating artists from Norway:
aiPotu
Lene Berg
Annie Anawana Haloba Hobøl
Pushwagner
and special projects by Vibeke Tandberg and Matias Faldbakken
Lene Berg, from Stalin by Picasso, 2007
Courtesy of the artist
The 2008 Biennale of Sydney as curated by its Artistic Director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, a visitor in OCA's International Vistior Programme (IVP) in January last year, is entitled Revolutions – Forms that Turn. The biennial will include a presentation of approximately 80 artists with works from 1913 to present, bringing together significant historical works with the art of today. The 16th Biennale of Sydney explores the relationship and gap between 'revolutionary art' and 'art for the revolution'; the space between formal experimentation and artistic intent – the impulse to revolt in both art and life.
The Norwegian duo aiPotu will contribute to the Sydney Biennale with two separate works, both related to their ongoing Island Tour. The first work, entitled If you don't like the weather – wait 15 minutes, is an installation to be shown inside the Museum for Contemporary Art in Sydney. The second work is a maritime construction site at the Cockatoo Island, in the Sydney Harbour. Annie Anawana Haloba Hobøl will present the project When the Private Becomes Public, an investigation on the private vs. the public realm. In the words of the artist the project "brings three characters (an Aboriginal woman, an African woman and a woman of western descent) that will together create a triangle linkage of their individuality, different cultures, and other experiences that are embedded in them. These women are to translate the changes and turns within the private realm and will enact them into a performance that will be shot in the Australian desert. The final piece will be a film/sound installation". Pushwagner will show Klaxton II, (2000); Manhattan, (2004-2006), the pictorial novel Soft City, (1968-1976) and the animation Soft City, (2006-2008). Lene Berg will present a new project consisting of a video and a series of images and objects entitled The Drowned One. Having the first photographic images of a human being (The Drowned One by Hippolyte Bayard) as its point of departure, The Drowned One deals with photographic paradoxes. The work will be shown on Cockatoo Island outside Sydney Harbour and in October, the project will be presented at Fotogalleriet in Oslo, Norway.
Although included in the previous Sydney biennial, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has also invited artists Vibeke Tandberg and Matias Faldbakken to take part in special projects in conjunction with the formal exhibition. Vibeke Tandberg's video Old Man Going Up and Down a Staircase (2003) will be included and Matias Faldbakken will present a slide show as a continuation of his recent image series Untitled (Young is Better Than Old) (2008). The images are composed by overlapping words rendered with black isolation tape on canvas, paper or directly onto the wall. In such a manner, the text becomes unreadable and the message is obscured. According to the artist, this way of working suppresses language in favor of a mute and negating visual gesture. The Sydney Biennial will also showcase important historical works from the collection of Erling Neby in Oslo, Norway.
The biennial takes place in various venues and sites throughout Sydney, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and Cockatoo Island, one if Sydney Harbour's historic landmarks. Forms that Turn will include an extensive public program that will bring together visiting artists with a range of participating curators, philosophers, writers and poets. For a full list of events planned, including times and locations, please consult the biennial's website.
The 2008 Biennale of Sydney has been supported with a grant from OCA's International Support Programme. A portion of this grant is provided by 03-funding*. For further developing information, please refer to Biennale of Sydney, or contact info@oca.no. You can preview artworks, texts and links in the 2008 Biennale of Sydney Online Venue.
Participating artists from Norway:
Knut Åsdam
Annie Anawana Haloba Hobøl
Kristina Bræin
and Helen & Hard Architects
Knut Åsdam, Still from Finally, 2006
Courtesy of the artist
Manifesta 7 will take place in the region of Trentino — Südtirol/Alto Adige, Italy. Three curatorial teams have been selected to realize the project, each working as a coordinated, but autonomous curatorial unit: Raqs Media Collective, formed by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta and OCA ISP visitors in April 2008, will be working at ex-Alumix, an industrial building from the beginning of the 20th Century, in Bolzano. Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg, will work at the former Post Office, a rationalist building from the 1930s in Trento, and Adam Budak, OCA IVP vistor in October 2007, will develop his exhibition between the 20th Century ex-Peterlini industrial building and the 19th century Manifattura Tabacchi, in Rovereto. The curators will collaborate on the fourth venue within the fortress of Fortezza with a project which departed from the idea of how imaginary scenarios shape our understanding of history and possibility to explore the concept 'immaterial dimension'.
