With sculpture as a starting point, the exhibition becomes a cross section where artistic practices that in different ways address space, the object and materiality, exist in synergy. The artworks act as embodiments of questions as well as responses to different cultural and natural phenomena; bronies, cruisers, cars, society, power, bees, materiality, the universe, what it means to be alive today and the end of the world.
The illusion of safety in the event of an apocalypse is the focus in the installation by Linda Tedsdotter where the gas mask becomes a symbol for survival, an object that keeps the family safe while the world outside turns toxic. Laura White explores the object, both as a physical form but also as an anthropological signifier, capable of revealing the human condition – vulnerabilities and capabilities, value systems affected by consumerism and material status, and object/human dependencies. Anja Carr and Dominique Rey connect over two continents, both working with performance and photographic collages that they turn into sculptures. Carr’s sculpture, a residue of a performance, playfully combines historical, violently imposed, male hair fashions with adult, mostly male fans of the My Little Pony-toys into a hybrid creature. In Rey’s video, a traveler and a hunter lure us to the heart of the forest and in their persistent struggle, it is unclear who will be the victor, the self or the other? Aganetha Dyck’s work, also rooted in nature, encourage us to ask questions about the ramifications all living beings would experience should honeybees disappear from earth while Yngvild Saeter flings a cruiser car into deep space to have the universe rip it apart and shape it into a sculpture.
Participating Artists
Aganetha Dyck – CA
Anja Carr – NO
Dominique Rey – CA
Laura White – UK
Linda Tedsdotter – SE
Yngvild Saeter – NO
Curated by Box board members Alexandra Nyman and Josefina Posch
Aganetha Dyck is a Canadian artist who is interested in environmental issues, specifically the power of the small. She is interested in inter species communication. Her research asks questions about the ramifications all living beings would experience should honeybees disappear from earth.
The Hive Scan is a collaboration between Aganetha and her son Richard Dyck involving a flatbed scanner inside a beehive. The non-bee objects are artworks in-progress, sculptures-to-be by Aganetha and the bees. The bees paint as they move relative to the scan head over the scanner bed, their images compressing and smearing anfractuously. Sunlight is controlled with the lid of the beehive, cracking it a little for a wisp. Dyck is using apiary feeder boards and hive blankets to develop her new body of work.
Aganetha Dyck has exhibited internationally since the 1970´s, is represented in collections the Canada Council Art Bank and the recipient of Making a Mark Award: in recognition of excellence in professional artistic practice. Winnipeg Arts Council, 2014, Art City Star Award, Winnipeg 2013, the Manitoba Arts Award of Distinction 2006 and Canada Council’s Governor General’s Award for visual and media arts 2007. Dyck sits on the board of directors of Plug In Gallery, and has served as a mentor in Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art
Anja Carr‘s wall-sculpture Hårpisk is based on a photograph on PVC, documenting Anja Carr’s performance with two 1:1 pony-sculptures and a naked male model, with his hair braided into each pony tail, like an embodiment of the Brony-subculture (adult, mostly male fans of the My Little Pony-toys). One pony and the model are cut out and sewn together, with the artist’s own braid and a real pony-whip and comb attached. Hårpisk, from Norwegian “hair” and “whip”, is a hairstyle with a long braid from the top of the scalp, violently imposed upon all men by the Qing dynasty, China (1644 – 1912) and men’s fashion in Europe in the 1700s.
Anja Carr’s 30 solo exhibitions include Skåne Art Association (Malmö, SE) and the Agency Gallery (London, UK). Recent group exhibitions are “UNCONTAMINATED Oslo Fashion Art Festival 2017” Mellomstasjonen / The National Museum (Oslo, NO) and “When Will I Be Little Again?” Tadeusz Kantor Museum (Kraków, PL). Performances in selfmade costumes include NOoSPHERE (New York, NY), Miami Performance International Festival ’15 (Miami, FL) and Le Générateur (Paris, FR). In addition Carr has run the exhibition space PINK CUBE in Oslo for five years, with pink bodyfluid-wall-paint and a majority of female exhibitors.
Dominique Rey playfully pushes the boundary between photography and sculpture, reinvigorating ideas of surface, materiality, and illusion. In her recent work Rey focuses on practices of recontextualization and translation. One form this has taken is in the creation of collages derived from her photographic archives that are then re-interpreted into what reads as large-scale sculptures, while Rey considers them to be photographic objects.
