Sculpture Talk VI: Portfolio viewings with women sculptors
For our sixth and last talk in our series of talks with focus on sculpture we chose to via an Open-Call invite women sculptors based in the Göteborg region to meet with curators and discuss theirs artistic parctices. 10 sculptors met 5 curators for 15 min each.
The participating curators were: Ylva-Li Ahlström & Elin Aldén from Galleri Slätten in Malmö, Rose Gibbs & Sofia Landström a.k.a The Temporary Separatists and Josefina Posch sculptureHUB/Snowball Cultural Productions.
Slätten is a gallery with focus on women´s artistic practice. We wanted to create a place where we are the norm, where we are always number one and where we never need to compete with each other. We wanted this because the combination of women and creativity, equals a fantastic place where anything can happen. Gallery Slätten in Malmö exhibits female artists working in all media. We present a new exhibition every month. The opening receptions have many visitors and the response to our concept has been positive. It is obvious that our focus fills a gap, or rather that we have created something completely new. A gallery just for women.”
Gallery Slätten is run by photographers Ylva-Li Ahlström and Elin Aldén who first met at Östra Grevie folkhögskola. Their common starting point in their art practice is that they have both made a conscious choice. They only photograph women. And in their gallery work they only collaborate with women. Ylva-Li received her BFA in Fine Art Photography from Akademi Valand in Göteborg. She mainly works with film and photography, always focusing on women´s stories. Elin studied photography at Fotoskolan in Gamleby, Östra Grevie folkhögskola and at Kbh film og fotoskole. Her photography focuses mainly on sisterhood and struggle.
Rose Gibbs uses sound intervention, sculpture and participatory performance as a way to consider the possibilities of consciousness-raising. Most recently she has used speech and the voice as a way to explore how iteration and re-iteration affects our feedback loops. She questions if we can become something other than we are, if we can escape our own reflexive loops, by experiencing and speaking other people´s words. She uses the voice to explore the space between the collective and individual experiences of identity, inviting participants to join communal readings. Similarly her objects become an invitation for group making, where the object can serves as a vessel for temporary community and conversation, creating a provisional space or carrier for a coming together in group action. All of these are attempts to reconsider the dual program of feminism: both a method that seeks to recognize gendered group treatment, while also finding a route to autonomy and liberation from such categorization, where these two aims are often felt to be at odds with one another. Her practice seeks to reflect and harness this oscillating movement in an attempt to disrupt ideological hegemony without resting easy.
London based Rose Gibbs has organized the discussions; Taking Up Space –Women Only Shows – hosted by The Contemporary Art Society and Central Saint Martins, as well as a Reproducing Motherhood at Shoreditch House. Recent performances have included Performing Protest, Becoming Radical and Slogans for Becoming at The Function Room London, and Invitation at Wysing Art Centre. She writes a blog for Huffington Post, and works with the grass roots feminist activist organization The East London Fawcett Group and in 2013 was director of The One Billion Rising Arts Festival. www.rosegibbs.com
Sofia Landström is a researcher with expertise in Exhibition Studies and Feminist Theory. She obtained her MA at Central Saint Martins and has curated numerous exhibitions in Sweden and London. In her practice she focuses on feminist methodology and alternative exhibition making. http://curatingjournal.com
Josefina Posch works with a number of different techniques and media; installation, drawing, sound, aromas and social experiments – always from a sculptors perspective. She explores the dividing line between the private and the public, working with the tension between a scientific and a voyeuristic form of observation, with focus on the point where technology, cloning, averages, ideas and fiction meet. Posch has had solo exhibitions in Sweden,China, USA and the UK and participated in several Artist-in-Residencies around the world. Posch is also active as a curator and is the founder of Snowball Cultural Productions that organized and produced exhibitions and seminars such as; nordic art / Between Miracles at CCA-Tbilisi, Georgia and the Nordic Tour of the Guerrilla Girls. Currently Josefina Posch is developing a network and seminar series titled; Female Sculptors as forum for dialog concerning dissent and 3D art, that focuses on Nordic Female Sculptors, supported by the Nordic Ministry of Culture. Since 2012 she is gallery manager at Galleri Box and representative on the IASPIS Gothenburg chapter board. www.josefinaposch.comwww.snowballproductions.com
The portfolio viewing day is part of the series of talks with sculpture focus organised by sculptureHUB / Snowball Cultural Productions during 2015/16 in collaboration with Galleri Box also supported by Göteborg Stads Kultur.
