PRESS RELEASE
5 April 2016
Tallinn Art Hall
Johna Hansen, Katrine Gram Sloth and Laura Põld’s joint exhibition at the
Art Hall Gallery
Home has not been a castle for a long time; home is a domesticable place,
say Johna Hansen (Sweden, Denmark), Katrine Gram Sloth (Denmark,
Norway) and Laura Põld (Estonia) with their exhibition SENSE OF PLACE.
And you are invited to attend the opening on Thursday, April 7th at 5 p.m.
The event will start with Johna’s performance, which she will repeat on
Saturday, April 9th at 4 p.m., as well as on the last Friday and Saturday of
the exhibition, May 6th and 7th.
These three young women from Northern Europe, who are slightly over thirty,
have participated in many residency programmes and travelled in various places
around the world, can definitely be called space travellers. Their approaches to
the places they have been encompass each of their lives and art schools, their
ability to observe and the acuteness of their cognition depending on their
individuality: Johna reconciles the functionality of architecture with the rationality
and customs of human behaviour; Katrine illuminates even the smallest
landscape into a panoramic view; and Laura grows the most two-dimensional
surface into a poetic space.
Laura, Johna and Katrine, have brought lots of impressions to Tallinn from their
travel experiences in Japan, Iceland and Spain to measure the foreign and the
familiar, stage and build. They are manually skilled (“my hands are just as
present as my senses,” says Johna, “…speaking simultaneously about things
that fill volumes, like cultural affiliation, dreams and beliefs,” says Katrine). They
create tactile objects that bear the mark of being touchable, even when they are
photos or paintings. These objects are ephemeral, short-term and consigned to
disappear like a nomad’s wanderings, but as long as the wanderer has the
strength, they will restart in a new place.
Katrine Gram Sloth (b. 1983 in Aalborg) is a Danish artist who lives and works in
Copenhagen and Bergen. Katrine obtained her MA from Konstfack in Stockholm
and her work combines her background in film and scenography with
contemporary art practices. She has appeared at prestigious exhibitions at home
and abroad, including the One Thousand Books Art Book Festival Carlsberg in
Copenhagen, the NAU Gallery in Stockholm and the Alibaba International Photo
Festival in Spain. She has also collaborated as an artist and writer in various
European publications and worked at the Danish Film Institute in colour
processing. Katrine Gram Sloth is represented by Arrivals, a Stockholm onlinegallery. www.katrinesloth.com
Laura Põld (b. 1984 in Tallinn) is an Estonian artist, who lives in Vienna and
Tallinn. Laura received her MA from the Department of Painting at the University
of Tartu and previously studied ceramics at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She
has participated in exhibitions in Vienna, Tallinn, Moscow, Berlin, Carcassonne,
Bayreuth and elsewhere. Her latest solo exhibitions include Road to Silver Mine
at the Chemin du Bonheur Gallery in Japan and a walk, a wall, some mountains
(with Titania Seidl) at Galerie Ulrike Hrobsky’s Showroom for Young Art in
Vienna. Laura Põld’s comprehensive solo exhibition just ended at Tartmus, which
was accompanied by an extensive catalogue. She is also one of the candidates
for the 2016 Köler Prize. www.laurapold.com
Johna Hansen (b. 1982 in Linköping) is a Swedish artist living and working in
Copenhagen. Johna graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts with
a degree in architecture. She has appeared in many international group shows
and solo exhibitions in Yamanashi and Copenhagen. She has also participated in
visiting artist programmes (Andrea Zittel’s Institute for Investigative Living, Frank
Lloyd Wright Foundation’s artist residency programme in Arizona) as well as the
ZK/U residency programme in Berlin. www.johnahansen.dk
Special Thanks: Danish Art Workshops /Statens Værksteder for Kunst, NordicBaltic Mobility Programme, Danish Arts Foundation, Cultural Endowment of
Estonia, The Estonian Artists' Association
SENSE OF PLACE
Johna Hansen, Katrine Gram Sloth and Laura Põld
Art Hall Gallery
8 April – 8 May 2016
Vabaduse väljak 6
Wed-Sun 12 noon – 6 p.m., free
kunstihoone.ee
More inforamtion:
Laura Põld
pold.laura@gmail.com
Press release compiled by:
Tamara Luuk
tamara@kunstihoone.ee