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New book for sale: Ting Tang Trash

 

 

Research Fellow Kjell Rylander’s National Fellowship Exhibition

 

THING TANG TRASH - Upcycling in contemporary ceramics

17/09/2011 to 08/01/2012

Westnorway Museum of Decorative Art (now part of Art Museums Bergen), Nordahl Brunsgt. 6, Bergen.

Upcycling is the process of converting objects and waste materials into new products of greater value. When artists use found objects and readymades they are transforming them from things with use value to objects with art value. This exhibition focuses on this kind of transformation processes.

Mounted in all the museum’s gallery rooms, the international exhibition Thing Tang Trash: Upcycling in Contemporary Ceramics will present works which use ceramics as starting points for new creation.

 

From Susanne Hangaard's video Absentia.

 

Participating artists:
Barnaby Barford (GB), Neil Brownsword (GB), Marek Cecula (PL), Nicole Cherubini (US), David Cushway (GB), Robert Dawson (GB), Jens Erland (NO), Gésine Hackenberg (DE/NL), Susanne Hangaard (DK), Gitte Jungersen (DK), Hella Jongerius (NL), Håkan Lindgren (SE), Carol McNicoll (GB), Anne Helen Mydland (NO), Evert Nijland (NL), Irene Nordli (NO), Ted Noten (NL), Ruta Pakarklyte (LT/NO), Kjell Rylander (SE), Richard Slee (GB), Paul Scott (GB), Caroline Slotte (FI), Linda Sormin (TH/CA/US), Jimmy Stambrandt (SE), Hans Stofer (CH/GB), Per B. Sundberg (SE), Svein Thingnes (NO), Clare Twomey (GB)

Curator: Heidi Bjørgan.

Published August 31 2011

Reservation conference

For more information about the upcoming conference Making or Unmaking? in Bergen Oct 27 - 29 2011 as well as reservation, please go to:
www.congrex.no/makingorunmaking

 

Award to Kjell Rylander

Villeroy & Boch Gustavsberg AB ceramic prize for 2011 has been awarded to Kjell Rylander. The sum is SEK 25 000. His poetic approach, his use of fragments as a language, his skills and originality is what the jury motivites their choice with. An award seremony will be held at Gustavsberg on Sunday August 28 at 2 pm.

Members of the jury: Agneta Linton, head of Gustavsbergs Konsthall, Päivi Ernkvist, ceramicist/project manager; Peter Larsson, director Villeroy & Boch Gustavsberg AB and Kjell Lööw, museum director Gustavsbergs Porcelain Museum.

Published August 22 2011

 

 

 

 

 

"Readymade-ceramics" from Bergen

Surprisingly many Norwegian ceramicists who work with found objects or readymades have been educated from Bergen National Academy of the Arts. The exhibition B.T. 2001 will show works from some of these. It will run at the same time as the international exhibition Thing Tang Trash: Upcycling in contemporary ceramics is on at Art Museums Bergen. Curator for both exhibitions is Heidi Bjørgan.

Published August 18 2011

Exhibition about blue and white ceramics in London

Blue is the title of an exhibition in Flow Gallery in London from 15 June to 3 September 2011. The colour blue has had great importance throughout craft history, with particular significance to the textile and ceramic disciplines. The Blue show explores the different ways current artists use the colour blue within their practice. The use of the traditional blue and white, gives the works particular points of reference, the recognition of its roots and heritage in Europe as well as in the Far East. Among the invited artists is Caroline Slotte, known for her reworking of second hand blue and white plates.

Published August 17 2011

We are on Facebook

Follow our activities, look at photos and get more informations about the conference Making or Unmaking? and the exhibition Thing Tang Trash by following us on Facebook. Search for K-verdi and you will find us.

Published July 4 2011

Museums and new technology

In 2005 “Re-Thinking Technology in Museums” brought together a group of academics and practitioners discussing novel ways of conceptualizing the museum experience in light of the presence of interactive technologies. The 2nd edition of this conference on the theme of “Emerging Experience” took place at the University of Limerick in Ireleand May 26-27 2011. It took further the discussion on novel approaches for understanding people’s experiences in museums and galleries, and for designing interactive technologies to support these experiences. These issues are part of the reserach Anne Britt Ylvisåker is doing in K-verdi and she gave a paper at the conference. It can be down loaded together with the other papers from
http://www.idc.ul.ie/techmuseums11/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15&Itemid=7

Published June 15 2011

Please note: Conference in Bergen 27 - 29 October 2011

Making or Unmaking?
The Contexts of Contemporary Ceramics

Terminus Hall, Bergen, Norway
Oct 27. - 29. 2011

The opposition between studio and industrial ceramics that has had such a central place in the self-understanding of studio ceramicists, no longer seems meaningful. A shift from production to reproduction has taken place. Images and patterns from different sources are appropriated and manipulated. Mass-produced objects, often characterized by disuse, disruption and damage, have come to be increasingly used as raw materials. The relationship between artist and artisan has also changed. The conference focusses on the way in which these changes influence contemporary making, and how they contribute to the unmaking of conventional understanding of ceramics and craft practises in general.

