Opening on Saturday 21st of June at 8:30pm.
Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir works with the transformation of materials, such as wet to dry, and the connection between elements from nature in a simple, material-sensitive presentation that reflects on traces, and the nature of imagery. Ink paintings on stone paper are created in simple gestures where stones are allowed to guide the composition. The stones were taken from the area surrounding Reykjavík in 2022 and used to create monoprints on stone paper, a surface made of waste from rock quarries. The process involved laying the stones on a sheet and pouring mixtures of seawater, sand, salt, acrylic-, oil-, and water ink over them. When the stones are removed from the paper, traces of the encounter and the transformation remain on the impermeable surface.
Hauksdóttir sometimes works with rocks as an intermediary between humans and nature, avatars for stasis and the passage of time. In her works, a sense of time is presented in the visual and the aural. She previously took rocks from Seyðisfjörður and transported them to Reykjavík and Berlin for her artwork Skriða, which is a composition for double bass made on the occasion of the 2020 landslide in Seyðisfjörður. She works with the subjective relationship between humans, animals and components of Earth such as water, mud, rocks and events such as landslides and earthquakes, the movement of the sun and the ebb and flow of tides.
Her drawings often serve as a score for choral and audio compositions. These drawings have previously served as a voice score for a choir ceremony performed in Reykjavík in 2022. This time she assembled a choir with the people of Seyðisfjörður who performed at the Summer Solstice Festival. The Fog Choir was spontaneously assembled and was composed based on ideas about the movement of the sun and Morse code.
Hauksdóttir lives between Reykjavík and Berlin, she studied fine art at the Iceland University of the Arts and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, from where she received her masters degree in 2005. Gunnhildur’s process as an artist spans 20 years, she has exhibited widely and worked in various fields of visual arts; teaching, curating, writing, editing and museum work. She has lived in Seyðisfjörður from time to time, first moving there in the summer of 2001 and moving away last time in 2017, but she visits Seyðisfjörður every year with students from the Iceland University of the Arts and leads a workshop in the town.
