The Art Council of Hafnarborg has selected The Wildflower as the autumn exhibition of 2020, from a number of excellent proposals submitted at the end of last year, but the winning proposal was submitted by curators Becky Forsythe and Penelope Smart. The Wildflower focuses a futuristic lens — sensitive and searching — on our human desire to know nature. Through this lens, audiences re-engage a swell of complex emotions and an acute awareness of our fragile world and our place in it. Working with artists from Iceland and Canada, the curators cultivate new space for a dynamic collision of climate activism, feminism and craft-based practice in contemporary art. Urging forward a renewed interest in traditional materials connected to local culture, artists transform wood, marble, plant dye, flowers, metal into new visions of textile, sculpture, painting and stained glass armour.

The conceptual vision for the exhibition is that of an open “field” in a northern landscape. In the expansive gallery space, audiences will encounter familiar yet unusual representations of flowers and nature: large, small, otherworldly, imaginative, disorienting, empowering. Our human relationship to nature is in flux, unfathomable and fantastical, felt as both a gendered and androgynous transformative power in this futuristic yet fragile field — a source of productive tension and enchantment within the size, scale and materials of the works.

The Wildflower has evolved out of the curators’ shared interest in climate change as an empowering phenomenon, natural materials and craft traditions in contemporary art, as well as new forms of representation in northern landscape. These genres also align in new and meaningful ways to emerging concepts of nature, power and the feminine. Envisioned as an innovative and female-led curatorial platform for all audiences, The Wildflower explores themes and materials related to innocence, violence, colonization, action, force and gentleness in powerful union with the innate qualities of nature, raising the question: how can that which is deeply familiar — our delicate flora clinging to rock — take root in new stories?

Becky Forsythe is a curator, writer and cultural worker. She holds a BFA Visual Art from York University (2007), an MA from University of Manitoba (2011) and a Postgraduate Certificate in Museum and Gallery Studies from Georgian College (2014). Her work focuses on varied systems of nature, collecting and acts of care, as well as placing value on collaboration in diverse spaces, situations and sensitivities. From 2015-2018 she held the position of Collection Manager at the Living Art Museum, where she led a number of projects and exhibitions, including Distant Matter (2018), Rolling Line (2017, co-curator) and Between mountain and tide (2018, co-curator). For Forsythe an exhibition is equally tangible and intangible, being a site of exchange, action and renewal.

Penelope Smart is a curator and writer. She holds an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCADU (2013), where she received the President’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies. Smart has held curatorial positions at The Art Gallery of Ontario, MULHERIN galleries (Toronto and New York) and Eastern Edge Gallery (St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador). Her writing has appeared in Canadian Art, C Magazine and n.paradoxa, among others. With a focus on young artists at the beginning stages of their careers, Smart approaches exhibitions as a place of risk-taking, life and mystery.

The participating artists will be announced at a later date.

On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Silent Spring, by Hertta Kiiski, Katrín Elvarsdóttir and Lilja Birgisdóttir, curated by Daría Sól Andrews, we are pleased to announce that The Reykjavík Forest Service (Skógræktarfélag Reykjavíkur) will plant a tree for every guest who attends the opening.

We are deeply grateful for this contribution from The Forest Service, which plays a critical role in preserving and protecting our environment all year round and helps us give back to nature in this way.

We would also like to call attention to a special happening featuring the choir Kliður, along with Lilja Birgisdóttir, which will take place at the opening.

The opening will be on Saturday January 18th at 3 p.m. At the same time, the exhibition Far will also open, with works by Þórdís Jóhannesdóttir and Ralph Hannam. Both exhibitions are a part of The Icelandic Photo Festival, going on from January 16th–19th.

Hoping to see you at Hafnarborg.

Thursday November 28th at 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Hafnarborg will participate in a conference at Kjarvalsstaðir, in partnership with the Reykjavík Art Museum and the Research Center in Museum Studies. The conference will take a look at art in the public realm and its meaning, both for local communities and in a broader context. Special focus will be on the origin of these kinds of projects, how they come to be, how they are financed and how they are planned.

The keynote speaker will be Tyra Dokkedahl, a Danish curator and journalist specializing in art in public spaces. Other speakers are architect Steve Christer at Studíó Grandi, Ágústa Kristófersdóttir, Director of Hafnarborg, artists Anna Hallin, Olga Bergman, Carl Boutard and Ólöf Nordal and Örn Baldursson from the Government Construction Contracting Agency. Ólöf Kristín Sigurðardóttir, Director of the Reykjavík Art Museum, will open the conference and Sigurður Trausti Traustason, Head of Collections and Research at the Reykjavík Art Museum, will lead the conference.

The participation fee is ISK 2.500. Coffee and a light lunch included. Registration required here.

The Art Council of Hafnarborg has chosen Everything at the Same Time as the autumn exhibition of 2019, with curators Andrea Arnarsdóttir and Starkaður Sigurðarson. The idea behind the exhibition is to explore the way artists tackle the freedom present in contemporary visual arts. How it is possible to extract meaning from art, which may be anything, a painting, a child’s toy, papier mâché, a movement, an idea, opera, plaster. On exhibit, will be works of different media, from oil painting to performances, in an effort to unite the scattered notions found in contemporary art.

The aim of the exhibition is not to show a section or an overview of how art is today, but to explore how artists, faced with this freedom, form fromit meaning. How art can take any shape, while still speaking the same language. How an oil painting on the wall in someone’s home is the same art, a part of the same history of art, as mushrooms made to grow in a bright, white exhibition space. How art – and art history – is a compressed thing, where everything exists at the same time.

Andrea Arnarsdóttir took applied studies in culture and communication at the University of Iceland, graduating with an MA degree in 2018. Her graduation project, the exhibition Superabundance at the University, drew quite a bit of attention. After graduation, Andrea went on an internship at the Artipelag, art museum in Stockholm. There she gained an insight into the museum world and the curatorial work, as well as working closely with the museum‘s curator of pedagogy.

Starkaður Sigurðarson has a background both in visual arts and writing, but after graduating from the Iceland University of the Arts, he went on to complete an MFA degree in creative writing at Goddard College in spring of 2018. He has exhibited in many places around Iceland, most recently participating in the exhibition Pressure of the Deep at The Living Art Museum in 2018, in addition to writing for Víðsjá, at the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, penning text for artists and museums, and editing the visual arts publication Stara.

Each year, Hafnarborg asks for proposals for the museum’s autumn exhibition, with the objective of motivating new people and selecting a curator or curators, who present an interesting idea. In this way, the museum aims to provide an opportunity for emerging curators, who are looking to gain more experience. The task of reviewing the proposals and choosing the winner is in the hands of the Museum Director and the Art Council of Hafnarborg.

With the autumn exhibition series, Hafnarborg wishes to open a channel for new ideas, in line with the museum’s mission, to strengthen and support various programmes of art and culture, through different perspectives. The exhibitions and related events have become an important part of the programme at Hafnarborg, being a catalyst for further development and discussion about art and ideas.

The participating artists will be announced at a later date.