With Glenn Adamson, Barnaby Barford, Marek Cecula, Monica Gaspar, Tanya Harrod, Ben Highmore, Gitte Jungersen, Søren Kjørup, Carol McNicoll, Kevin Murrey, Andrew Livingstone, Michael Petry,
Mike Press, Paul Scott, Ezra Shales, Richard Slee, Caroline Slotte, Linda Sormin, Hans Stofer, Clare Twomey, Jorunn Veiteberg, Anne Britt Ylvisåker.

Exhibitions: West Norway Museum of Decorative Art: Thing Tang Trash. Upcycling in Contemporary Ceramics (curator: Heidi Bjørgan); Galleri Rom 8: Kjell Rylander; Hordaland Art Centre: Shot: Textiles and Photography (curator: Glenn Adamson); Galleri Format: The Red Room (curator: Heidi Bjørgan); Galleri Fisk.

We will start Thursday Oct 27 at 10 am. and end with a dinner party Saturday evening.

More information about price, accommodation and a more detailed program will be published soon.

Published March 28 2011

Viva Voce for Caroline Slotte

Research Fellow Caroline Slotte conducted her Viva Voce Saturday 26 March 2011 on the project Second Hand Stories.

Caroline Slotte and the expert assment comettee: Neil Brownsword, Anke Bangma and Linda Sormin. Photo: Jorunn Veiteberg.

The artistic research project "Second Hand Stories" refers to personal objects' capacity to preserve memories. Caroline Slotte investigates the artistic possibilities of second hand ceramic materials in her project.
The artistic result was presented in the exhibition Going Blank Again in October-November 2010 at Galleri s.e. in Bergen, and in the launch of her exhibition catalogue Closer. The critical reflection Second Hand Stories - reflections on the project was completed in February 2011. The reshaping of existing objects is essential in Slotte's artistic practise. She reshapes found objects, primarily ceramic objects, and gives them new meaning. She is interested in the tension between the enigmatic and the recognisable, the ordinary and the unexpected. Caroline Slotte works with the ceramic material by cutting, sculpting, sanding or adding. Through these physical interventions in the ceramic material the work process becomes a method for questioning and highlighting the stories the objects contain. In the project's theoretical dissertation Slotte investigates alternatives to the academic –scientific text genre. In her critical reflection she debates, among others, the subjective writing process as a method to approach the knowledge which is hidden in creative processes.

Published March 28 2011

Caroline Slotte exhibits in Gallery Ra

Gallery Ra in Amsterdam has invited Caroline Slotte to exhibit together with Bettina Speckner from Germany in their new gallery in Amsterdam. Read more (pdf)> 

Published Dec 20 2010

Museum purchase Kjell Rylander

At Kjell Rylander’s exhibition at Kunst1 in Sandvika outside Oslo the fund for the purchase of contemporary craft has purchased an object to The National Museum of Decorative Arts in Trondheim.

Published Dec 20 2010

Sales success for Caroline Slotte

From the series Going Blank Again, 2010. Photo: JV.

Caroline Slotte nearly sold out on her solo exhibition Going Blank Again at Gallery s.e. in Bergen, and The West Norway Museum of Decorative Arts bought five pieces, included the one we show a photo of here.

Published Dec 20 2010

Lecture by Amanda Fielding: Richard Slee: From Utility to Futility

Amanda Fielding will visit Bergen Nov 9 2010 ang give a lecture at KHiB. Fielding is an independent writer and curator.  For many years until 2006 she was Curator of the Crafts Council Collection, organising a touring programme of thematic shows.  In her capacity as Camberwell College of Arts/V&A Research Fellow in Craft (2007-09), she curated the exhibition Richard Slee: From Utility to Futility, on view in the Ceramics Galleries at the Victoria & Albert Museum between June 2010 and April 2011, and wrote the accompanying contextual essay.  She has contributed catalogue essays, articles and reviews for almost 25 years and is co-author with Emmanuel Cooper of Walter Keeler (2004) and Michael Casson (2010).  Currently she is working on a book on the pioneering ceramist Gillian Lowndes.  She is Advisor to the Crafts Lives Project, based at the National Sound Archive of the British Library and to the Acquisitions Committee at the Crafts Study Centre, Farnham. 

Amanda Fielding. Photo: Jorunn Veiteberg.

Research Fellow Caroline Slotte shows reworked everyday ceramics

The exhibition Going Blank Again and the publication Närmare/Closer are the artistic results of Caroline Slotte’s R&D project at Bergen National Academy of the Arts. The project explores ceramic everyday objects as keepers of memories. The exhibition opens at Galleri s.e. in Bergen 16 October 2010 at 6pm.

