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A harbinger of spring
“Never before have Icelanders enjoyed the possibility of such diversity in the arts...”
The above remark – made as the very first Reykjavík Arts Festival opened in 1970 – still holds true today. The festival has been an annual occurrence since 2005, and at this year's opening ceremony – which took place at the Reykjavík Art Museum on Wednesday – the speeches of mayor Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir and artistic director Hrefna Haraldsdóttir set the tone for what was to come.
The museum's windows were adorned with photographs by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne: “I've always loved the advertising technology that I've seen covering busses and windows, that let the people inside see out — albeit dimly — but the folks outside see only the giant images. It's as if the whole world were wrapped in images and ads, as if every surface were not only itself, but something else as well. Playing with this phenomenon, I have proposed putting windows and doors over the windows. An obvious idea, maybe; but if a very modern art museum can come off as itself and also a combination luxury hotel, fabric shop, and ordinary house—then that would be wonderful,” Byrne says of his exhibition, which is called Inside Out.
This year's festival focuses on photographs, and its first exhibition opened in the gallery of the National Museum, the country's main exhibition space for decades. The exhibition is called Saga-Steads. In the footsteps of W. G. Collingwood and features works by photographer Einar Falur Ingólfsson, inspired by the watercolors, drawings and photographs of British artist William Gershom Collingwood (1854-1932). Alongside Ingólfsson's photographs, the exhibition also features some of the 300 paintings Collingwood made while staying in Iceland. “When I looked through Sögustaðir [Saga Steads – ed.], the book based on the exhibition, I felt an urge to travel myself,” Education Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir said at the opening. “This exhibition is an engaging dialogue between two artist whose journeys through the country are separated by a hundred years. Much has changed during that time, but the country is the same and they document the landscape they see, each in their own way.”
The pinnacle of the festival's celebration of the photograph is Cindy Sherman's exhibition in the National Gallery of Iceland. Sherman's most famous series is Untitled Film Stills, completed between 1977 and 1980. She started out as a painter but turned to photography in in the 60's after growing frustrates with the limitations of painting. “I was meticulously copying other art,” she explains, “and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead."
The Reykjavík Arts Festivals will go on until June 5, 2010. The programme can be found at artfest.is.