In the Manifattura Tabacchi Knut Åsdam will present a new work, which spans from architectural installation to the cinematic in a hybrid installation that encompasses a large narrative architectural environment. In ex-Alumix in Bolzano, Annie Anawana Haloba Hobøl will premiere the video The Air between Two Women: a conversation between Italian video artist Francesca Grilli and Annie Anawana Haloba Hobøl about their mental ‘residue’ and how they can find a language in which these ‘mental residue’ can co-exists collectively. Kristina Bræin will exhibit a partly site specific installation. The installation, entitled The Problem of Functionality insists on a human softness and homely scale amidst the raw, huge spaces of the abandoned factory. The Stavanger based architecture office Helen & Hard will present a site-specific installation that initiates resonance and evocative relations between natural and cultural/political spaces.
The four central exhibitions of Manifesta 7 will present works from approximately 140 artists, the majority of which are being specially created for the occasion. Together with the biennial, other parallel events will take place throughout the region, including exhibitions, performances and concerts.
For accreditation form for the press preview, refer to: http://pressform.manifesta7.it/en/. For professional accreditation, please contact: professional@manifesta7.it. Please refer to manifesta7.it for further information.
Participating artists from Norway:
Pushwagner
and Lars Laumann
Adam Szymczyk, OCA IVP visitor October 2006, and Elena Filipovic, curators of the 5th berlin biennial, taking place day and night from 5 April to June 15, 2008 under the title When things cast no shadow, have selected the Norwegian artists, Pushwagner and Lars Laumann, to participate in the biennial. At Kunstwerke, the work of Pushwagner is exhibited as contextualized within the series Soft City (1969–1975), a pictorial novel which gives an account of one day in the life of an anonymous father–mother–child family, living a mechanical life in a dehumanized city. The curators' interest in the work stems from the way the pictorial novel has served as a key work that simultaneously acts as source material for Pushwagner's later production, but also an important reference for the generation of artists that followed him. In showing it, they hope it will "give access to a significant work of art still unknown to a larger public and thus paying tribute to an important work not yet having received proper recognition."
Lars Laumann is screening his latest film, Berlinmuren (2008), which centers on a highly unusual relationship: the love affair between Eija-Riita Berliner-Mauer and the Berlin Wall. Laumann's approach is not primarily documentary but is guided instead by a respectful interest in the idiosyncrasies of marginalized social phenomena – not only that such relationships are possible in modern popular culture, but also how society reacts to them. The music for the film was specially written and recorded by Swedish guitarist Dan-Ola Persson. Laumann designed the special structure built on the wasteland area of Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum to screen the film. The structure is a house with two rooms, one screening the English version and one screening the German dubbed version.
Lars Laumann also curated an exhibition of Pushwagner as one of the five alternating, artist-curated solo shows of more obscure and/or historic figures from the world of art, architecture, and design. The exhibition presented paintings from the Apocalypse series realized by Pushwagner in the 1980s and 1990s and took place at the Schinkel Pavillon between 11 and 27 April.
For further information visit the biennial website.
Participating artist from Norway:
Samba Fall
Samba Fall is invited to exhibit within Dak'Art 2008, 8th edition of the Biennale of the Contemporary African Art, taking place in Dakar, Senegal, from 9 May to 9 June, 2008. The theme of Dak'Art 2008 is “Mirror” in relation to Africa's current presence in the world. Other participating artits are: Justin Kabré, Georges Fikry-Ibrahim, Gabriel Pacheco and Roberto Rico. For access to the online pressroom, please contact info@biennaledakar.org. The project is supported by 03–funding*.