Published Oct 11 2010

 

Kjell Rylander exhibits at Galleri Kunst1

Objects is the title of an exhibition that will take place at Galleri Kunst1 (Gallery Art1) in Sandvika outside Oslo from Oct 6th to Nov 7th. Participating artists are Hanne Tyrmi, Jon Gundersen and Kjell Rylander.

Published Oct 11 2010

New book

Ezra Shales currently has a new book out: Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era.  It is published by Rutgers University Press. Made in Newark describes a changing industrial city at the dawn of the twentieth century. The Newark library's outspoken director, John Cotton Dana, collaborated with industrialists, social workers, and New Women to reconfigure a cultural institution for a city in flux. Ezra Shales tells the story of experimental exhibitions in the library and the founding of the Newark Museum Association--a project in which cultural literacy was intertwined with lessons in civics and consumption. Local artisans theatrically demonstrated crafts, connecting the cultural institution to the department store, school, and factory, all of which invoked the ideal of municipal patriotism. Today, as cultural institutions reappraise their relevance, Made in Newark explores precedents for contemporary debates over the ways the library and museum engage communities, define heritage in a multicultural era, and add value to the economy.

Ezra Shales will visit Bergen National Academy of the Arts November 21-28 2010. Seminar and lectures will be announced on www.khib.no.

Published Sept 10 2010

 

Award to Jorunn Veiteberg

Norsk Form’s Honorary prize for 2010 has been awarded to Jorunn Veiteberg. Norsk Form is a foundation devoted to promoting the use of design and architecture. The prize is awarded to people or institutions that have ‘made an outstanding contribution to Norsk Form’s field’. In its reasons for the prize, the jury says that: ‘Over many years, Jorunn Veiteberg has worked in a wide-range of fields and been of outstanding importance to the disciplines of craft and design. She has made an outstanding contribution to various fields through her research, documentation, criticism, writing and organisational work.  She has also been active as a curator and in teaching as well as holding offices on boards and committees both in Norway and abroad. The jury believes the time has come to honour a professional critic and theorist who has set the standard for professional discourse and dissemination. Theorising and criticism are literary genres and absolute prerequisites for setting a national standard and ensuring development.’

 

From the awards ceremony at DogA on 2 September 2010. Photo: Tore Fjeld/Norsk Form.

Published Sept 05 2010

Museum purchase

The fund for the purchase of contemporary craft has purchased Portrait of the anonymous (Portrett av det anonyme) by Kjell Rylander at the exhibition Tendenser: Craft in Transition at Galleri F15 in Moss. The West Norway Museum of Decorative Art will house the piece in its collection.

Kjell Rylander, Portrait of the anonymous, 2010. Photo: Jorunn Veiteberg.

Published Sept 05 201

 

Guest researcher

The Research Council of Norway has allocated funds that will enable Ezra Shales (b. 1969) to be affiliated to the Creating Artistic Value project as a guest researcher. He is educated both as a visual artist and an art historian and holds a teaching post at Alfred University, one of the most important educational institutions for ceramicists in the USA. It is his knowledge of industrial production in general and the history of ceramics in particular that make him a suitable partner for Creating Art Value. The plan is for him to stay in Bergen for two to three weeks in spring and autumn 2010 and 2011.

Ezra Shales in Bergen in June 2010 as a lecturer at the High-speed craft (Fartsfylt kunsthandverk) seminar. Photo: Jorunn Veiteberg

Published: 24 June 2010

 

Le Cru et le Cuit

Or, translated into English, The Raw and the Cooked, is the title of an exhibition of Norwegian ceramics that opens on 12 September 2010 at Galerie Favardin & De Verneuil in Paris at the same time as the International Academy of Ceramics is to hold a conference and its annual general meeting.  The title is borrowed from the social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’s classic study of myths, and it serves as a metaphor for the process of ceramics:  from the natural product raw clay to cultural product via a process of reworking and firing. The exhibition features work highlighting various stages in this process from raw to cooked, from chaos to order, from formless to fixed form. In 1993, the same title was used for an exhibition of new work in clay in the UK. This marked a move away from the functional and useful towards sculptured objects and expressive pots, a tendency that has also dominated Norwegian ceramics since the 1990s. Today’s ceramics encompasses even more ‘dishes’, however. Influenced by globalisation and in step with the closing down of industrial production in Europe, techniques and materials from the ceramics industry have increasingly found their way into studio ceramics. Already ‘cooked’ objects thus serve as raw materials for many young ceramicists. In terms of materials, substance and meaning, the question of what ‘ceramics’ can encompass is therefore more open than ever. This exhibition is the Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts’ major priority in 2010 and an important part of its endeavours to promote Norwegian craft abroad. The exhibition will run from 12 to 25 September 2010. Torbjørn Kvasbø took the initial initiative for the exhibition. It is curated by Jorunn Veiteberg, while Heidi Bjørgan is responsible for mounting it. Research fellows Kjell Rylander and Caroline Slotte from the Creating Artistic Value project are both represented with recent work. Invitation (pdf)>

