Icelandic Art Center — Out There (Icelandic Art Center)

Guðjón Ketilsson is the current recipient of the Artist of the Year award from the Icelandic Art Prize. In this episode we meet him in the studio in downtown Reykjavík. We discuss early memories of art, his first solo exhibition, school abroad and specific works that span his over thirty-year practice. Guðjón’s experience of emerging into an art scene with the raw presence of the avant-garde gives inside perspective into a specific and vibrant time in Icelandic art.

Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Centre, Out There brings host Becky Forsythe in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals.

In this episode of Icelandic Art Center’s podcast “Out There” Becky and Tinna talk with Maria Alyokhina, or Masha from Pussy Riot, about the exhibition Velvet Terrorism in Kling & Bang Gallery which has generated an important response in the local and international context. The exhibition comes to a close for now this coming Sunday at the end of January 2023. This conversation covers the  first presentation of Pussy Riot’s political actions in the exhibition and Putin’s war on Ukraine. Masha speaks about her own personal experiences and Pussy Riot’s efforts to raise awareness around the complexities and nuances about the past and current social and political situation in Russia.

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe @beforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals at the @101liveradio.

#OutTherePodcast #IcelandicArtCenter #IcelandicArt #IcelandicArtist #Iceland #VisualArt #ContemporaryArt #InspiredByIceland #IcelandicArt

Artist and project manager of the Icelandic Art Prize Tinna Guðmundsdóttir joins us to discuss the nominations for the 2024 Icelandic Art Prize. In this overview episode, we detour from our usual format, and take some time to review the artists, and the exhibitions, that are nominated for the Prize's two main award categories; Artist of the Year & Motivational Award.   

The Icelandic Art Prize awards, including the Artist of the Year award, the Motivational Award, Publication of the Year, Group exhibition of the Year and Honorary Artist of the Year, annually award outstanding visual artists, as well as encouraging new artistic creations, and recognizing significant contributions made to the field of contemporary art over the year. The award ceremony will be held on March 14 at Iðnó, where the Icelandic Love Corporation and artist Pola Sutryck will contribute to the evening’s festivities.

The nominees for the two award categories are: 

Artist of the Year Nominations

Amanda Riffo - House of Purkinje at the Living Art Museum

Arnar Ásgeirsson - Cleaning Methods at the Neskirkja Church

Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar - Index at Ásmundarsalur

Ólöf Nordal - Blird at Ásmundarsalur @olof_nordal

Motivational Award Nominations

Almar Steinn Almarsson - Almar in the Tent at Svavar Guðnason Art Museum 

Brák Jónsdóttir - Possible Oddkin at the Nordic House

Sara Björg Bjarnadóttir - Two infinities betwen 1 and 3 at Akureyri Art Museum

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe @beforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals.

Opening up our quest to get out and into the environments that define, support and circulate artists and art professionals from Iceland’s art scene, Becky Forsythe sits down with Markús Þór Andrésson, Chief Curator, Exhibitions and Public Engagement at Reykjavík Art Museum. Their conversation builds upon Markús’ own personal experience, art history, meaningful past moments and the present, and leaves us with some thoughts about a potential future art scene in Iceland.

Art collective Lucky 3 is composed of Darren Mark, Dýrfinna Benita Basalan and Melanie Ubaldo. From the perspective of their “collective, first-person immigrant experience” the group has recently opened up new space for conversation on diaspora, displacement, vulnerability and belonging. The collective´s Filipino-Icelandic origins informed their breakthrough exhibition Lucky Me?, held in Kling & Bang in 2019, and as an act of quiet activism, speaks volumes about identity and location, marginalization and claim, Filipino community, and locating culture from the periphery in Iceland.

Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings host Becky Forsythe in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals.

Intro: When You Know You Know from the album Moonlove by artist Egill Sæbjörnsson. 

In this episode, artist Katie Paterson and writer Andri Snær Magnason talk about the world we live in, the catastrophic consequences of the human race’s behavior, and how art can be a power of change.

Katie Paterson is widely regarded as one of the leading artists of her generation. She recently exhibited in the Living Art Museum in Reykjavík with the exhibition The Earth Has Many Keys. The title of the exhibition, taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson, indicates that the earth is the basis for our knowledge of nature, time, change, the universe and ourselves.