P.S.1/MoMA will host a solo project by Børre Sæthre scheduled to open in NYC, NY, USA in October 2008. The exhibition curated by Lia Gangitano, Curatorial Advisor to P.S.1/MoMA, will include the artist's various installations created specifically for his recent show under the title For Someone Who Nearly Died but Survived at the Bergen Kunsthall, Norway. Sæthre's installations evoke hybrid spaces reflecting upon the artist's own fantasies and confessions rendered in morphed interiors.
Børre Sæthre, My Private Sky, 2007, Courtesy of the artist and Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway
Between 12 April and 22 June, 2008, Le musée de Sérignan, Sérignan, France is holding a Per Barclay solo exhibition. Entitled Sans parole (without word), the exhibition is curated by Hélène Audiffren, director of the Musée de Sérignan. For Sans parole, Per Barclay produced a new interactive installation, which regards the space as an essential part of the work. Composed by a labyrinth of wires, Sans parole responds to the movement and touch of the spectator by amplifying the sounds generated by the vibration of the wires. At the same time, many photographs come into resonance with Per Braclay's installation.
Kristina Bræin, Painting, 1998
Courtesy of the artist and
The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway
Floris Kruidenberg, Co-curator of 1646, in The Hague, The Netherlands invited Kristina Bræin to hold a solo exhibition at the newly renovated artists–run Project Space 1646. Kristina Bræin will develop a site specific work within the frame of her artistic practice and in line with the aim of the new exhibition/project program to be a place were artists develop new work on location rather then delivering a ready, detailed plan. The exhibition will take place between 6 and 28 June, 2008.
Kjell Bjørgeengen is invited for a solo exhibition and two separate performances at the 6th edition of Kill Your Timid Notion, at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), Dundee, Scotland. Curated by Graham Domke, curator of Dundee Contemporary Arts and Barry Esson, curator at Erika, UK, Kill Your Timid Notion is a exhibition/festival that investigates the perceptual differences between what one sees and what one hears. In addition to a solo exhibition at the main gallery at DCA, Kjell Bjørgeengen will present a performative collaboration with Keith Rowe and Phillipp Waschmann, two of the leading figures in UK improvised music. The festival exhibitions will take place between 19 September and 9 October, 2008. Performances, screenings, talks, workshops and installations will be presented on 10, 11 and 12 October.
Kathrin Höhne and Bjarte Gismarvik, Bycatch, 2008
Courtesy of the artists
Angela Lennon, Assistant Curator at Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen, Scotland has invited Kathrin Höhne and Bjarte Gismarvik to realize their project Bycatch between 19 August and 20 September, 2008. Bycatch is an investigation into the decline of the fishing industry in Aberdeen and its effects on the local community. The project consists of three elements: a fanzine to be distributed throughout the city, a workshop involving a local community group and an exhibition at Peacock Visual Arts.
Unni Gjertsen is invited by Corinne Diserens, Director at MUSEION — Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, in Bolzano, Italy, and OCA IVP visitor in November last year, to select films by Swedish director Mai Zetterling for the screening program of the exhibition Peripheral Look and Collective Body. The exhibition, conceived as an exceptional event for the opening of MUSEION's new building, discusses the question of the collective bodies in contemporary visual art considering the tight relationship with architecture and performance — dance, in particular. The exhibition will explore the creation and the use of 'the collective body' as a critical strategy to question the legacy of our recent history. Peripheral Look and Collective Body will be looking at how recent artistic proposals have been informed by the American avant-gardes from the post WWII period which themselves had activated some experimentation from the German, Polish and Russian milieu of the early XX Century. The exhibition will bring together a selection of works, including film, performance, documents and texts from Meyerhold to contemporary art. Unni Gjertsen will make a presentation of the films on 3 July at MUSEION. Peripheral Look and Collective Body opens on 24 May and closes on 21 September, 2008.
