OERSTED

RASMUS DANØ, SØREN HÜTTEL, DIRTY MAC, DAN MILLER, STEFF NORWOOD, KEV POLLOCK

Tree God, Mixed media on paper, 29cm x4 2cm, 2014. Image courtesy the artist (Photographer: Dan Miller).

Oersted will feature new work by six artists from Glasgow and Copenhagen. It will incorporate a wide range of media to create a dynamic and immersive audiovisual environment – a place of intermittent ocular and auricular experience.

The exhibition is named after the Danish chemist Hans Christian Oersted, who was the first person to produce aluminium in 1825. This discovery is directly linked to the industrial legacy of the site, which included the operation of an illegal smelt during the 1970’s. The title creates a dynamic link between the exhibition context and the manipulation of material, taking further inspiration from Oersted’s pioneering research into electromagnetism and acoustics.

Hopeful Landscape, Mixed media on paper, 11cm x 20cm, 2014. Image courtesy the artist (Photographer: Dan Miller).

Oersted is hosted and supported through WAVEparticle’s AiA (Artists in Arches) initiative, one of three dynamic spaces included in their Open Spaces programme. Over the past two years WAVEparticle have worked in partnership with the New Gorbals Housing Association and Urban Union to deliver the Art & Living: Laurieston strategic plan.

The inception of this project can be traced back to my first meeting with Rasmus Danø during the 2007 Supermarket art fair in Stockholm. We became firm friends and organised an exchange exhibition between Glasgow and Copenhagen in 2008. I first met Søren Hüttel during the installation of Through the Looking Glass at SWG3. It soon became clear that we all shared very similar artistic concerns and methodologies. Since 2008 we have exhibited together across Scandinavia, including Copenhagen, Malmø and Esbjerg.

I’ve worked collaboratively with Dirty Mac, Steff Norwood, Kev Pollock for the last ten years on a variety of collaborative projects and group exhibitions. The Cleland Lane arches provide the perfect context for the Glaswegian and Danish artists to work together on this ambitious large-scale project.

Spinalonga, Letterpress ink and lino cut on paper, 20cm x 25cm, 2014. Image courtesy the artist (Photographer: Dan Miller)

I’ll be working collaboratively with Dirty Mac to present a live audiovisual performance, concentrating on the themes of resolution, distortion and fidelity. I’m currently editing footage for a multi-channel synchronized video projection that will act as a catalyst for Mac’s sonic performance. For the exhibition I’ll be presenting a new series of digital banners and paintings. These allegorical works will investigate the legacy of capitalist realism and the territories of ratio and repetition.

OERSTED

RASMUS DANØ, SØREN HÜTTEL, DIRTY MAC, DAN MILLER, STEFF NORWOOD, KEV POLLOCK

Artists in Arches
Arches 1-3,
Cleland Lane,
Glasgow,
G5 9DS

Fri 8th April – Mon 25th April 2016
Mon – Sun, 1.30pm – 6pm

Preview Friday 8th April: 6pm
Live audiovisual performance Friday 8th April: 7pm

Scheduled performances will take place throughout the festival.
For more information and updates: www.oersted.industries

Supported by WAVEparticle and The Danish Arts Foundation.

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Firstly let me introduce myself, my name is Calum Johnston and I am a Scottish visual artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. I first moved to the city 3 years ago for the primary reason to learn the language. I managed to persuade my girlfriend, a Dane with little to no appetite for the city that it was a good idea and after Art School we could both do with a fresh start. So we packed our bags and headed east. At the time I never realised exactly what I was letting myself in for, but needless to say it was considerably more difficult than I thought. In reflection, I was probably running away from post Art School blues and the inability to make work. Having adapted, albeit slowly, I have managed to carve a small corner of Copenhagen into home. As an artist whose primary subject matter is language, it has proved to be a fruitful process. Learning a language from the bottom up is a great way to consider the idiosyncrasies of both languages.

It was 7.15pm on a cold, wet Monday night in Copenhagen. I was in a supermarket with my girlfriend, we were in a queue trying to buy some flowers. There was something like forty thousand people walking past the shop window as we waited. Just as we were leaving the store an older lady, possibly in her mid seventies, stopped me to ask if we were going to the Synagogue. This took me by surprise but I soon realised that the flowers were a give away. ‘Yes… We are’ I said ‘Would it be ok if I walked with you’ she asked ‘Of course, not a problem’.

This is strange for a number of reasons. I love Copenhagen, it is a great city but one thing it most certainly is not is warm or particularly friendly. The chances are if you have visited here you would have experienced some sort of dodgy customer service. There are a number of contributing factors to this, but what you are left with is a fairly inward facing city with many people in closed relationships. People like to stick to their own. It takes many years to make a lasting friendship in Copenhagen.

The Lady was Iranian. She had recently suffered a stroke that affected her temporal lobe so she had lost the part of her memory that controls names, places and faces. Everyday she would do the same thing so not to get lost or confused. As we walked towards the Synagogue we talked and she told us that she was going to a meeting for Iranians for Democracy. Once we completed the short walk we said goodbye and each lay our flowers. I couldn’t help but think that the flowers were a reflection of the people all side by side, hand in hand. Irrespective of race, creed or colour we were all there, all together. Since then the city has changed.

