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Just Swedish
10 September - 31 October 2008
In the early 20th century, Swedish craft was influenced by function. Today a new generation of makers is exploring boundaries between art, design and craft.
This exhibition, co-curated with Mats Jansson of Nääs Konsthantverk in Sweden, brings seven artists together, working in different materials showing the diversity in Swedish Crafts.
Eva Hild, one of Sweden's best known sculptors whose distinctive works epitomise current trends in Scandinavian ceramics explores the relationship between the internal and external realities; the dualism between content and form, feeling and shape, impression and expression. The shape consists of continuously flowing inner and outer surfaces, with one line running through the form.
Silversmith Anders Ljungberg mixes the contemporary with the customary. He combines traditional silversmithing techniques with contemporary materials. He is interested in the way his objects are displayed and used within a home. The objects become altered through use and encoded with a new meaning. A jug containing water is just waiting to be used and the water poured. The table and the jug or the cup form part of the same daily landscape.
Per Brandstedt creates burnt oak vessels and works with the imperfections of the wood such as splits and rough surfaces to create mainly functional vessels.
Karin Östberg looks for rhythm and balance, trying to discover the mystery of repeating patterns in her ceramic forms. Clay, holes and crackling glaze creates layers of patterns which all relate to each other.
Tore Svensson only makes a few iron bowls a year. It is a painstaking low process. For nearly two decades he has been making the same simple form: the few bowls he makes each season hardly vary in size and form from their predecessors. They derive their appearance from such lengthy work. Fired with linseed oil, their iron is black. A streak of gold on some bowls
pierces this darkness. "I don´t see them as things
for material use, but as holders for your thoughts."
Mia Olsson makes beautiful almost transparent sculptural wall pieces in sisal fibres and sometimes coir. They are often monochrome and three dimensional exploring the movement of light through form and colour.
Elisabeth Henriksson's glass vessels and sculputres draw inspiration from nature. She says, "I want my works to feel alive like living organisms with every product being very individual."
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