All welcome to experience the summer show of Skaftfell Art Class

Tuesday the 4th of June from 13.00-16.00

Performances:

May 16 – 24, at Skaftfell Main Gallery: Open ongoing drawing performance by Brent Birnbaum

About the project:

Knit is dedicated to the exploration of performance art. Five artists will be invited to Seyðisfjörður for two weeks for the sole purpose of experimenting with the art form. None of the artist have before used this medium to any extend for realizing their artistic endeavour.

The project is based on the assertion that a completed artwork is only a fraction of its existence and the relation between meaning and method is truly the core of art development. Thought process, ideas and life views are essential fundamentals to producing interesting art, but not trained skill or ability in a particular medium.

The performance sessions occurring during Knit will be flexible and spontaneous. The artists will present their work when and where they see fit during the period. Around town there are posters where the artists will advertise their performances. Therefore the posters will be constantly changing while the program evolves.

Artists Bio

Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir is born in Reykjavik, Iceland, and graduated from the Icelandic Art Academy in 2012, the Fine Art department. Later that year she co-founded Kunstsclager, a project space and basar located in down town Reykjavik.

Brent Birnbaum was born in Dallas, Texas in the year of the snake and currently lives at Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York. Most people are more surprised he is not on Facebook than learning his cousin invented the Bedazzler. Recent solo shows include Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia and Scope in Miami. He has appeared on VH1 as their You Oughta Know Artist and was interviewed on New York´s public radio about his Vanilla Ice Museum. Brent is busy preparing for his first museum show since exhibiting his collection of used condoms for World Aids Day at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A nine-room installation will open at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain in October, followed by an interactive sculpture show at Space Gallery in Portland, Maine opening in November.

Gavin Morrison is a curator, writer and publisher based in Marseille. He is an Exchange Fellow in the Department of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh and a co-director of the research project, What is Ignorance? at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, Sweden. In addition he is also a director of Atopia Projects, a curatorial and publishing initiative. He is currently working on an exhibition about the modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin for the Art Academy in Tbilisi, Georgia. And recently he has started to collaborate with a number of different artists, including: A History of Type Design with Scott Myles. Further he is presently working on two books: The Unresolved Fate of the Kinetic Tower, an irregular history of a maligned public sculpture in Edinburgh and Falkirk Cannons for Corsica an explorative travelogue searching for cannons sent from Scotland to Corsican rebels in the 1770s. During Knit Gavin is collaborating Karen Breneman. Karen was born in Sarasota, Florida. She now lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland. She studied art at University of Central Florida and went on to get her MFA at Edinburgh College of Art. She has exhibited in Europe and USA.

Karlotta Blöndal is a visual artist. Her work involves different media and appears in various contexts. Her practice ranges from exhibiting her work as well as being part of artist run initiatives and projects. She has co-published and edited a magazine on art and theory and teaches art on a regular basis. In her art the notion of language and mediation has been her main focus. Colour and material as such. Her work is often site specific. She graduated from Malmö Art Academy in 2002 and is currently living in Reykjavik.

Yvette Brackman is an artist and writer. Her work takes many forms such as installations, sculptures, performances, videos and text. She explores themes such as the relationship of the body to space and memory; the interaction between origin and trauma as a result of displacement and exile; cultural survival and adaptability and political systems and their consequences. She was Professor and Head of the Department of Mur and Space at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts  from 2000-2007. She lives and works in Copenhagen and has exhibited widely, both at home and abroad.

Tuesday, May 7 at 21.00, three Artists-in-Residence will have an artist talk in the Bookshop-Projectspace.

They are:

Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir from Iceland, staying for one month.
Manfred Hubmann from Austria, staying for two month.
Yann Leguay from Brussels, staying for one month.

The talk will be in English and light refreshments.

Norðurgata Residency

The current artists in residence; Joey Syta, Andrius Mulokas and Liam Scully

and Skaftfell invites for an informal artist talk at the Norðurgata residency this wednesday afternoon.