The Earth Has Many Keys mirrors the artist’s boundless curiosity, who more often than not works together with scientists and scholars around the world to peek beyond the limits of our horizon. At the same time Katie Paterson’s works serve as an urgent reminder, challenging us to rethink our relationship with nature.

Andri Snær Magnason is an Icelandic writer and documentary film director. His newest book, On Time and Water, about the climate catastrophe is been translated to more than 30 languages.

The podcast was produced by the Living Art Museum in collaboration with the Icelandic Art Center.

In this episode of Icelandic Art Center’s podcast “Out There” Lukas Strolia (LT), who was assisting the Icelandic Art Center as a part of the Borderland Poetics exchange project between Rupert (LT) and CCA (EE), talks to his colleagues J.L. Murtaugh (US) and Erik Vojevodin (LT) about the artist-run space Autarkia, Vilnius.

Autarkia is located in the former workers’ canteen at the long-gone secret Soviet military factory in Vilnius, Lithuania. The group discusses what it takes to run a self-proclaimed Artist daycare centre, which is liquid enough to act as an artwork and the creative entity providing artistic services. They talk about its natural resistance to formality, its ambiguity, functionality, successes and struggles.

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J.L. Murtaugh

Liam is an artist, curator, writer, and consultant organizing projects under the alias of Syndicate since 2014. Currently, he is the artistic director of Autarkia, Vilnius, and was previously the director of Tenderpixel in London.

Erik Vojevodin

Erik is an artist and curator born and raised in Vilnius, Lithuania. He graduated in philosophy and art history at the University of Glasgow (dissertation on John Cage, George Maciunas, and Pure Being). Erik is interested in spaces and participatory formats with the potential for a living pure being.

Lukas Strolia

Lukas is an artist, curator, project/production manager, researcher, and art handler. He was co-running an artist-run space Autarkia, producing Gut Feeling, Lithuanian Pavilion at Venice Art Biennale 22’. Currently, he works in the commercial gallery Vartai.

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Thanks to RadioVilnius for providing their infrastructure and Lubomir Grzelak, aka Lutto Lento, for letting to stream his sound piece.

Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals at the 101 radio studio.​​​​​​​​

In this episode of Icelandic Art Center’s Out there podcast we spoke to the curator Heiðar Kári Rannversson who has been keeping busy with a few exhibitions recently opened locally in Iceland. We discuss the exhibition spring that has sprung in Iceland with a couple of exciting solo exhibitions having opened in Kling & Bang; Andri Björgvinsson and Tara & Silla and the National Gallery; Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir, Þóra Sigurðardóttir and the new iteration of Steina Vasulka’s Borealis Installation from 1993 now on display.

Heiðar Kári @hkrannversson is an independent curator, art historian and most recently he held a position at the Nordatlantens Brygge in Kobenhavn 2018 - 2022.  He has curated multiple shows across Iceland; The Living Art Museum, the National Gallery and for the Icelandic Art Center.

In the episode his most recent exhibitions and projects were discussed including: 

Sóley Ragnarsdóttir @soleygendary is a Danish/Icelandic artist that lives and works in Thy, Denmark. Ragnarsdóttir has a sculptural approach to painting, and her works, painted and ornamented with both synthetic and organic materials, hover between figuration and abstraction. She mixes acrylic and epoxy with shells, amber and sea-sanded shards of glass on surfaces of wood, canvas and napkins. Her solo exhibition “Queen of Hearts” curated by HK  is now on display at Gerðarsafn.

Þór Vigfússon @arslonga_djupivogur is an artist that lives and works in Iceland. He creates powerful objects with colour, texture, and reflection using prefabricated industrial materials. His deceptively simple works, primarily made of glass, plexiglass, mirrors, and Formica with monotone colour fields, push the boundaries between two- and three-dimensional works. Architecture and space play a vital role in their presentation.His solo exhibition “Numbers, Places” curated by HK is now on display at Gerðarsafn.

Outside Looking In, Inside Looking Out is an exhibition that has been traveling around the world and will continue in the coming year with the stopa in Tokyo, Oslo and Paris this Autumn. The exhibition showcases works by established and emerging artists from Iceland. This exhibition project is a collaborative platform between the Icelandic Art Center, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Business Iceland, promoting visual art from Iceland abroad.

