The exhibition is a rendez-vous between the ceramist Heidi Bjørgan’s expressive clay art and the collection of the National Museum of Arts and Design. Heidi Bjørgan is herself the curator of the exhibition and this is her first show in her home town. The Story of an Affair is the tale of an artist who sits down in the director’s chair and, by means of the pottery collection of the National Museum of Arts and Design, stages the dramatic chronicle about her sources of artistic inspiration. It is the strange account of an affair between Heidi Bjørgan’s expressive contemporary pottery and the luster glazes of the 19th century, Art Nouveau, Finnish oxblood and the ruthlessness and refinement of East Asia. The scenario finds its final form in a cacophony of wallpaper, velvet, mirrors and clay art in low-key film lighting heavily inspired by for instance the British director Peter Greenaway, the theatre director Robert Wilson’s collection exhibition in the Danish Museum of Decorative Art in Copenhagen, "Anna didn't come home that night," the contemporary artist Matthew Darbyshire’s interventions in one of the world’s most significant pottery collection, the W.A. Ismay Collection at the Zwingerpalasset in Dresden – and George Ohr, the Mad potter of Biloxi.
Read Jorunn Veiteberg comments on Heidi Bjørgan´s exhibition The story of an Affair as PDF here or at Norwegian Crafts.
Project leader for the exhibition: Steffen Wesselvold Holden
Photo: Thor Brødreskift
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Earlier Event: May 16
No Two Alike
Later Event: October 19
Exhibition at Kunstnerforbundet