ragnar kjartansson - Fremantle Arts Centre

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ragnar kjartansson
the visitors & the end
Influential Icelandic contemporary artist Ragnar Kjartansson and his work will
visit Australia for the first time as part of the 2015 Perth International Arts Festival.
Fremantle Arts Centre and John Curtin Gallery are pleased to partner with the
Festival to provide a comprehensive insight into his work, across two galleries.
THE VISITORS | JOHN CURTIN GALLERY | 12 FEB–2 APRIL
Kjartansson’s elegiac video installation The Visitors features a gathering of a group of friends and musicians
in the grandiose and decaying 200-year-old Rokeby Farm on the shores of the Hudson River in upstate New
York. The work, shot simultaneously using nine cameras in a single take, is presented on nine individual
screens which coalesce into an encompassing cinematographic montage.
THE END – ROCKY MOUNTAINS | FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE | 14 FEB–6 APRIL
Filmed against the stark, snow-laden Canadian landscape, The End – Rocky Mountains is an epic five-channel
music and video installation featuring Kjartansson and fellow Icelandic musician David Thor Jonsson. Playing
on composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ideas of spatial music, the duo performed versions of a thirty minute
composition in situ in the Rocky Mountains. When synched and played together in one space, the unique
folk-country soundtrack and beautiful yet melancholy visuals provide a sensory experience which is poetic,
compelling and whimsical. A series of watercolours will be also on display.
The Visitors will be supported by a public program. Please visit the John Curtin Gallery website
www.johncurtingallery.curtin.edu.au for details.
JOHN CURTIN GALLERY
Curtin University,
Building 200 Kent Street, Bentley
Western Australia
Open Monday – Friday 11am-5pm | Sunday 1-5pm
Free Entry
T +61 8 9266 4155
E [email protected]
W johncurtingallery.curtin.edu.au
John Curtin Gallery
Visual Arts Program Partner
FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE
1 Finnerty Street, Fremantle
Western Australia
Open Daily 10am-5pm
Free Entry
T +61 8 9432 9555
E [email protected]
W fac.org.au
ragnar kjartansson
the visitors
Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors, 2012, nine channel HD video, colour, sound, loop 64:00min. Production photo Elisabet Davidsdottir.
Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik.
OPENING WED 11 FEB | 7PM | EXHIBITION RUNS THURS 12 FEB–THURS 2 APRIL | JOHN CURTIN GALLERY
In this major Australian premiere, celebrated Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson will present
his monumental video installation, The Visitors, at the John Curtin Gallery as a highlight of the 2015 Perth
International Arts Festival.
The immersive nine-channel video installation takes a two-versed poem and extends it into a prolonged and
achingly beautiful 64-minute musical epic that fills the John Curtin Gallery with melancholic sound and vision
in an ode to femininity.
The bohemian gathering of a group of friends and musicians in the grandiose and decaying twilight zone of
Rokeby Farm in upstate New York becomes the scenery for what the artist calls a “feminine nihilistic gospel
song”: a layered portrait of the artist’s friends and an exploration of musical cinema taking its title from
ABBA’s last album, marked by divorce and defeat. Themed to lyrics from a text written by Kjartansson’s exwife Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, the cinematographic tableau shows the eight protagonists each performing the
song in separate settings.
Chris Malcolm Director, John Curtin Gallery said: “This is a unique opportunity for Perth audiences to enjoy an
astonishing array of works by an international artist whose work is being sought after by major art museums
around the world. This exhibition also heralds an unprecedented collaboration between the John Curtin
Gallery and the Fremantle Arts Centre – two of Perth’s major public galleries. Ragnar Kjartansson’s work is
comical, poignant, deeply touching and possessing extraordinary lingering beauty often infused with a gentle
melancholy. I am confident that The Visitors will join recent Festival exhibitions from the John Curtin Gallery
as one of Perth’s most memorable exhibitions in 2015.”
The John Curtin Gallery will be filled with nine large screens, eight of them featuring the projected image of
a single musician — a guitarist, pianist, cellist, and so forth. The ninth screen offers an outside view of the
porch where the inhabitants at Rokeby and other friends sing along.
Singing whilst playing a range of instruments (the musicians monitoring each other’s contribution via
headphones), the event was recorded in a single, precise take. These nine channels of HD video are presented
in the Gallery, perfectly synchronised to create an ensemble performance in real-time.
ragnar kjartansson
the visitors
The Visitors is presented in tandem with Kjartansson’s cinematic video installation The Man – the beguiling
portrait of 96-year-old legendary blues musician Pinetop Perkins, lovingly captured in Texas the year before
his death in 2010. Set in a field outside of Austin, The Man is a work where the significance of the tiniest details
are magnified to create a mesmersising durational experience.
Together these works touch on what the artist considers two of the most important things that happened in
the twentieth century: Feminism – heralding the twenty first century as the “feminist century”; and the Blues
– being the forerunner to Rock’n’Roll which the artist describes as “the world’s first truly global culture”.
The Visitors premiered in 2012 at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich and has since toured
around the world, traveling to Malmö, New York, Vienna, Milan, Ohio, Bilbao and Cardiff.