This episode ends with the exhibition of the month segment which is dedicated to the one and only Venice Biennale and its 60th international art exhibition curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Special mentions from the main exhibition include Ahmed Umar’s work “Talitin, The Third” (2023) and the Mataaho Collective’s installation “Takapau” (2024). For the national pavilions Becky and Tinna briefly discussed the following; Pakui Hardware at the Lithuanian Pavilion, Eimear Walshe’s installation at Ireland at Venice, the Nigerian Pavilion with a star-studded artist roaster, Canadian Pavilion’s exhibition with Kapwani Kiwanga’s installation, Archie Moore’s installation at the Australian Pavilion curated by Ellie Buttrose and more! Listen in for a quick review of the cacophony at the Biennale.

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe @beforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals at the bokasamlagid.

In this episode we speak with Sigurður Guðmundsson, Artist and co-founder of the international contemporary art museum ARS LONGA, initiated with Þór Vigfússon & Ineke Guðmundsson in 2021 and based in Djúpivogur. We talk about the upcoming summer show that is to open at ARS LONGA on the 8th of July, summer 2023. Sigurður tells us stories spanning his career, plays some symphonies that resonate with different periods in his life, including legendary SÚM group initiatives back in the 70’s and unpacks some of his unique conceptual ideology, both in life and art-making.

ARS LONGA strives to be a leading venue for international contemporary art in Iceland with progressive exhibitions and seeks to strengthen connections and collaboration with artists and professionals through dynamic activities. ARS LONGA’s mission is to collect artworks by Icelandic and international artists, but Sigurður Guðmundsson’s art donation of twenty-seven works is the basis for the collection.

In the mid sixties, a group of young artists founded the SÚM group which broke with tradition and introduced a new approach to the Icelandic art world. Back then, the newly founded group of artists had varied and different practices in art, however, were unified in the making of public art and interventions. Sigurður Guðmundsson is one of the founding members of SÚM. 

Cover image courtesy of the artist, and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík.

Sigurður Guðmundsson, COLLAGE (1979)

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Created by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe @beforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals at the @101liveradio.​​​​​​​​

#OutTherePodcast #IcelandicArtCenter #IcelandicArt #IcelandicArtist #Iceland #VisualArt #ContemporaryArt #InspiredByIceland #IcelandicArt

Artist Egill Sæbjörnsson joins Becky & Tinna to discuss his solo exhibit at the National Gallery of Iceland titled Egill Sæbjörnsson and Infinite Friends of the Universe. In the exhibition, Egill invites an infinite number of friends to join in an instance of togetherness in the endless playroom of art. On view until February 25th 2024, so make sure you make the visit whilst you can!

This is the first episode of the year and Becky & Tinna think about a few exhibitions as they look back on 2023. Like most years, the art scene and exhibition-making circuit was productive in various ways and shapes. We acknowledge all of the action and activity that took place last year and rather than attempt to talk about everything, we share a few selected notes on three exhibitions. Alongside talking with Egill, these include Hildur Hákonardóttir: Red Thread which opened early 2023 at the Reykjavik Art Museum - Kjarvalsstaðir and Nermine El Ansari’s ‘Er ekki lengur | No Longer | لَمْ تَعُدْ installation that opened late last year at Skaftfell Art Center.

For this new season of the Icelandic Art Center's podcast 'Out There', Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir joins Becky Forsythe as co-host. In this episode they chat with collaborative art partnership Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson - also known as Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson. Their 20-year interdisciplinary art practice explores and tests human and more-than-human relational behaviours within specific locations, in a context of environmental change. Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson are committed to the principle that Fine Art, with its unique and ever-expanding set of methodologies, has a special and important contribution to make to knowledge production and indeed in identifying how knowledge itself is constituted.

Tinna also tells us a bit about the Reykjavík Art Festival, currently ongoing in Iceland til the 19th of June.

Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals.

In this episode we converse with Pari Stave, Director at Skaftfell Art Center. Pari shares her vision for fostering a connected art community in Seyðisfjörður and newly nurturing the interdependencies between the many art initiatives that can be found in the fjord. We equally discuss the unique international profile of the institution and its legacy, as well as the challenges of being geographically and metaphorically located on the periphery of Iceland. 

We debut the new segment “Artwork of the month” in the episode, however, you’ll have to listen until the end to know which art work it is! 

Skaftfell Art Center is located in Seyðisfjörður, East Iceland, and is a meeting point for local and international visual art, located regionally. Skaftfell fosters and presents contemporary art on an international level through its artist residency program, exhibitions, workshops, artist talks, and collaborations with other arts organisations. As an independent, non-profit art organization, it was founded in 1998 in honor of the Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth (1930-1998), who had close ties to the place, and frequently lived and worked in Seyðisfjörður during the last decade of his life. 

