22 Sep 2011

Context Gallery presents Stars - dedicated to mothers

Stars is a cubist poem made by multi dimensional, site specific, audio and video installation incorporating local performers and dancers. At the heart of the work are texts that the duo started writing in 2007 and are still writing. They create settings for realising these texts with actors (by way of advertising for neighbourhood stars in local papers). They record video-episodes in the installation that constantly grows in the process. To date they have collected around 30 videos.

Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir and Kristín Ómarsdóttir build the settings inside the exhibition space each time on location, in this case the Context Gallery. The settings take various forms of stages; a gallows, a harbour, a podium on wheels, swings, trees, etc. They locally collect costumes and various objects that correspond with the texts and become part of the exhibition as well. The videos, made on location each time are spread around the installation on monitors and projections.
 
Kristín and Gunnhildur have collaborated extensively since the year 2002 when they organized the performance Footbath in Reykjavík. Stars is the third and final exhibition in a series of three previously showing My Gift, Your Excellency (Iceland, 2011) and Audition (Canada, 2008) in the same series. The project will be followed by a publication next year.

 
Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir, was born in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1972. She received her MFA from the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2003 and is an active member of the Dieter Roth Academy. She has lived and worked in Amsterdam, Holland and Berlin, Germany until 2008 but is currently residing in Reykjavík, Iceland. Gunnhildur works evenly in sculpture, audio, video and performance. Among her most recent exhibitions are Pacifiers (Iceland, 2011) Mirrorriff (Iceland, 2010), Howl (Austria, 2010), Rockabilly Gal (Denmark, 2009) and Cultus Bestiae (Iceland, 2008) to name a few. In 2010 she participated in a podium on performance art at the Anti festival in Koumio, Finland, organized a series of lectures with the German Philosopher Marcus Steinweg in Reykjavík in collaboration with The Living Art Museum, The Icelandic Academy of the Arts, The Icelandic Philosophy Association and the Icelandic Art Theory Association. She is chairman of the board and director of the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, on the curatorial board of the Sequences Art festival and guest artist at the Icelandic Art Academy. 
  
Kristín Ómarsdóttir, b. 1962 in Reykjavík, where she works and lives. Five of her novels have been published, three books of short stories, seven books of poetry, and eight of her plays have been staged in Icelandic theatres, and five plays produced by the Icelandic broadcasting service, RÚV. Among Ómarsdóttir Ì?s novels are: Elskan mín ég dey, I Ì?ll Die My Love, which was nominated to The Nordic Council Ì?s Literature Prize.  In 2005 Kristín received Gríman, as the best playwright of that year, for the play, Segðu mér allt, Tell Me Everything. The play Lovestory III was nominated to The Nordic Council Ì?s Drama Prize.  Along with her writings she has worked with visual artists and showed her drawings and work in art exhibitions. 
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this.is/gunnhildur