|
|
| TONJE BØE BIRKELAND |
 |
| |
From mid- June, Bergen and New York based artist, Tonje Bøe Birkeland is staring her art residency in Orkney and creating new works for Papay Gyro Nights 2014 Art Festival. The artists will be continuing "The Characters" project and will be recreating an imaginary journey of a stereo photographer Luelle Magdalon Lumiére to Orkney (Papa Westray, Hoy, Stromness) - which took place somewhere between 1915 and 1920. The journey will be documented through series of artworks: photography, objects, writing...
The results of the art residency will be presented at Papay Gyro Nights 2014 Art Festival
Tonje Bøe Birkeland had exhibited her works in Norway, Sweden, Germany and New York and attended art residencies in Mongolia and New York
21- 24 June : Tonje Bøe Birkeland "The Characters" - an exhibition and introduction to the Orkney project, artist’s talk and photography workshop are taking place at PAPEY LISTSKJUL (Papay Arts Centre) in Papa Westray Tonje Bøe Birkeland’s exhibition at PAPEY LISTSKJU (Papay Arts Centre) is the first presentation of the artist's work in Britain
FR 21 June, 7.30pm @ PAPEY LISTSKJUL: Exhibition opening and artist’s talk by Tonje Bøe Birkeland. “The Characters” – previous works and new project in Orkney.
ST 22 June : Photography workshop by Tonje Bøe Birkeland |
| |
 |
THE CHARACTERS (2008-2013)
My projects derive from journeys. Through photographs - landscapes and self-portraits - text and found objects I work with female travellers – The Characters – and their adventures.
The researcher Aline Victoria Birkeland travels in the arctic regions and Svalbard at the turn of the twentieth century. She struggles with social expectations and is forced to hide her own scientific discoveries.
Tuva Tengel travels in the Gobi Desert between 1927 and 1937, driven by her adventurous spirit.
Luelle Magdalon Lumiére is stereo photographer. Driven by mystery, illusion and magic, she travels to Orkney, to Papa Westray, Stromness and Hoy – in her early days as a stereo photographer, shortly after the technique of showing the world in three-dimensional images was discovered and patented around 1900.
The travels of the characters as well as the artist are metaphors for an inner journey. The characters are symbols of the creative artist, founded in the historical past and simultaneously an extended self-portrait. I wish to let the characters from the past, meet the audience and artists of today – without the limitations of time – through timeless, unchanged landscapes like the shores of Papa Westray or the sand dunes of the Southern Gobi Desert.
The photographs show gaps and parallels in the friction between past and present, one society and another, a human being and a character from the past. The journey continues. The quest is to find nature within the landscape. The constructed and the physical meet on the border between fiction and reality as I embark on my adventure and experiences from the journeys shape the characters. Artist and character depend on each other in order to preserve their biographies.
For both must rely on each other in order to preserve their own biography for the present and in history. (Huang, Chennie: The unknown adventurer)
|
|
|