As current Director, Pari Stave brings new vision for a sustainable future and wider residency program at Skaftfell. Prior to arriving in Seyðisfjörður, Pari was at The Metropolitan Museum in New York, where she held the position of Senior Manager of Administration, Collections, and Curatorial Projects in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. She has also worked as Consulting Curator for the American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF). An art historian and curator, Pari has collaborated on numerous exhibitions, among them Ragnar Kjartansson: Death Is Elsewhere, which was co-organized with Jennifer Farrell and debuted at the Met in 2019.

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Created by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe @beforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals at the @101liveradio.​​​​​​​​

In this episode of Icelandic Art Center’s Out there podcast we speak with artists Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir and Unnar Örn, who are board members at Safnasafnið, The Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum. The Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum was founded in 1995 by Níels Hafstein and Magnhildur Sigurðardóttir in Svalbardseyri, in north Iceland. For 30 years the founders and board of the museum have focused their attention on collecting work, and often extensive bodies of works, by artists whose contributions to art have existed outside the cultural mainstream and collections, and have been considered folk, naïve or outsider artworks. We discuss the role of the museum, some of the language around categorizing art and artists, and the summer exhibitions, including; Dark Deeds and the Light of Hope and Aesthetics of Senses and Delights curated by Níels Hafstein, Source by Nína Óskarsdóttir and Who Came Through by Jasa Baka curated by Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir, Sale by Arnar Herbertsson curated by Unnar Örn, Domestic Spirit by Svava Skúladóttir curated by Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir, Deities by Bimala Dutta curated by Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir and Assortments by Örn Karlsson curated by Níels Hafstein. There are over 13 exhibitions and hangs on display now so to read more about the variety visit the museum’s website. 

The Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum was founded in 1995 by Níels Hafstein and Magnhildur Sigurðardóttir. For over 30 years the museum’s founders have been passionately committed to collecting artworks by artists who have hitherto been seen as outside the cultural mainstream, often also called naïve or outsider artists who have a real and direct connection to an original creative spirit; true, unspoiled and free. The museum is unique in Iceland, initially collecting artworks by all major con­temporary folk artists and autodidacts in Iceland, forming the core of the collection, while also gradually acquiring an excellent collection of art by professional artists, whose works cohere with exhibition and collection policies. It is of importance that all the artworks presented are on an equal footing, in exhibitions as well as the collec­tions. The core collection consists today of thousands of artworks and sketches by over 300 artists, dating from the mid­19th century to the present.

https://safnasafnid.is/exhibitions-2024/

@gunnitune @unnar.orn at @safnasafnid

@ninaoskarsdottir @jasa.baka 

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe @beforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals at Borgarbókasafn. This episode is our last one, but surely more things to come from the Icelandic Art Centre in support of circulating critical engagement with contemporary art in Iceland, ongoing dialogues with artists and their works!  

#OutTherePodcast #IcelandicArtCenter #IcelandicArt #IcelandicArtist #Iceland #VisualArt #ContemporaryArt #InspiredByIceland #IcelandicArt 

In this episode we critically unpack Tracing Fragments with curator Daría Sól Andrews and Brynja Sveinsdóttir, Director of Gerðarsafn. We discuss exhibition themes, Gerðarsafn’s unique position within the Icelandic art and museum community, and the inner workings of independent curating in public institutions.

Tracing Fragments includes works by Kathy Clark, Sasha Huber, Hugo Llanes, Frida Orupabo, Inuuteq Storch and Abdullah Qureshi. Through their works, these artists provide potential tools for emancipation and possibilities for healing by revisiting notions of identity ridden with complex legacies of dissociated, violent, and dispossessed experiences — themes and practices of unlearning, revising and reclaiming personal and shared histories that are relevant to our changing time. From Daría's curatorial text:

The artists of Tracing Fragments examine the

complicated histories behind colonial and

racial violence, repossessing terms like power

and victimhood. Realizing brown, indigenous,

and queer body on their own terms, each

artist imagines what forms this body and

history can take.

Tracing Fragments opened on the 4th of February at Gerðarsafn, Kópavogur Art Museum and is on view until the 21st of May, 2023.