Sissel Tolaas, Fear 9, 2006
Courtesy of the artist
Sissel Tolaas and Verdensteatret have been invited to exhibit within Synthetic Times — Media Art China 2008, a Cultural Olympics Project at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. The exhibition, curated by the NY based media curator, Zhang Ga, is organized around four distinctive yet interrelated themes that testify to the incessant and obsessive pursuit of an ideal world through artistic intervention into media and communication technologies as well as bio-cultural spheres. Sissel Tolaas who is one of the few artists currently working with smell, creates installations that explore real scents, questioning certain cultural prejudices. For Synthetic Times she will contribute with the project Fear 9, in which she collects and displays the smell of 20 different men who have nothing in common but the fear of body contact. The Norwegian collective Verdensteatret will present the installation The Telling Orchestra, "where images, sculptures, sound and video are deeply integrated into each other to form an audio-visual-spatial". As part of the Synthetic Times, several evening programs dedicated to countries that have made significant contributions to the developments of media art and culture will take place in Beijing, as well as a special screening program at the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition will include approximately 50 media works, from both established and emerging artists and is scheduled from 9 June through 3 July, as one of the more important cultural events leading up to the Olympic Games in Beijing. The project is supported by 03–funding*.
Bodil Furu, Still from My Ambience, 2005
Courtesy of the artist
Following a visit to Norway to participate in OCA's International Visitor Programme, the Director of Johannesburg Art Gallery, Clive Kellner and Maria Fidel Regueros have invited Torbjørn Rødland, Goksøyr & Martens (Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens), Bodil Furu and Maia Urstad to participate in the exhibition Disturbance – Contemporary Art from Scandinavia & South Africa. The exhibition will examine the relationship that Scandinavian and South African artists have to notions of identity and place. The thematic of the show will focus on "disturbance" – a term used here to explore ruptures in society. For Disturbance, Torbjørn Rødland will present various c prints on aluminum — works with a pop culture element, which pokes fun at clichés. Bodil Furu will exhibit My Ambience, (2005) and Kabul Ping Pong (2005, with Beate Pedersen), works which filter the immediate reality using the mediums of video and sound. Maia Urstad will exhibit a sound installation consisting of a wall of radios and a performance entitled Cleopatra's Needles. The artistic duo Goksøyr & Martens will exhibit a new work created for Johannesburg. The Danish artist Paul Gernes, and the Finnish Alija-Lisa and Veli Granö are also to participate in the exhibition along side South African artists such as Anthea Moys, Lerato Shadi and Siemin Allen. Disturbance – Contemporary Art from Scandinavia & South Africa takes place at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa between October, 2008 and January, 2009. The project is supported by 03–funding*.
Knut Åsdam, Jorunn Myklebost Syversen, Ane Lan and Annette Stav Johanssen will participate in Rencontres Internationales, a project that investigates the specificities and convergences of art practices between new cinema and contemporary art. The Rencontres Internationales, which initially took place in Paris and Berlin, now opened in a third city: Madrid, Spain, from the 5 to 14 May, 2008. With the participation of 150 artists and filmmakers, the program includes films, videos, installations, net art and concerts in different venues citywide. Among the film and video screenings are works of Alfredo Jaar, Gordon Matta-Clark, Peter Downsbrough and among exhibited artists are Lawrence Weiner, Erik Olofsen and Claude Closky.
Anne Katrine Dolven, Bring Me Back, 2007
Courtesy of carlier♣gebauer, Berlin, Germany and Wilkinson Gallery, London, UK
Anne Katrine Dolven is invited by curator Anna Bitkina to participate in the exhibition H2O Contemporary: Nordic and Russian Public Art in Non-Traditional Space. Initiated by CEC ArtsLink, the exhibition and summer public event is aimed at increasing the interest of Russians for contemporary art by organizing an event with an approachable theme: water. For H2O Contemporary, Anne Karine Dolven will produce a video piece with the working title Liberty. The work questions the reality of what one actually sees and where one is. Other participating artists are Tommi Gronlund and Petteri Nisunen (Finland), Ulf Rollof (Sweden), Jacob Kirkegaard (Denmark) and Finnbogi Petursson (Iceland). H2O Contemporary: Nordic and Russian Public Art in Non-Traditional Space will take place in St. Petersburg, Russia in September, 2008.
