Art Link until 7.1.07 Göteborg Konsthall (S)

This autumn the Göteborg Konsthall will be presenting a group exhibition of works by artists, all sharing the intention of involving and engaging us and having us examine more closely the society we live in, our own selves and our daily lives. The exhibition is entitled Art Link and consists of six works by seven artists who all in their various ways hope to stimulate people to participate actively in their projects. The works thus belong to the category known as ‘participatory art’, art with a social ambition focusing on processes and human relationships and situations rather than on the art object as such. In projects of this kind the artists often have as their starting point some specific social, cultural or political context which they aim to discuss, research or present alternatives to. In recent years there has been a surge of this type of artistic projects. Art Link exhibits a small selection of the various approaches and methods used.

Apart from the fact that these artists share certain common features, their choices of content and working method differ. Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen have devised ‘workshops of complaint’ as part of their Complaints Choir. Assisted by other participants and a composer they have converted these expressions of complaint into songs, which they have then gone on to perform in choral form in the cities where the four art projects have been held. In her work Funk Lessons from 1983, Adrian Piper invited visitors to the exhibition to listen and dance to funk music, the intention being to stir reflections on the stereotypical image we have of African-Americans. Superflex presents the project Guaraná Power, an energy drink that the art group have produced in collaboration with a peasant guarana cooperative from Maués in Brazil. The Power and Illumination Projec is Annika Lundgren’s alternative to energy production, in the form of fitness centres’ spinning bicycles as energy source. In The West London Social Resource Project Stephen Willats has worked with residents of four London areas, with emphasis laid on their relationships to their immediate environment and behavioural patterns.
Esther Shalev-Gerz presents First Generation, about first generation immigrants to Sweden and their responses to confrontation with the new land. After a month this artwork will be removed from the exhibition to be replaced by a parallel exhibition opening on 18 November with an entirely new work, The place of art, by the same artist. The Place of Art is a video installation in two parts. Based on contributions from 38 artists living in the suburb Bergsjön, the project deals with questions of the relation between art and place. The work is shown in two places, Rymdtorget´s shopping center in Bergsjön and Göteborgs Konsthall, linking contrasting spatial constructions and cultural domains. TheArt Link exhibition marks the start of a programme with the same title in which the Göteborg Konsthall aims to develop a number of projects over the next two years. The Art Link programme will focus on communication, co-operation and the creation of networks. The programme’s basic aim is to promote and create links between contemporary art and the environments in which art operates, links between different art projects, between the practitioners and consumers of art and between people in general.