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe @beforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals at the @101liveradio.​​​​​​​​

#OutTherePodcast #IcelandicArtCenter #IcelandicArt #IcelandicArtist #Iceland #VisualArt #ContemporaryArt #InspiredByIceland #IcelandicArt

The second episode of the second season of Icelandic Art Center’s #podcast ‘Out There’ is out there! (link in bio) The episode includes conversation with Becky Forsythe @bforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta and the Artist in Iceland Visa Action Group @aiv.ag members Wiola Ujazdowska @wiola.ujazdowska and Bryndís Björnsdóttir aka. Dísa @di_official_sa. AIVAG is an advocacy group working towards the possibility of greater accessibility to residency permits for artists in Iceland. Dísa and Wiola are both practicing artists themselves, or art workers as Wiola prefers to describe her artistic and curatorial practice. In the episode Becky and Tinna get to know AIVAG’s activities and ambitions, contemplate the precarity of being an artist of foreign origin in Iceland and have the chance to discuss with Wiola and Dísa about their artistic work and recent projects.

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals.

This episode of Out There features artist-led initiative Open, represented by two of the founding members Arnar Ásgerisson and Örn Alexander Ámundason. Open is both a shared artist studio and an artist run exhibition space. Founded and organized by artists Arnar Ágeirsson, Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir, Una Margrét Árnadóttir and Örn Alexander Ámundason, Open is the groups studio space on a daily basis, that can be tucked away and transformed into an event, performance and exhibition platform according to the schedule and needs of the space and its occupants. Based in the old fishing district and harbour in the center of reykjavík, the initiative contributes to the lively exchange in the area and has provided necessary space for artists of all origins in the Icelandic art scene. Open has hosted a variety of exhibitions and events with local and international artists and collectives including Ghana based artist duo FOKN Bois, Expat, Lucky Three the Filipino/Icelandic artist collective and Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir to name a few exciting projects! We discuss the flexible format that Open works within, where responding to contemporary themes and critical dialogue is always possible and encouraged, the motives behind the initiative and where Open is headed. 

In this episode we meet artist Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir @hekladoggjonsdottir to discuss her current mid-career retrospective at Reykjavík Art Museum – Kjarvalsstaðir @reykjavikartmuseum, an ongoing series of exhibitions that aims to draw attention to and celebrate the various contributions made by artists in Iceland. Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir is an artist who supports other artists, whether through inviting them into her work, actively participating in the artist-led scene or as an educator who aims to contribute to a living, shifting and expanding communal arts scene. Heklas is an active member of Kling & Bang. We discuss specific works, past and present, various contemplations on recurring themes and references, and what it is like to look over one’s entire artistic career, up until now.

This episode concludes with focus in the Artwork of the Month segment on Egill Sæbjörnsson solo exhibit at the National Gallery of Iceland entitled Egill Sæbjörnsson and Infinite Friends of the Universe. The exhibition will be on display until February 25 2024, so make sure you make a visit whilst you can!

Null Island opened on November 18th at the Reykjavik Art Museum – Kjarvalsstaðir and closes on February 29th, 2024, leap year day. The exhibition is curated by Markús Þór Andrésson and a comprehensive publication has been released on the occasion.

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe @beforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals.

#OutTherePodcast #IcelandicArtCenter #IcelandicArt #IcelandicArtist #Iceland #VisualArt #ContemporaryArt #InspiredByIceland #IcelandicArt 

In this episode of Icelandic Art Center’s podcast “Out There” Tereza Eyrún Hofová does a take over of the podcast and talks to Teo Ala-Ruona, Johhan Rosenberg and Netti Nüganen. Tera was assisting Sequences Art Festival production being a part of an internship programme run by the festival and the Icelandic Art Center. Young Boy Dancing Group's performance is the art work of the month, with their latest performance being made at the final day of the Sequences XI - Can't See festivities at the Reykjavík Art Museum - Hafnarhús.

In the episode Tera interviews some of the performance artists that contributed to the 10 day long biennial programme of Sequences. Thus dedicating this Out there episode to the live programme of the latest iteration of the Reykjavík-based biennial.

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Performances covered in the episode Traps by Johhan Rosenberg Traps can be seen as a confluence of different actions, dragged by linguistic elements. A hypnotic zoo invites the viewer into its trap. The performance finds itself between the wet walls, inhabited by an unknown identity that seeks to make eye contact with the public.

