This year’s Globe of Goodwill, Sphere with Mark, by Karin Sander is now available at the museum shop. Each year, the Globe is sold as a limited edition, but last year the Globe sold out. All proceeds go to benefit children and young people with disabilities.

A red brushstroke floats in the tree, a painterly gesture on a fragile glass sphere, the colour glows and moves, acting as a marker of the ending year.

Karen Sander applies a single brushstroke to the transparent Globe of Goodwill as a clear painterly gesture. The thick impasto sits on the smooth, convex surface of the glass, visible three-dimensionally from all sides, including its concave side. The brushstroke’s end is wispy, revealing the viscosity of the colour while also telling of a gesture that is both cautious and energetic. The chosen colour stands out luminously from its surroundings, thereby becoming a sign of attentiveness and self reflection. Sphere with Mark thus becomes a mobile painting that constantly changes, as it responds to the environment, integrated in the painting itself.

Karin Sander (b. 1957) lives and works in Berlin and Zurich, but she has been connected to the Icelandic art scene since the early 1990s. Her artistic practice questions given situations and spaces in relation to their structural, social and historical contexts, making them visible in different ways using a range of media. Her works have been presented in solo exhibitions and festivals worldwide and belong to public collections around the world. Since 2007 she has held a professorship for architecture and art at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich. Together with Philip Ursprung, she will represent Switzerland at the 18th International Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2023.

The Globe of Goodwill will be sold at the museum shop from December 8th until December 23rd, or while it remains in stock. 

Gunnar Örn Gunnarsson (1946-2008) moved with his family to Kambur in South Iceland in 1986. There, he had a spacious studio in an old storehouse, which he transformed and used as his workspace for over two decades, but the space made it possible for him to work on a bigger scale than before. From 1998, Gunnar Örn also ran an international gallery on site, called Gallerí Kambur, now an artist residency.

This summer, Hafnarborg presents a retrospective of Gunnar Örn’s career, titled In the Depths of Your Own Awareness. In connection with the exhibition, Gunnar Örn’s family will open the artist’s studio at Kambur all Saturdays in August, from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Kambur is located by the lake Vestra Gíslholtsvatn, midway between the towns Selfoss and Hella, on route 284, diverging from the Ring Road shortly after one crosses the river Þjórsá heading eastwards (driving from the capital takes a little less than an hour and a half).

Click on the map to view it as a bigger image.

Welcome to the studio for a coffee and a chat.

At noon on June 10th, Rósa Guðbjartsdóttir, Mayor of Hafnarfjörður, unveiled a new mural by artist Juan on the wall of Strandgata 4, which has been decorated with various wall paintings in the last years. In the first place, Juan contacted the municipality of Hafnarfjörður to find out if the town had a building which might be fit for this purpose, but Juan has lately caught people’s attention for his murals in the public space all around Iceland.

Members of the Culture and Tourism Committee of Hafnarfjörður were intrigued by Juan’s idea and asked him to submit a proposal for a mural on Strandgata, but the resulting sketch was a collage of monuments and public artworks in the town of Hafnarfjörður, including select works under the care of Hafnarborg. Subsequently, representatives of the town contacted the artists or the families of the artists to ask for their permission to make use of the works in this manner, which they all kindly granted, and so thanks go to everyone who made this work possible.

The mural depicts the following monuments and public artworks:
· Worship by Ásmundur Sveinsson
· Shelter for Winds by Barbara Tieaho
· The Golden Gate by Eliza Thoenen-Steinle
· Monument to the First Lutheran Church in Iceland by Hartmut Wolf, also known as Lupus
· Troll by Páll Guðmundsson of Húsafell
· Hafnarfjörður Variations by Sebastian
· Bad Connection by Sonja Renard
· Untitled work by Sólveig Baldursdóttir
· A Hundred Years of Solitude and an untitled work by Sverrir Ólafsson
· The Watch by Timo Solis
· Sailing by Þorkell Gunnar Guðmundsson

The mural also features a QR code which leads directly to Hafnarborg’s website on public artworks in Hafnarfjörður, which will hopefully increase awareness of and people’s interest in this remarkable collection, which can be visited at all hours of the day. In the hopes of improving public health, Hafnarborg the encourages both residents and visitors of Hafnarfjörður to take a walk around town – seek out the works, take a little break and let art be a force of healing.

Hafnarborg’s website on public artworks can be found here.

All of us at Hafnarborg would like to congratulate Elfa Björk Jónsdóttir on being named the Artist of the Year of Art Without Borders, but Elfa Björk will have a solo exhibition at Hafnarborg this autumn in connection with the festival.

Elfa Björk Jónsdóttir is a talented artist whose style is based in abstraction, where she brings together formalist and figurative imagery in a lively manner, drawing inspiration from the environment, nature books or from art history.

Art Without Borders 2022 will take place from October 15th until October 30th.

Pictured with Elfa Björk are Jóhanna Ásgeirsdóttir, artistic director of the festival, and Aldís Arnardóttir, Director of Hafnarborg.