In the body of work Pieces of Me Pieces of You the forms are further broken down and deconstructed. Rather than build towards something solid, the collages, even in moments of coalescence, point towards fragmentary states. A feeling of suspension pervades this work. Here the body is only alluded to, and when it does appear it is out of bounds, merging, morphing, perpetually reshaping itself. There is a logic and beauty to this fractured space, but also a great sense of uncertainty.
Her fascination with the representation and embodiment of the other, the marginal figure, plunges inward in the video Funambule to explore the unconscious other within. Moving between the open expanses of the grasslands to the dark shadows of a cedar grove, a traveler and a hunter beckon us to the heart of the forest. In their dogged struggle, it is unclear who will be the victor, the self or the other? On one hand this encounter might lead to self-discovery, on the other to madness.
Dominique Rey is a multidisciplinary artist based in Winnipeg, Canada whose practice includes photography, video, performance, sculpture, and installation. She has exhibited across Canada, the United States, and Europe. Her art appears in numerous collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and the Province of Manitoba. She holds a MFA from Bard College (NY) and a MFA from the Transart Institute (Berlin). Dominique Rey was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2016.
Laura White‘s practice focuses on a negotiation with the world of STUFF, i.e. interactions with materials and objects, exploring ideas of value, profile, association, meaning and behaviour of materials, individual and collections of objects. Things are explored both as material stuff and anthropological signifiers, that are capable of revealing the human condition – vulnerabilities and capabilities, value systems affected by consumerism and material status, and object/human dependencies. Her works occupy a fluid space, on one hand demanding critical discourse, and on the other their own ambiguous and intuitive logic.
Laura White’s practice is interdisciplinary including sculpture, installation, drawing and photography. Her web site ‘Tenderfoot’ launched in 2017, is a on-line space for exploring materiality through her own writing, forums, events and a curated space where she invites contributions from artists, writers, and makers. White also runs participatory events for example, ‘What it means to handle stuff – auto-pedagogy – a course in butchery’, which saw White bring Royal College of Art students and staff from Raven Row Gallery London together to learn butchery skills under the guidance of a professional butcher, here looking at what it means to learn a skill and to deskill, the environment we learn in and the groups we learn with and skills we can access both as an amateur and as a professional.
Recent exhibitions include: The Agency Gallery London UK, Gallery Cadaqués Spain, & Model Leeds UK, SPACEX Exeter UK, Marlborough Contemporary London UK, The Wall House #2 Groningham Netherlands, Kling&Bang Reykjavik Iceland and Galleri Box Göteborg Sweden.
With her series Apocalypse Insurance, Linda Tedsdotter chose to focus on fear of the external threat at a time when “the powers that be” have resorted to fearmongering, either to gain or to maintain the support of the people (because visions in it self is no longer powerful enough) and everything seems to revolve around the act of maintaining and increasing capital. The sound installation Apocalypse Insurance- Keep Family Breathing (the first artwork in the series and made from five gas masks) the humming voices of a family choir can be heard, the voices longing for a sense of safety.
Linda Tedsdotter is born 1975 in Laisvall, Sweden but has been based in Gothenburg for the past 20 years. Since graduating from the Valand Academy in 2001 Tedsdotter´s work has been exhibited in many locations including Something Else Off Biennale Cairo, Palais de Tokyo Paris, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Museum of contemporary Art Zagreb, Kaohsiung International Arts Festival Kaohsiung, Invaliden 1 Berlin, Newlyn Arts gallery Pencenze, UK.
New Horizons is part of the sculpture series Cruise Control, in which Yngvild Saeter have envisioned a cruiser car being flung into space, the car ripped apart and the parts shaped by the universe. All the works are from the same cruiser car, an Audi 80 ´91 from Rindal, Norway. The works are named after man made objects in deep space.
Yngvild Saeter (b.1986) is a Norwegian artist, graduated in Fine Arts and with a background in anthropological and political studies. She works around practices of looking in and at culture and cultural phenomena by utilizing anthropological methods in a makeshift, semi-professional manner. This brings a quasi-scientific abstraction which often takes the form of imagined scenarios in which her projects unfold. Saeter is attracted to blatant displays of masculinity, which has led to projects about cruiser car- and bodybuilding cultures.
Hendrik Zeitler