LACUNA by Teo Ala- Ruona Lacuna is a body horror performance and work of auto-fiction that brings together ghostly memories and lived experience, while composing a verbal and musical incantation. “Lacuna” means an opening or a gap.

The Myth: Last Day by Netti Nüganenis centred around a prefabricated archaeological mine, where a pseudo-archaeologist digs objects from the ground. It intertwines reality and fiction, and creates myths, thereby constructing speculative pasts and futures. Young Boy Dancing Group's performance at Reykjavík Art Museum is the art work of the month. So make sure you listen till the end to hear what the work spurred in Tereza.

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, with co-hosts Becky Forsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir

Sequences XI - Can't See is curated by Marika Agu, Maria Arusoo, Kaarin Kivirähk and Sten Ojavee.

In this episode Claire Paugam, a multidisciplinary French artist based in Reykjavík, shares her practice, themes and experiences from within the studio. An active board member of the Living Art Museum and community, Claire is the current recipient of the Motivational Award of the Year. This recognition is given by the Icelandic Art Prize to an emerging artist who has contributed significantly to the local art scene through their generous practice.

Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Centre, Out There brings host Becky Forsythe in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals.

Artist Ragnar Kjartansson joins us in this episode and we travel along the spectrum of emotions including love and understanding, fear satire and fakery. Ragnar shares stories about art for theater, the role of fiction, feminism and pushing things to the end in his works, exhibitions, radical meetings and collaborations. As one of the most recognized and well-loved contemporary artists of our time, Ragnar’s works spark something human, are sometimes misunderstood, but most often adored. He has exhibited across the world and realized a number of meaningful collaborations with artists, musicians, performers, activists and other creatives from his local Iceland and beyond. Alongside many other things at the moment, Ragnar recently opened the first comprehensive solo exhibition of his works, titled Epic Waste of Love and Understanding, on September 6th, 2023 at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, which is on view until October 22nd, 2023. 

Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976) studied at Iceland University of the Arts, The Royal Academy in Stockholm and the Homemaking School in Reykjavík. His solo exhibitions have been held in many of the most respected art museum in the world such as Barbican Center in London, 2016, Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, Germany 2019 and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York 2019. He represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 2009.

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe @beforsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir @tindilfaetta in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals.

#OutTherePodcast #IcelandicArtCenter #IcelandicArt #IcelandicArtist #Iceland #VisualArt #ContemporaryArt #InspiredByIceland #IcelandicArt 

Episode mentions -->

Ragnar Kjartansson

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Stella í orlofi: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369000/

Eva Ísleifs

Kling & Bang

The episode is devoted to speaking with Sigurður Guðjónsson who is best known for his striking time-based media works that often focus on human-made machinery and technical relics, investigating their enigmatic, hidden elements, just beyond our field of vision. Becky and Tinna talked with Siggi about his contribution to La Biennale di Venezia, the multisensory sculpture Perpetual Motion. They also discussed  his art practice throughout the years as well as two exhibition openings in Reykjavik, Iceland this October 'Perpetual Motion' at BERG Contemporary and 'Transits' at Reykjavik Art Museum curated by Mónica Bello.

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Created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center, Out There brings co-hosts Becky Forsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir in conversation with artists, curators and art professionals.​​​​​​​​

What does the Icelandic art scene look like today? What can we learn from within the artists’ studio? By getting out there into the scene, our field, the studio, the storage, the artist-led space, gallery and museum, and by looking around us? Icelandic Art Center’s podcast Out There brings these things into focus and more. It is a new reflection on a specific place and our present moment; a widened view that offers vibrant impressions of the Icelandic art scene, here and now.

Join me, Becky Forsythe, in a series of ongoing conversations with artists, curators, organizers and art professionals as we think about artist practices and environments, discuss personal histories, themes and experiences, question history, the future, and where we are now. In an attempt to know who and what is Icelandic art today.

Out There is created and produced in Reykjavík by the Icelandic Art Center.

In this episode we critically unpack For Those Who Couldn’t Cross the Sea with curator Elham Fakouri and Sabina Westerholm, Director of the Nordic House. We discuss exhibition themes, the unique position of the Nordic House within the Icelandic art world and some of the inner workings of curating in public institutions. This episode concludes with focus on the current exhibition at the Nordic House, MASKS by artists Kjetil Ingvar and Gøran Ohldieck. This is take two for the exhibition, which was censored and taken down when first exhibited forty years ago, in the 80s, due to homophobic and anti-queer sentiments in management at the time. MASKS is curated by Ynda Eldborg and is a part of the official programme of Reykjavík Pride, 2023.