Hafnarborg strives to open up the world of art to everyone by offering guided tours for all audiences and all ages. To that end, Viewpoints is a new senior visitors programme, for those interested in arts and culture, looking to get a deeper insight into what is happening at Hafnarborg, either by focusing on current exhibitions or by examining individual works in the museum collection.

The events will allow guests the opportunity to approach art through a variety of means, in discussion with museum experts. At the end of the meeting, we invite visitors to sit down for a chat over coffee and snacks, provided by Hafnarborg.

The programme will centre on a special subject during each visit, set to take place on Wednesdays, once a month, from 2-3 p.m. To ensure that everyone can enjoy the programme, there is a limit of 25 guests during the visit.

Spring Programme:

March 16th at 2 p.m.
The Icelandic Photo Festival – Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir

A guided tour of Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir’s exhibition, A Few Thoughts on Photography – Vol. III. Hallgerður utilizes the various possibilities of the medium, photography, to better understand its technique and history. The exhibition is a part of the programme of The Icelandic Photo Festival.

April 13th at 2 p.m.
Works from the Collection

The Hafnarborg Collection currently counts nearly 1600 works in a wide range of media. This includes painting, drawing, sculptures and video works, as well as the Hafnarfjörður’s public art collection, which is under the care of Hafnarborg. The visit will centre on select works from the museum collection.

May 11th at 2 p.m.
DesignMarch – Tinna Gunnarsdóttir

A guided tour of  Tinna Gunnarsdóttir’s exhibition, Touching Landscape. The works displayed are part of Tinna’s ongoing doctoral research project in Héðinsfjörður in Northern Iceland, where she reflects on the relationship between man and nature through various design methods. The exhibition is a part of DesignMarch 2022.

Guests can register for the visits via telphone at +354 585 5790 or via email at [email protected].

Free entry.

Hafnarborg wishes its friends and supporters a very happy Easter. Opening hours during the holidays are as follows:

Maundy Thursday April 14th
Open 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

Good Friday April 15th
Closed

Holy Saturday April 16th
Open 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

Easter Sunday April 17th
Closed

Easter Monday April 18th
Open 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

The Globe of Goodwill 2021 is sold out at our museum shop, as in many places in the Great Reykjavík Area. Some places may still have a few pieces left, but we recommend calling ahead to make sure that the Globe is still in stock.

A list of places selling the Globe can be found here.

One Year by Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir is The Globe of Goodwill for the year 2021. Each year, the Globe is sold as a limited edition, but last year the Globe sold out. All proceeds go to benefit children and young people with disabilities. The artist describes the piece with these words:

The sphere is surrounded by an illustration that shows different sun orbits depending on the time of the year in Iceland, from long bright summer nights to the winter solstice when light is only present for few hours a day. The illustration depicts the different brightness levels of the day and the decisive seasonal fluctuations that we experience as the year goes on here by the Arctic Circle. The five colours that stretch around the sphere represent dawn, first light, daylight, sunset and darkness. The most prominent colours are yellow for bright midday and blue for the darkness of the night; in between are orange, pink and purple for the twilight. The piece tries to capture something we are all so familiar with in our daily lives, but it also speaks to our larger context, to our ever-changing position in space where we revolve around an axis on an orbit around the sun.

Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir completed her BA degree from thee Icelandic Academy of Art in 2001 and an MA degree from the School of Visual Art in New York in 2013. Sirra’s work is cosmic in nature, often connected to speculations about our position within the inner workings of nature, physics and the forces that drive the world. It often evokes our status as individuals, our value and smallness where the small is placed in the context of the larger and the meaning is transferred from one phenomenon to another so that it becomes a new perception, a new vision. She has held solo exhibitions at the Reykjavík Art Museum, The Living Art Museum, the Árnes Art Museum, Hafnarborg and Kling & Bang. She has also taken part in numerous exhibitions around the world, including in China, Finland and England. Sirra has attracted well-deserved attention for her art and received grants and recognition from the art funds of Svavar Guðnason, Guðmunda Andrésdóttir and the Guðmunda S. Kristinsdóttir Prize. Sirra has been a member of the artist-run space Kling & Bang since its inception in 2003.

The Globe of Goodwill will be available at our museum shop from December 9th until December 23rd. This year’s Yuletide Lads mobile is also available at the shop until December 16th. To read more about the mobile, please click here.

Hafnarborg is open as usual, until Christmas, everyday except Tuesdays, 12–5 p.m. The opening hours during the holidays are as follows:

December 23rd: open 12–5 p.m.
Christmas Eve: closed
Christmas Day: closed
December 26th: closed
December 27th: open 12–5 p.m.
December 28th: closed
December 29th: open 12–5 p.m.
December 30th: open 12–5 p.m.
New Year‘s Eve: closed
New Year‘s Day: closed

Please note that the office of Hafnarborg will be closed during the holidays. Regular opening hours will resume from January 2nd. Entry is free and everyone welcome.