Archive

Curated by Kjersti Solbakken and entitled 'SPARKS', Lofoten International Art Festival 2024 is inspired by the history of the Lofoten Line: a large-scale national initiative from 1861 which sought to make the Lofoten fishery more efficient.

'We work like this. We save sticks and wood and tarp and wire. Then we make things. Then we don’t need those things anymore, and we take them apart. Sometimes sticks and wire go directly into new constructions, sometimes they are stored for later use. Sometimes they are left to rot. And if you don’t absolutely have to, you don’t change. If a stick is too long for this construction, perhaps a shorter stick can be found. You never know when you need that long stick. All your constructions are stored for later constructions.' Silje Figenschou Thoresen

This year's Arctic Arts Festival Exhibition is a collaboration on the occasion of the festival's 60th anniversary, and a prelude to the Lofoten International Art Festival which is held in September.

The exhibition Virvel (Vortex) by the artist Morten Torgersrud is a collaboration between Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF), the exhibition space NOUA and the Borderland Museum.

'The close relation between humans and nature is faltering. Knowledge that was basic to everyday life a few generations ago is now seen as fragments from an exotic time when people struggled for survival. We walk about in nature and see only an idealised image of something we want to appreciate but no longer know. I want to create works that exist in a condition of tension – where the conversation between hands, tools and nature becomes a source of information for the listener. What is there of hidden knowledge that can show us who we are?' Trond Ansten

A fictitous, medical future temple characterized by something reminiscent of anatomical models, as well as healing remedies. The sculptures are made from ceramics, blown glass, brushed steel and textile.

How do economic, political and ideological systems influence our physical surroundings and how we move around in them? In this exhibition, Bianca Hisse skews elements usually perceived as rigid. With her background in choreography, the human body becomes decisive for her sculptures and video works.

The artist Signe Johannessen focuses on the relationship between humans and other species, and how speculation and play can create a free space in which to imagine new ways of being in the world. In the exhibition, an unusual archaeological unearthing of bones and discoveries in a museum archive of taxidermic animals form the basis for an artistic exploration in which unicorns, werewolves and other hybrid bodies can emerge.

Through a variety of visual media, Wendimagegn Belete explores his origins and our contemporary society.

The artistic practices of Inger Johanne Grytting and Mimi Gross can be seen as diametrically different. Grytting is known for her minimalist drawings and paintings, subdued in colour, while Gross unfolds with expressive colours in her renderings of people and landscapes. Despite such differences, but partly also because of them, it makes sense to show their works together. The background for the exhibition is primarily a friendship between the two that has spanned several decades and created artistic connections in the environment in New York of which they are both a part.

The artist duo 'Samvær Under Tilsün' transforms the exhibition space into a user-controlled leisure club for all ages. The main activity is Pling Pong, a form of table tennis where participants get to play with specially made rackets that generate vibrant sounds and images. The room is a mixture of a social meeting place and a multimedia installation.

North Norwegian Art Centre is pleased to start its exhibition program for 2023 with 'Projekti u dialogu - Projects in dialogue' by Damir Avdagić. In the exhibition, two video works Prolazi izdanje 1980-2021 (Passengers between 1980-2021) 2021 and Prevodenje (Translation) 2014 are shown - as well as selected material from the artist's archive. The works address issues related to migration, identity, trauma and reconciliation. The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia form the historical backdrop for the videos and for the artist's own family history.

The starting point for Rina Charlott Lindgren’s artistic practice is drawing, yet she has built out from there and explores a diverse set of materials. She mainly creates works on paper and sculptures in wood, but her art can also be made of, or include, materials such as leather and stone. She concentrates on landscapes and space. With references to – but also divergence from – the Romantic landscape tradition, the works relate just as much to the surrounding space as to their material base.

LIAF 2022 is curated by the duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi and is entitled Fantasmagoriana. It runs from September 3 to October 2 of 2022, at five sites in the city of Kabelvåg. The city was chosen because it’s both the place where Dada artist Kurt Schwitters was confined during the Nazi occupation of Norway, and because it’s now home to the film school Nordland kunst- og filmhøgskole, which offers an excellence in moving image education.

The Hands That Unravel the Sweater is curated by Anne Klontz for The Norwegian Association of Arts and Crafts and The North Norwegian Arts Centre. The exhibition is open from 18 June –14 August 2022 at The North Norwegian Arts Centre in Svolvær, Lofoten. Graphic identity created by William Jokijärvi Andersson and Oskar Laurin.

«Via norske fjell« («Via Norwegian mountains») is a several year long project of Maiken Stene, where she connects a personal understanding of landscape to that of art history and to geological relations. The project consists of an exhibition series entailing «total installations» where the painting is central. Here, she examines how historical ideas about landscape continue to influence our relationship to nature today.

Artificial intelligence has long been interwoven with human life. At North Norwegian Art Centre, Synnøve Sizou G. Wetten through her poetic and atmospheric short films, explores some of the existential questions that arise when the boundaries between biology and technology are blurred.

LIAF 2019 took its inspiration from the multitude of inhabitants, materials, struggles, and processes that reside and take place within the wide intertidal zone surrounding the Lofoten Islands.

LIAF 2017, I Taste the Future, wanted to speculate about the future but without falling into apocalyptic thinking. Science fiction, performance and collective visions of the future were central to this edition of the biennial. This was also the first time LIAF was held in Henningsvær.

