Ulf Nordfjell
Between Sky and Sea
An installation inside and outside - colours and fabrics, plants and scents, water and air.
Landscape architect Ulf Nordfjell, art historian
Ia Schildt and designer Synnöve Mork search for and tease out the beauty of Millesgården. Using brainwork and handiwork, gently and resolutely, they add new forms, colours and scents to the park and the garden. Spring and summer at Millesgården
2010 - 2012
Last year we experienced how the oak bed and the bistro bed were transformed into a sea of colours ? blue, white, yellow, orange, violet and green throughout the summer until the end of September. It was landscape architect Ulf Nordfjell's first intervention at Millesgården and the beginning of a long-term collaboration. Two-times winner of the gold medal and the 2009 recipient of the - Best in Show- award at Chelsea Flower Show, Nordfjell was inspired by the Josef Frank fabrics in Anne's House on the Lower Terrace.
This year he continues in the same spirit, but now with the entire Millesgården as an exhibition space and in collaboration with his colleagues, art historian Ia Schildt and designer Synnöve Mork. In addition to the trio's interior and exterior installations, .
The flower beds, still inspired by Josef Frank's fabrics, with dahlias, pink and white cosmoses, larkspurs, canna and giant verbena et al. Art historian Synnöve Mork will work with Anne's House on the Lower Terrace and let the Josef Frank fabrics in green hues flow in from the garden. A dense light blue carpet of pratia just outside. Ulf Nordfjell's giant geometric formations - sphere -on the staircases and landings. Lemon and olive trees in rows on the Middle Terrace.
Art historian Ia Schildt will put the spotlight on Carl and Olga Milles with new sign boards.
Opening Saturday 12 June at 11am-5pm | www.millesgarden.se
Press officer: randy.jamtlid@millesgarden.se tel. +46 8-446 75 89 +46 70-560 09 03
Claes Hake, sculpture & paintings
The sculptor Claes Hake, active since the 1960s, presents work from four decades in the exhibition Hake på Millesgården [Hake at Millesgården]. Amerikanaren [The American], a plastic sculpture that resembles moose antlers painted with the American flag, expressionistic bronze sculptures and rings in black bronze demonstrate the artist's width and variation in both expression and material.
The exhibition also presents more recent paintings. The large, often unframed paintings, made on coarse paper, have sculptural qualities, suggesting that they basically deal with the same issues as the sculptures: the interplay of forms, the qualities of the surfaces and the light.
Claes Hake is famous for his large sculptures in granite and other varieties of stone, installed in some 60 places in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the US. He is thus one of Sweden's most well-represented sculptors in public places. The immense arches, portals and vaults provoke the same powerful experience as archaeological remains and raise the same questions: How can one sculpt, manipulate and assemble such big blocks of stone?
Born and raised in Göteborg, Claes Hake is very attached to the province of Bohuslän. Stone, and particularly granite, is a material he grew up with but only recently started to work with. During his first years as an artist, plastic was a new and exciting material. When plastic turned out to be harmful for his health, he moved on to more traditional materials such as clay, plaster and bronze.
Today he works mainly in stone. The heavy work with sculptures requires planning and precision. Before the sculptures are installed, many people and machines have been involved. Painting is the opposite ? it is spontaneous and fast. That is why it is good to combine.
In Claes Hake's art one can trace features of art styles from different decades, such as pop art, expressionism and minimalism. However, his sculptures and paintings are characterised by an individual expression and monumentality, regardless of size. It is also interesting to follow how a successful artist changes his work over time while still retaining his personal idiom.
The women at Millesgården
- images of Olga and Ruth
Open from September 20
In the Artist Home
Olga Milles, née Granner (1874-1967) was a portrait painter, Ruth Milles (1873-1941) was a sculptress and illustrator. The exhibition The Women at Millesgården - images of Olga and Ruth shows works of art in various forms, but also sketches and drafts, as well as personal belongings and letters.