A number of Kjartansson’s other major works, including the five-channel music and video installation The End
– Rocky Mountains, along with a suite of watercolours, will be presented at the companion exhibition at the
Fremantle Arts Centre from 14 February until 6 April 2015.
Media Contact
Samantha Smith
9266 7347 | 0407 386 687
[email protected]
Work Days: Mon-Wed
ragnar kjartansson
the end
Ragnar Kjartansson, The End – Rocky Mountains, 2009, Five-channel video projection, colour, sound, loop: 30:30 min. Production photo: Laura
Vangas. Commissioned by the Center for Icelandic Art for the Pavilion of Iceland at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Produced in collaboration with The
Banff Centre, Canada and the Stephan and Adriana Benediktson Fellowship for Icelandic Artists
OPENING FRI 13 FEB | 6:30PM | EXHIBITION RUNS SAT 14 FEB–MON 6 APRIL | FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE
In the heat of the Australian summer the Perth International Arts Festival and Fremantle Arts Centre present
an immersive exhibition depicting the snow-covered heights of the Rocky Mountains. In this national premiere,
celebrated Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson will exhibit across two venues, showcasing his acumen in music,
film and performance with works that are instilled with a sense of the romantic and the absurd.
Filmed against the stark, snow-laden Canadian landscape, The End – Rocky Mountains is a five-channel music
and video installation featuring Kjartansson and fellow Icelandic musician David Thor Jonsson.
Playing on composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ideas of spatial music, the duo performed versions of a thirty
minute composition in situ in the Rocky Mountains. When synched and played together in one space, the unique
folk-country soundtrack and beautiful yet melancholy visuals provide a sensory experience which is poetic,
compelling and whimsical.
Like many of Kjartansson’s works, The End focuses on the persona of the performers and utilises a typically
Icelandic style of storytelling. Playing the part of the troubadour, Kjartansson leads audiences on a rambling yet
highly choreographed journey, echoing elaborate myths and sagas.
Perth Festival Visual Arts Manager Margaret Moore said she was thrilled to bring Kjartansson’s work to
Australia for the first time. “He is such a significant and influential contemporary artist,” she said. “We are
grateful to our colleagues at the Fremantle Arts Centre and John Curtin Gallery for helping us realise this vision
in such a professional and comprehensive way and sharing his dreamy and distinctive art with our audiences.”
“Ragnar’s an incredible international artist who has been producing really thought-provoking works of epic
proportions for the past decade,” FAC Director Jim Cathcart said. “We’re delighted to be partnering with the
Perth Festival and the John Curtin Gallery to introduce local audiences to his work.”
Kjartansson’s work will take over all of FAC’s galleries with a collection of watercolours and video installations
also on exhibit, including Song, Mercy, Me and My Mother and Kjartansson’s contribution for the 2013 Venice
Biennale, S.S. Hangover.
The Visitors will be on show at the John Curtin Gallery during the same period. This immersive nine-channel
musical video installation features intimate portraits of Kjartansson and his friends, in a rapturous ode to
femininity.
This double bill provides a comprehensive insight into Kjartansson’s energy and breadth of work.
Media Contact
Sam Leung
08 9432 9565
[email protected]
artist biography
Ragnar Kjartansson was born in Reyjavick, Iceland in 1976 to actor parents. He trained as an artist
at the Royal Academy of Stockholm and the Icelandic Academy of the Arts.
In 1994 Kjartansson started performing with various bands, becoming the lead singer of electroindie band Trabant who were known for their flamboyant live shows, and his performance work
today is informed by those early live gigs.
Kjartansson’s performances are tragicomic, reflecting upon the nature and position of the artist
as typically mysterious and bohemian. Identity and repetition are recurring themes within his
performances, where he regularly assumes new personas – playfully merging his own personality
with a variety of cultural and historical characters.
In recent years, he has become known for his ‘durational performances’ marked by length and
repetition. During the 2013 Venice Biennale, his performance piece S.S. Hangover featured a brass
band aboard a small sailboat that sailed in the Arsenale and performed music by Kjartan Sveinsson
over a period of five months.
Kjartansson brings the history of film, music, theatre and visual culture to his body of work which
engages with a very broad range of media from video installations and durational performances
to drawings and paintings. His performances offer a microcosm of humanity, depicting mundane
interactions on an epic stage as Kjartansson presents a kaleidoscope of emotions from happiness,
sadness and excitement to boredom and frustration.
Since participating in the 2009 Venice Biennale, where he exhibited at the Icelandic Pavilion,
Kjartansson has exhibited widely in major international art museums throughout Europe and North
America.
reviews & additional information
Ragnar Kjartansson, The Man, 2010, Single channel HD video, colour, sound loop: 49:25 min. Performer: Pinetop Perkins. Courtesy of the artist,
Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík
Artist Biography
http://www.artspace.com/ragnar_kjartansson
Kjartansson discusses his work, life experiences, and Scandinavian issues as part of MOCA’s Art Talk Series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2nXUq99IW0
Kjartansson speaks to Alexandra Augustin of FM4 about feminism, the Vienna Boys Choir, music and art
always being a hobby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnVp9iMCbzc
Feature on Kjartansson by ArtReview
http://artreview.com/features/may_2014_feature_ragnar_kjartansson
media images
High resolution images and full credit details are available on request