Published: 17 June 2010

 

Kjell Rylander at Tendenser

This year, the long-established annual exhibition Tendenser, a showcase for contemporary craft, has invited art research fellow Kjell Rylander to take part. It is Galleri F15 in Moss that has staged the exhibition since the 1970s. In recent years, it has applied an ‘expanded’ concept of craft. The curator of this year’s Tendenser is art historian Knut Astrup Bull. Tendenser 2010 will run from 21 August to 17 October.

Published: 17 June 2010

Caroline Slotte purchased by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has purchased five pieces by Caroline Slotte for the official residence of Torbjørn Jagland in Strasbourg. Last year, Mr Jagland was elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe for a period of five years.

Published: 16 June 2010

Velcome to the exhibition Speed in Gallery Format Bergen June 3 2010 at 5 p.m!

The exhibition is produced by Think Tank A European Inititive for the Applied Arts. In connection with the exhibition will there be a seminar at West Norway Museum of Decorative Arts, see program (pdf)>

Sabrina Gschwandtner

Artist, writer and curator Sabrina Gschwandtner is visiting Bergen May 27 - 28 2010. She is a leading figure in the knitting's new wave. Her views on craft and feminism and investigations into the blurry edge between craft and fine art, makes her a interesting discussion partner for us. She will partcipate in the seminar Subversive Stiches, see program (pdf)>

Sabrina Gschwandner and Regina Möller in Bergen. Photo: J.Veiteberg.

Collect at Saatchi Gallery

K-verdi was strongly represented at Collect 2010 in London 14-17 May. Research Fellow Caroline Slotte was showing new works by the galley Kunst 1 and Heidi Bjorgan by Galleri Format. Jorunn Veiteberg partcipated in the seminar Craft a European Question, hosted at Collect by the Crafts Council and WCC UK and lead by Clare Twomey, chair of World Craft Council UK and Vice Presidency of WCC Europe. She also gave a paper at The Speed of Craft, presented by Think Tank A European Initiative for the Apllied Arts.

Heidi Bjørgan, Gallery Format. Photo: Norwegiancrafts.no/André Gali.

Curator

The research project Creating Art Value has now invited Heidi Bjørgan to curate an international exhibition at West Norway Museum of Decorative Art in Bergen. The exhibition will take place from September 2011 and a conference will be arranged later in the autumn. Heidi Bjørgan is educated from the Department of Ceramics at Bergen National Academy of the Arts and knows the field well as an active member of the artist group Temp. In the spring 2010 she will finish her education as a curator, but she has already curatorial experience from the time she was running Gallery Temp.  More information about the concept of the exhibition will be published later.

Heidi Bjørgan, Yellow Hare, 2007. Courtesy of  the National Museum of Decorative Arts, Trondheim, Norway.

Virtual collection

Anne Britt Ylvisaaker is now working with Fredrik Sundt Breien from Turbo Tape Games to develop the understanding for how a virtually collected museum object can function. They hope to be able to present a proto type by the end of 2011. Read more about Turbo Tape Games www.turbotapegames.com.

A mixture of glazed ceramics from Jordan, the Mameluk period, ca. 1400 AD (virtual) together with a modern espresso cup (physical). Sketches from University of Bergen Institute of Archaeology, technology from NITH HCI lab. Presented at 2006 Calit2-UCSD World Heritage Centre by Fredrik Sundt Breien.

Museum collection 1

Caroline Slotte participated in Opplandsutstillingen 2009  and two of her pieces in the exhibition were sold  to West Norway Museum of Decorative Art.

Caroline Slotte: Under Blue Skies 1, 2008

Museum collection 2

Kjell Rylander participated in the exhibition Ånden og materien at Troendelag senter for samtidskunst in Trondheim in November – December 2009.  Both The National Museum of  Decorative Art in Trondheim and West Norway Museum of Decorative Art in Bergen bought objects made by him.  

Kjell Rylander, Untitled, 2009. Paper cup and porcelain fragments.

Collect 2010             

Collect.  The International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects, Saatchi Gallery, London, 14 -17 May 2010. Caroline Slotte will be represented by the Norwegian gallery Kunst1. Jorunn Veiteberg will participate in The Speed of Craft, a rapid-fire presentation of Think Tank’s latest publication and exhibition Friday May 14, 6-7.30 pm at Collect.

Biennale in Taiwan

Caroline Slotte has been selected to the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale 2010, Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum, 1 July – 31 October 2010.