The idea behind this article was to talk about the cultural hot spots and to give my take on what is ‘happening’ in Copenhagen, instead I am going to talk about two places, the first being café Halvvej. Café Halvvej is as traditional and as Danish as Stæk flesk og pasli sauce. In the afternoon they serve smørrebrød and you can buy a klippekort for your beer. It’s small, wooden and smokey (after the lunch service is finished). There is one thing that I love more than anything else. In café Halvvej mobile phones are banned. If you want to make a call, then you go outside. Great! This brings the bar back to basics. After all, isn’t the reason we go to bar’s to enjoy each other’s company? I am not a smoker (5 years free) but this is one bar I don’t mind sitting in for hours. This to me is the real beating heart of Copenhagen. A place where it does not matter what you earn, where you work or what you believe in, you will feel welcome. This is the warm underbelly that Copenhagen exposes all too little.

As an artist, and a pretty low rent one at that, I have always been interested in underground art and music scenes. Copenhagen doesn’t have the same DIY history as parts of the working class UK. I suppose you will find all over the world that the cities with money don’t need a DIY scene. Yet, sandwiched between Tivoli and Copenhagen’s postal sorting office you will find a little rough diamond. There is a rag-tag group of artists in a disused council loft space with limited electricity and even more limited heating. Tietgensgade 31 or TTG 31 is everything that is great about artists; ingenuity, creativity and community. This formally disused space in the centre of the city is a hub for live music, exhibitions and parties. It has a real buzz and excitement in a place where the people are doing it for the right reasons.

Copenhagen is a great place. For me it is like the relationship I have with my big brother… quiet, distant but when needed he is there strong and supportive willing to defend what is right. Complicated but brilliant.

Read Calum’s recent interview on Made in Mind here.

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No Man’s Art Gallery was founded by Dutch ex-lawyer, Emmelie Koster in 2010. In a very unusual career move, Koster suddenly decided to take up painting whilst in the second year of her masters degree in law. Unhappy with her paintings, she sold them online under a different name (Bob Koster) and set up an a fake art gallery to promote them. Soon afterwards, real artists began sending Emmelie their portfolios looking for representation. By the time she finished her studies and started her job as a lawyer, she realised that the gallery had become a project with serious potential and quit her legal career to focus on realising that potential.

© Max & Charlotte, Ou est Charlie, Piscine Pontoise, Paris V, 2009

The name ‘No Man’s Art Gallery’ refers to No Man’s Land, the land that has no laws and no set boundaries. No Man’s Art Gallery now provides an international platform for young artists by organising pop up galleries all over the world. Every three months they take on a different city to find local young artists with great talent. They exhibit the new-found artists’ work in their local city and travel with No Man’s Gallery to the next city. The exhibitions always show a wide variety of young artists, coming from all over the world. Previous exhibitions have been in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Mumbai, Paris, Copenhagen, and most recently in Shanghai.

Works by Sarah Wijzenbeek at the Mumbai Exhibition

The gallery has its headquarters in Amsterdam as well as a recently opened office in Copenhagen. They aim to promote artistic collaborations between the Netherlands and Denmark in addition to organising their pop-up galleries worldwide. No Man’s Art Gallery is the first art gallery to organise pop up galleries in a different country every few months. The exhibitions are open for a week before they are gone again and are always an adventure to visit. The location is secret, and only disclosed to those who sign up beforehand. So far, they’ve exhibited in special locations worldwide; the ruins of a cotton mill compound in Mumbai, a chapel on Vestre Kirkegaard in Copenhagen, a harbor building in Hamburg, an atomic shelter in Amsterdam.

© Daniel van der Noon, Mertropolis, 2012

In the three months preparation for a pop up gallery, they face the challenge of finding a location and setting up a complete network of artists, art lovers and buyers, members of the press, sponsors and local partners. They select their artists in a new city by contacting all art schools and visiting young ateliers to find the talents that the city has to offer. Everyone in No Man’s Art Gallery gets a say in the selection, and the final decisions are made by Emmelie Koster and Emma Sofie Jensen.

© Participant of the No Man’s Art Slum Photography Contest, Black Sludge, 2011

They also hope to be able to organise the No Man’s Art Slum Photography Contest annually. In 2011, private sponsorship for analogue cameras and film rolls was organised for 45 children from Dharavi, Mumbai, the biggest slum in Asia. The children were taught how to use the cameras in a short workshop and sent off to capture the moments in life that they enjoy the most. The results were absolutely amazing. All the children received the prints of their photos and a selection of the photos are now exhibited and for sale at No Man’s pop up galleries. The proceeds go directly back into buying new film and development of the film.

Mumbai Exhibition

Lyrical Artist Justus Raapgaarde reads his poetry at the Hamburg Exhibition

No Man’s Art Gallery’s latest pop-up gallery exhibition was in Shanghai. The exhibition featured local Chinese artists alongside the artists that were discovered at previous pop-up galleries in Copenhagen, Paris, Mumbai, Hamburg and Amsterdam. Additionally, three Chinese artists will be chosen to travel with No Man’s to their upcoming future exhibitions. Find out more here.

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