Project Isfjorden
June - October 2019
In collaboration with Aktiv i Friluft, Artica Svalbard curated 'Project Isfjorden’.
In June 2019 artists Floortje Zonneveld, Kim Nekarda and artist duo 44FLAVOURS were invited by Artica Svalbard to join excursions organised by Aktiv i Friluft to help clean up Svalbard’s beaches. As part of the project the artists also collaborated with the local community to produce three public artworks in various locations around Longyearbyen.
Down to Earth
A sculpture in the form of a dome that the public can enter, filled with more exciting artworks made of beach waste. This work was created by 44FLAVOURS via workshops in collaboration with Svalbard Folkehøyskole´s art students.
"On Svalbard the idea is to work with a ground structure from wood and develop a 3 dimensional installation, which we also see as a sort of painting with material. The research of found material is part of our working process and the found objects will influence the outcome of the finished work, that will be installed in public space. The piece will be part of a new permutation of an idea that we, Bagge & Rölle have been developing and exploring for many years ie. the possibilities of creating novel intersections between a two dimensional painting and a three dimensional installation".
44FLAVOURS
For more than 15 years, Julio Rölle (*1981, Bersenbrück) and Sebastian Bagge (*1981, Oldenburg) alias 44FLAVOURS have been working closely together as artist and graphic design-duo under the name of 44flavours. They met during their design studies at University of applied sciences in Bielefeld and are working in different media like painting, installation, sculpture and graphic design. Since 2011 they are both teaching at the Multi Media Art department of Salzburg University of Applied Sciences. They live and work in Berlin.
Photo: Florian Büttner
Visible Whales
'Visible Whales' by painter Kim Nekarda, a large scale mural, created in collaboration with Svalbard Folkehøyskole's art students. On display in Longyearbyen outside of Lompensenteret, opposite Svalbardbutikken.
Kim Nekarda
Kim Nekarda was born in Giessen, 1973. He studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Stuttgart as well as at the Academy of Fine Art in Munich. He has exhibited widely internationally, participating in both group exhibitions and solo presentations. Nekarda lives and works in Berlin.
"Choosing the sea as a topic comes, I believe with a responsibility. The destruction and annihilation the human race inflicts upon those who live in the oceans is monstrous. In the process of painting this tragedy can hardly be ignored.
As an artist I want to utilize painting to sound out the possibilities of discarding alienation and embracing incorporation by trying to somehow blur the boundaries between our species and witness its fusing emerge on my pictorial surface.
In Svalbard, I am going to use the local, global remnants of the way we have decided we want to live to realize a mural in Longyearbyen – certainly an experiment with an ambiguous ending".
Havet Bringer
'Havet Bringer' by video artist Floortje Zonneveld, a stop-motion video work made during a series of workshops with various parts of Longyearbyen's local community. The work was projected from within Fyrhuset near UNIS.
Floortje Zonneveld
Artist Floortje Zonneveld lives and works in Amsterdam and Longyearbyen. She graduated from the Utrecht School of Arts Netherlands in 2009. In 2018 she became an Arctic Nature Guide in Longyearbyen. Floortje has worked on public engagement projects for Artica Svalbard, Træna Festivalen, TIFF, at schools in the Faroe Islands, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and at many other locations, from the Netherlands to further North.
http://www.ijsblink.nl/
"I develop workshops where people of all ages are invited in the process of (art) making. This results in works that are time-based and site-specific: through exploration and experimentation participants experience to create a visual reflection on stories from their everyday life. Stories about big or small adventures, about people and places, that trigger curiosity and wonder about the world we share".
A big thanks goes to Aktiv i Friluft, Svalbard Folkehøyskole, Coop, Avinor Longyearbyen, Svalbard Bygg, Maler Andersen and Longyearbyen Lokalstyre for support and collaboration.