We warmly welcome our summer guests from Kirkenes, in northeastern Norway.
On August 10th, we invite you to a day where both presents their art works.
It is an afternoon at the guest studio, NKF and in collaboration with Marabouparken konsthall where Silje Figenschou Thoresen is currently showing both structures and drawings in the exhibition – härifrån strök gränsen mot nordväst i en båge [from here the border stretched to the northwest in an arc].
- 15:00 The day starts at Marabouparken, with a conversation between Silje Figenschou Thoresen and director Helena Holmberg.
- After the conversation a joint journey goes, by commuter train, to the NKF – Nordic Art Association’s guest studio, at Nytorget 15A
- 17:00 A conversation between artist Morten Torgersrud and curator Sara Rossling about Torgersrud’s new project that tries out different ways of assembling photographs.
- Everyone is welcome to stay at NKF for an informal dinner
At NKF Morten Torgersrud will present a larger sketch material from a work that is under development. The new project tries out different ways of assembling photographs, which will also include previous works, as well as material from the local photographic history in the Kirkenes area.
Their stay follows a visit that board members from NKF had in the north Sapmí region in September 2022. Visiting both artists and the fellow organization SDS Sámi Dáiddačehpiid Searvi.
Morten Torgersrud works with photography and takes his immediate surroundings as his starting point. This mainly means the landscape around Kirkenes and the area's history, but he has also photographed in large parts of the Nordkalotten/Sápmi region.
In later projects, he has also been interested in how the materiality of the surroundings is depicted and displaced in the encounter with photographic technology. There is often something structural and repetitive about Torgersrud's approach to the relationship between place and photography, and there is also a recurring interest in the juxtaposition of photographs in sequences or montages. The works may contain references to local photographic history, but also more reductive, fragmented approaches to objects and the concrete landscape. Torgersrud's projects operate on different scales and with different degrees of resolution.
Silje Figenschou Thoresen often uses objects she finds to build her structures – pieces of different kinds of wood, paper and plastic. The material she prefers is often insignificant objects which in a specific situation turn out to be exactly what is needed to fill an empty space – to support something. She works from within the Sámi design tradition she grew up in. In this tradition you fix for yourself the problems that can arise in everyday life and work, with the materials and the knowledge you posess.
The aesthetic result both in the design tradition I grew up in and in my own practice is determined by the materials you have at hand. They are what produce the result. I try to find the material logic in what I work with without changing, gluing or screwing, for then the structure is locked in a form and can no longer become something else. The flow from structure to structure you find in the tradition – that must also be present in my work.
Silje Figenschou Thoresen graduated as a furniture designer and interior architect from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design and Konstfack in Stockholm. She has exhibited at among other places at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Kunsthall Trondheim, Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš/ the Sámi Centre for Contemporary Art in Karasjok, Liljevalchs, Galleri Riis, and Sven Harrys Konstmuseum in Stockholm