With Lofoten’s nature and culture and the demolition-ready hardware and furniture store Jern & Bygg as a framework, LIAF 2015 used as its starting point the idea that our possibility to change the world is about to disappear. 24 artists from various countries participated, and several works were created especially for the biennial.

LIAF 2013 investigated the local community, partly through the use of residential homes, business buildings, garages, fishermen’s shanties and public spaces in Svolvær and Kabelvåg.

LIAF 2011 took place only in Kabelvåg for the first time. Six kilometres west of Svolvær, it had earlier hosted projects and exhibitions under the festival banner, but the main festival location had always been Svolvær.

The organisation of LIAF was transferred to the North Norwegian Art Centre in 2009. Because of this it was decided that the next full festival should be moved to 2011, with a smaller version occurring in the summer of 2010. Helga-Marie Nordby and Erlend Mogård- Larsen were appointed curators of the interim festival. It began on a June weekend in an area called Kuba on Svinøya in Svolvær under the title 'Invasion of Kuba'.

'Towards a Future Present' had great ambitions concerning wider contacts with the outside world, and the duration of the festival was extended to a record-long three months. Several art projects engaged local residents, and a strong commitment was made to an extensive communications network, including a seminar and large youth project called LIAF Junior, which took place under the direction of the artists’ collective Institutt for Farge [Colour Institute].

In 2005, LIAF was established as a foundation, thus becoming independent of Vågan municipality. Curator of the 2006 festival was Maaretta Jaukkuri, who had good knowledge of the region, having been one of the head curators for Skulpturlandskap Nordland [Sculpture Landscape Nordland]. The title of her exhibition – To see the world, to feel with your eyes – reflected a wish to ‘present art which, in various ways, creates situations, images or stories that many can recognise’.

Before the festival took place in 2004, it was renamed Lofoten International Art Festival – LIAF. The local art scene was represented by Kabelvåg artist Thor Erdahl, among others, but, as the name suggests, the exhibition had a stronger international profile than previously.

In 2001, the art festival marked the millennial change by launching its first website. At 27 and 28, Vibeke Sjøvoll and Gry O. Ulrichsen, both from Vågan, were the youngest curators in the festival’s history. They made use of the web catalogue to write a text that considered how poor the economic basis of the festival had become. The title of the festival was Kjærlighetens Ferjereiser [Ferry Travels of Love], taken from Edvard Hoem’s 1974 novel of the same name. In an October 2000 Lofotposten interview, Ulrichsen asserted that she and Sjøvoll had been given free rein for their work, but that the cultural director of the municipality of Vågan, Astrid Arnøy, had expressed a hope that they might integrate Vågan artists into the exhibition.

Among the goals formulated for the 99 incarnation of the festival was that standards should be raised via initiatives such as having a ‘main exhibitor with international experience’ and coordinating ‘exhibitions with themes and relevance beyond the regional and national level’. The greatest responsibility for planning the festival had been assumed by artist Tor Inge Kveum, who lived in Vågan at the time. For 1999, Kveum and Per Gunnar Tverbakk became curators of the festival exhibitions. Tverbakk had a background as an artist and curator, and he had operated the gallery Otto Plonk in Bergen. This was the first time the festival had people involved who called themselves curators.

When the festival returned in 1996, it was with a new orientation, reflected in a separate part of the programme, entitled Kunst i natur [Art in Nature]. Three artists in the project – Inghild Karlsen, Astrid Eidseth Rygh and Inger Haugen – worked with landscape in a broad sense.

While the festival was made up of somewhat fewer exhibitions in 1994 than in previous years, the range of content remained great. The main exhibition was devoted to painter Irma Salo Jæger. Clothing designer Svein Ove Kirkhorn presented attire for men, and, among other things, the programme offered exhibitions involving book illustrations, earthenware and a kite seminar. Kunstnernes næringsforum i Vågan [KNIV, Arts and Business Forum in Vågan] arranged an exhibition in the former post office.

This year's main exhibition featured Dagny and Finn Hald, who showed graphics and ceramic objects. The idea of focusing on a main exhibition with a nationally recognised artist who could draw attention to the festival was proposed in the municipality's earliest plans for a festival. From 1993 onwards, the festival followed this up. The festival itself emphasises crafts in its programme, and ceramist Astrid Hestholm demonstrates Japanese raku firing of ceramics outside the artist centre. The Danish artist and author Dea Trier Mørch receives attention both in the press and in the festival's own newspaper.

In 1992, the festival’s format and scope remained largely the same as in the previous year. The new festival newspaper (published 1992–4) encapsulated this in the headline ‘21 exhibitions – 100 artists’.

When the idea of an art festival in Lofoten began being discussed, a national festival of art was already taking place in various parts of the country from year to year. The national festival was planned under the auspices of Norske kunstforeningers landsforbund [NKLF – Norwegian National Union of Art Associations], the umbrella organisation for the hundred-plus art associations in Norway which, some years earlier, had established a system whereby, an art festival was organised to coincide with the national organisation’s annual meeting. In the spring of 1989 Gerd Rødsand Bremnes – chairperson of Atelier Lofoten, the art association in Svolvær – applied to organise this festival in Svolvær in 1991. In May of the same year, Atelier Lofoten received a message from NKLF that they had been given the challenge of arranging the annual meeting and art festival for 1991.