For Those Who Couldn’t Cross the Sea includes works by Adel Abidin, Ahmed Umar, Pinar Ogenci, Thana Faroq and Ibi Ibrahim. Through their works, these artists reflect on the experiences of refugees and migrants, as well as the challenges they face in their search for a new home. The aim of the exhibition is to build empathy and highlight patterns of trauma, erasure, identities, belonging, and home. 
For Those Who Couldn’t Cross the Sea opened on the 10th of May at the Nordic House and is on view until the 3rd of September, 2023. MASKS will be on display until the 24th of September.

Artist Amanda Riffo joins us to discuss newly receiving the 2024 Icelandic Art Prize Artist of the Year award, exhibitions, projects, residencies and creative coincidences. Amanda received the award based on her exhibition House of Purkinje, her first major solo show, which was exhibited in The Living Art Museum in 2023 and curated by Sunna Ástþórsdóttir. Amanda’s natural storytelling takes us through various works and exhibitions, art encounters, soundtracks, some of her personal history and the ways she approaches thinking about and creating art.

Amanda Riffo (b.1977) is a French-Chilean artist based in Reykjavik. After completing a Master of Arts at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, she later participated in exchange programs in Tokyo and Beirut. Her work has been shown in Europe, Japan, Iceland, Chile, Finland, Belgium and more. Exhibition projects in Iceland include her solo exhibition in Open (2018) and Skaftfell (Seyðisfjörður, 2019), as well as participation in the international art biennial Sequences Xl (2019). She is the current recipient of the Artist of the Year, Icelandic Art Prize and the Friend of Nýlo Artist for 2024.

Amanda Riffo - House of Purkinje at the Living Art Museum 

@amanda_riffo @nylistasafnid @icelandic_art_prize @gallery_port

The episode's playlist by Amanda Riffo herself:

* James Ferraro -individualism-album Human History 3 /2016
** Robert Wyatt -at last I am free-album Nothing Can Stop Us /1982
*** Ol dirty Bastard -Brooklyn Zoo -/1995

In this episode of Out There Becky and Tinna discuss what is taking place at Iceland University of the Arts, from the perspectives of artist and head of the fine art department Bjarki Bragason and curator and Professor Hanna Styrmisdóttir. Sharing their personal experience and diverse professional backgrounds, Bjarki and Hanna contribute to the progressive and expanding art university in Iceland. We discuss the Universities goals, ambitions and future, program formats and the thriving student body.

Hanna Styrmisdóttir is a curator, art adviser and supervising professor of the International MA Curatorial Practice based in Iceland University of the Arts.

Bjarki Bragason is an artist and Head of the Fine Art Department at Iceland University of the Arts. In his work, Bjarki focuses on collisions in time, tracing paradigm shifts through investigating these shifts in geology, botany or architecture.

This episode ends on a performative note with a script being read out loud by recent BA graduates in Fine art from the Iceland University of Arts.  Hlökk Þrastardóttir, who invigilated at the Icelandic Pavilion as an intern of the Icelandic Art Center this autumn and her close creative collaborator Silja Jónsdóttir, the pair were in residency at Kling & Bang this past summer which ended with a pop-up exhibition in the gallery space.

The new episode of Out There features the exhibition series The Wheel I - V, represented by Kristín Dagmar Jóhannesdóttir curator of “THE WHEEL V: All is Well”, the last and final iteration of the annual series, and Haraldur Jónsson visual artist and chairman of the exhibition committee of the Reykjavík Association of Sculptors. Becky and Tinna get to know the Association’s origin story and past projects. More recently “All is Well” was selected as the Group Show of the Year at the Icelandic Art Prize. 

The final edition of The Wheel took place in postcodes 101, 102 and 107 in Reykjavík. Eight artists exhibited works in public space, all of whom are members of the Sculpture Association, and Swedish artist Ulrika Sparre, the exhibition’s honorary international artist.

Artists in The Wheel V included: Emma Heiðarsdóttir, Finnur Arnar, Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar, Ragnheiður Gestsdóttir, Sean Patrick O’Brien, Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir, Ulrika Sparre and Wiola Ujazdowska.