Olga Milles and Ruth Milles were well-educated and as young women they had very clear plans for the future in relation to their professional lives. They pursued their professions for many years, but perhaps not to the extent that they had originally planned. Their lives, both private and professional, came to be characterised by their relationships with the sculptor Carl Milles. Olga Granner became his wife. Ruth Milles was his older sister. With their talent, education and loyalty, these women were key to Carl Milles's success and the establishment of Millesgården. However, they were chiefly artists trying to assert their professional identities at a time when women rarely worked, especially not as artists.
Sixty-seven years have past since Ruth Milles died, and 41 years since Olga Milles died. Most of the people who knew them are also dead now. We still have letters, writings, interviews and photographs, and mainly all the works of art, but we can only guess at the rest.
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Mikael Lundberg
Kliver ur min avsikt och faller / Step out of my intention and fall
31 January - 22 March 2009
The Art Gallery | Millesgården
How do you become a human being? Mikael Lundberg appears to point to the courage of being human, the courage of not shying away from the unbearable or the inexplicable if one is to find a solid base within oneself. The most subjective is also the most universal. When Mikael Lundberg depicts issues of being, randomness and the time span that every human being has to relate to - life's beginning and end - they may spring from seemingly dry statements, through documentation of his own movements or a statistically calculated end time for his own life.
The exhibition Kliver ur min avsikt och faller / Step out of my intention and fall, whose title is borrowed from a poem by Magnus William-Olsson, is a large presentation of Mikael Lundberg's work from 1994 to the present. The artist works slowly, and his pieces are time-consuming and often technically advanced. Based on an idea, he selects a method, material and a manner of execution, which is why his art is multi-faceted but still explicit in the sense that he never deviates from his exploration of life's innermost issues. Mikael Lundberg covers topics that are elusive, frustrating and fascinating. His works create a singular presence, elucidate the subject as a field of investigation in order to simultaneously confront the viewer with questions of responsibility, courage and choice.
Stepping out of one's intention - does it mean stepping out of the imagined regulations that various conventional systems such as creeds, rule systems and market forces inscribe the individual into, and realise the power in one's own actions and decisions? To allow oneself to fall? Humans try to organise their lives, on all levels, make it comprehensible, understandable, but Mikael Lundberg discusses entropy, that is, the tendency in a system to change in the direction of its most probable and thus most disordered state. Everything falls apart, all matter is in a state of decay. Among other things, Mikael Lundberg's art deals with how randomness contributes to form our world. In his explorations of our conditions and vital necessities, he chooses to approach the issues from different angles, which, from a concentrated focus, accelerate and move into a vertiginous space - every human being's existential choice. A section of the exhibition comprises works that, in a sense, could be called self-portraits: Lifetimer. Lifeline, Kapsel s, Kapsel m, and Marsyas. The first work, from 1995, is composed of a printed circuit board with a digital counter that counts down the artist?s statistically calculated remaining lifetime in seconds. Marsyas is a silicone cast of the artist?s body, depicted as a skin hung on the wall. In Greek mythology, Marsyas is a Frygian satyr who found a double flute which he learnt to play so well that, in a moment of hubris, he challenged the god Apollo to a contest of music, on the terms that the winner could treat the defeated party in any way he wished. The god won and chose to flay Marsyas alive as a warning to others. Ovid writes about how fauns, satyrs, nymphs and shepherd boys cried over Marsyas' fate and their tears were the source of the river which today bears the name of the unhappy satyr. Mikael Lundberg situates us next to the one who challenged authority, the one who challenged his own fate. To see one's death is to relate to life.
Isabella Nilsson
The exhibition is a collaborative project between Norrköpings Konstmuseum, who has produced and organised the exhibition, Konsthallen Bohusläns museum, Västerås Konstmuseum and Millesgården. The accompanying digital exhibition catalogue may be downloaded from www.millesgarden.se
See also: www.mikaellundberg.se
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