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The idea for the Nordland sculpture project was presented by Anne Katrine Dolven and was based on the thought that Nordland as a periphery viewed from art centers, could become a new kind of center, with its regional beauty and these artworks in the landscape. A kind of motto for the program has been Michael Heitzer’s statement from the early seventies,which, echoing Martin Heidegger’s thinking, states that a work of art is not put in a place, instead it is the place, Accordingly the artists would create new places by placing their works in specific sites in the landscape or constructed milieus.
The artists invited to contribute to the Artscape Nordland project were consciously selected in a way that would not be limited by artist’s generational or stylistic concerns. The idea has been more of a collection than a uniform, conceptually coherent art project. The international group of artists was selected by a committee of four curators and was based on the idea of an expanding spiral of geographical backgrounds. The core of invited artists would be from Norway and other Nordic countries to insure sensitivity to local culture and identity. The artists I the program came from 18 countries. This led to one of the main lines of criticism of the project and the concern as to whether artists from these foreign countries would be able to understand local traditions and culture. The starting point for each work has been identical. Each artist was invited to a pre-selected municipality to look for a specific site for the forthcoming work. As the project progressed, this work was increasingly done in collaboration with the local artists’ local hosts, who suggested and presented various possibilities. After this initial visit, the artist rendered a sketch of the work that was considered by a small working group as to the suitability of the suggested site and the economic and technical possibilities of realizing the work. A great concern at this stage was also whether the work could tolerate the quite harsh climatic conditions of the region. As in most projects of this nature, economic concerns were great and some of the proposed works had to be abandoned due to their production costs. The subsequent turn of events was different in each case. Some took many years to complete while others could be realized more rapidly. |
The concept of a collection also contained the concept of the site specific. The artists planned their works for the sites they had selected. The aim was to create a real dialogue between the environment and the presence of the work. However, the dramatic changing seasons could not always be taken into consideration. Beyond the fact that in some places snow entirely covers some sculptures in winter this has not been particularly important, as visits to the sculptures are made primarily during the summer months, in keeping with the main tourist season. The sculptures remain in a state of semi-hibernation during the winter.
Most of the artists preferred sites that one had to choose to visit and works have been placed in a preexisting milieu in but a few instances. The landscape of the region is the inherently “sublime” aspect of the project. The artists were also very conscious of the uniqueness of the possible sites offered for to work. The collection of sculptures placed in the county of Nordland, if not being able to present a seamless narrative of sculpture as it has developed since the 1960s (as was the original goal,) nevertheless shows a complex and varied set of approaches to the art of sculpture and its contexts. There is a range from an understanding of sculpture in the expanded field to what is called new genre public art with its central idea of public participation. In most cases, the fact that the work was to be permanently installed on a site affected the choice of both materials and visual idioms. Initially the tendency was to use beautiful local stones as well as local craftsmanship in shaping this material. In terms of visual idioms, a predilection toward what could be defined as more general or even universal issues may be detected. Among the large themes reflected in the works are: nature in dialogue with culture; architectural structures related to the visitor’s presence (shelters, pavilions, scenic lookout points); the human figure in the landscape; local cultural artifacts integrated into new settings; time-related processes (changes in materials, viewer comments filed continually); representations of cultural institutions (temple, museum, studio) and interventions in the landscape that either make the overlooked apparent, or create an ongoing situation for interaction with an existing site. Often the visitor’s gaze is guided -through the sculpture - outwards toward the beautiful scenery surrounding the artwork. Framing the landscape is one of the dominant themes of the project, although realized through different means.
Maaretta Jaukkuri, editor |
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