The 3 artist have all been staying in Seyðisfjörður for almost two months.

Program

Sequences VI – Off Venue
Saturday April 13,  18:00-21:00
The Norðurgata residency

About Andrius Mulokas:

In keeping with Sequences’s theme, Joey Syta presents “About”, a work that focuses on how time and experience have shaped his artistic identity for Sequences off venue programming at Skaftfell – the Bookshop-projectspace. Syta believes that actively experiencing art is a necessary component of his practice, directly informing and subconsciously shaping his output.For approximately five years running he has collected press releases from exhibitions and compiles one key sentence from each to form his own on-going chronological artist profile.

“About” is an audio installation that includes a monologue of Joey reading this current profile, the familiar art-speak forming a narrative that at times contradicts itself, presenting impossible scenarios, while also simultaneously projecting an accurate portrayal. This work speaks to the inherently debilitating nature of language as a tool to describe one’s unique experience, especially in actualizing the response towards artworks.

The event is a part of Sequences VI – Off Venue, www.sequences.is

About – Joey Syta:

In his practice, Syta appears to bridge the two traditions of artmaking – a highly site-specific staging indebted to minimalism which foregrounds spatial context and the viewer´s perception, and an anti-art strain beginning with Dada that questions the fundamental nature of the art object, both materially and as a categorical term. In truth, while evoking both of these idioms, his interests lie also in more metaphysical concerns – the creation of complex pictorial spaces and a recalling of more ancient purposes for art, which simultaneously tether the viewer to concrete reality while pointing to unknowable possibilities. The artist´s fantastical aesthetic is often contradictory in nature: revealing yet enigmatic, disquieting yet encouraging. It is matter anyone can relate to and everyone can understand. His consistent refusal to settle into a signature style is reflected in a malleable practice in which divergent bodies of work display an optimistic restlessness, revealing a playful and openended engagement with materiality.

In the performance Sleeping beauty by Inga Jautakyte, the audience is invited to re-look into the action of sleep, a part of the daily practice of every human being, by positioning herself into this personal act in the public sphere of the exhibition room. Unlike any of our other daily activities, sleep is the one practice we are conditioned and subjected to involuntarily. To fulfill this action Inga will prepare with a lack of sleep and exercises to push challenge the will and circumstances of sleep. Inga will be Sleeping Beauty at the main exhibition room at Skaftfell´s exhibition space on Sunday the 14th of April from 15.00 until she wakes up – or 22.00.

The event is a part of Sequences VI – Off Venue, www.sequences.is

In her artistic practice Inga Jautakyte recently deals with the physical body,concept of time and repetition.Her works are mostly performance based actions that often incorporate video works, drawings and mobile installations. She is interested in physical limits where mind plays an important role.Exploring conscious and unconscious states of mind with it’s evidence.

Inga  was born in 1985 in Lithuania, finished National M.K.Čiurlionis Art School in Vilnius,studied in Vilnius Academy of Arts, later on in Athens School of Fine Arts(Greece) and now finishing the 3rd degree in Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.

For Sequences Liam Scully (UK) will be presenting his film entitled Quake.

The film is a collection of earthquake actions starring the local community in Seyðisfjörður. This work is a dramatised account of the everyday, shopping at the local supermarket, having a beer with friends or going for an afternoon stroll.The mundane is abruptly amplified through a faux earthquake. Liam Scully will be presenting this video alongside a collection of drawings and collages documenting his daily life in Seyðisfjörður and his encounters with the local community. His activities on the Birgir Andrésson residency can be followed via his blog.

www.gone2iceland.blogspot.com

The event is a part of Sequences VI – Off Venue, www.sequences.is

We are proud and very thankful for all the attentions.

Here is a link to the press release: http://www.listahatid.is/um-listahatid-i-reykjavik/frettir/nr/2249

More about the award here: http://www.listahatid.is/eyrarrosin/