Curators Johan Sjöström, director pro tem of Göteborgs Konsthall, Sweden, and Mika Hannula have invited Josefine Lyche and Martin Skauen to exhibit within Tomorrow Always Belongs to Us, a group exhibition with new Nordic paintings. The curators selected the works The Scent of a Woman series (2008) and What goes around comes around (2008) by Martin Skauen, and Dream Machine by Lyche. Lyche will also produce a large three-dimensional painting on a specially constructed wall. Among other participating artists are: Anastasia Ax, Louise Dorph, Henrik Eriksson and Christina Malbek. Tomorrow Always Belongs to Us takes place between 5 June and 28 September, 2008 at Göteborgs Konsthall, Sweden.
Lina Viste Grønli will participate in the annual outdoor sculpture exhibition Sølyst Skulptur Udstilling 2008, entitled Partiche, to take place in the park surrounding Sølyst Castle in Jyderup, Denmark. The exhibition, initiated by The Art Work Shop of West Zealand (VAK), will show works of various international artists such as Anders Bonnesen, Richard Hughes, Eva Rothschild, Jacob Dahl Jürgensen, Tommy Støckel, Claus Egemose, Neil Zakiewicz, Gernot Wieland, Karen Land Hansen, Thomas Lindvig and Sofie Hesselholdt & Vibeke Mejlvang. For Pastiche, Lina Viste Grønli will present her new work Untitled (Super Form), a piece in shape of a cross that focus on the formal, sculptural and abstract qualities of this well know form. Pastiche will take place between 30 May and 30 August, 2008.
Jesper Alvær, Video Comments with Translator, 2006
Courtesy of the artist and Jiri Svestka Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
Jesper Alvær is invited by Joanna Zielinska, Curator at Centre of Contemporary Art ’Znaki Czasu‘, in Torun, Poland to exhibit within the context of Sight of Times. The exhibition, which marks the opening of the new contemporary art centre, investigates the collecting phenomenon and its place in the contemporary artistic practice. For Sight of Times, Jesper Alvær created the project Employer & Employees that directly intervenes with the employment process of the Centre. The exhibition runs from 14 June to October, 2008. Other participating artists are: Kutlug Ataman, Walerian Borowczyk, Oskar Dawicki, Wojtek Doroszuk , Lilla Khoor, Robert Kuśmirowski, Gosha Macuga, Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova, Janina Turek, Łukasz Skąpski, and Andrzej Urbanowicz.
Snorre Hvamen, Ignas Krunglevicius and Dordi Strøm are invited by curator Julija Fomina to exhibit within Sound, an exhibition at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania. Sound, which takes place between 6 June and 17 August, 2008, will exhibit works by young artists working with the sound medium. The exhibition is organized by the Contemporary Art Center alongside with the international exhibition of artist awarded with Arts Viva prize. The Norwegian trio will create four installations integrated into mundane objects in and around the Contemporary Art Centre. The installations are viewed as one piece where each one of them represents strategies for creating an invisible geography were the spectators can get access to new ways of perceiving the environment and their role in it. Among other artists exhibiting are Nico Dockx, Florian Hecker, Marcellus L. and Astrid Nippoldt.
9 May, 2008
*03–funding: The purpose of the 03-funds as allocated by the MFA to OCA is to further develop cooperation and professional networking between OCA and the constituency of artists, independent cultural producers, and organizations that are located in designated countries or associated with 03-countries. This includes but is not limited to "professional research visits by cultural producers, artists, and curators", "short-term residencies for cultural producers and artists", "the development of seminars, conferences, art projects, workshops, etc. that focus on the further development of professional exchange and networking between and among countries", "project development and "pilot projects" on an international scale."