Sunday October 16th at 2 p.m., we invite you to a guided tour of our newly opened autumn exhibition, high tide – low tide, led by curator Sigrún Alba Sigurðardóttir, along with a few of the artists participating in the exhibition. The artists involved in the talk will be photographers Pétur Thomsen and Stuart Richardson. The event will be in Icelandic and English.
The exhibition features the work of seven artists. Many of them were brought up on islands and all of them come from countries where the sea is one of the wellsprings of society; at once, a way out into the wider world, and a barrier to what lies beyond. They have all stood by the sea, suspended in their powerlessness and strength.
Pétur Thomsen (1973) was born in Reykjavík and now lives and works in Grímsnes, South Iceland. He studied French, art history and archaeology at The Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier and art photography at École supérieure des métiers artistiques, also in Montpellier. In 2004, he completed his MFA degree from the École nationale supérieur de la photographie (ENSP) in Arles. Thomsen wields the camera as a tool for research, inspection and creation.
Stuart Richardson (1978) was born in in Auckland, New Zealand, and raised in New England. Since 2007, he has lived in Iceland, where he is now a proud citizen. He earned his MFA in photography from the Hartford Art School in 2018. Richardson’s photography is characterized by the attention paid to subtle details and forms in the natural environment, and his work often explores themes of environmentalism, the sublime and transience – whether in relation to experiences, natural phenomena, or to how images render on film or video.
Sigrún Alba Sigurðardóttir is an independent curator and scholar, working in Iceland and Denmark. In recent years, she has curated exhibitions at the National Gallery of Iceland, the LÁ Art Museum, the Reykjavík Museum of Photography and Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen. Sigrún Alba is the author of various books and academic papers on photography, contemporary art and history, like Snjóflygsur á næturhimni (Mál og menning, 2022), concerning the interplay between photography, memory and reality, being released this week.
Free entry – everyone welcome.