On September 12 this autumn's main group exhibition Against Time opened at Bonniers Konsthall. The exhibition gathers 20 artists and authors who, from different perspectives and using different methods, work with time, history and storytelling. Common to them all is a fascination to recreate the past; a past that is reinterpreted, re-used and given new meanings through creative rewritings and new writings. The exhibition questions the methods of storytelling: how is continuity created, how is it broken down, are there other ways of telling? But it is also concerned with the way we create history through our narratives and with the function that the image and the reconstruction of the past performs in the present.

A main theme in the exhibition is an interest for literature's forms of narration and its function in contemporary visual art. The exhibition is devised as a crossover between visual art and literature in which several of those contributing to the exhibition also work as fictional authors. An important element in the exhibition is the comprehensive anthology Anachronisms in which the artists and authors participate. Their respective roles overlap in some cases in the same way that their contributions shift between text and image.

Against Time is an exhibition where time is an expressed dimension. The architecture devised for the exhibition by the Swedish architectural firm SPRIDD emphasises this by leaving a space for reading to occupy the heart of a labyrinthine series of rooms. It underscores the artists' play with time and history, and counteracts the Konsthall's transparency and clarity by using textiles to create darkness. A wide-ranging programme of readings, performances, discussions and lectures will be given during the course of the exhibition. Several of the contributing artists have produced new works especially for the exhibition.

Contributors:
Ulla von Brandenburg (Germany), Gerard Byrne (Ireland), Marcel van Eeden (The Netherlands), Annika von Hausswolff (Sweden), Johannes Heldén (Sweden), Leif Holmstrand (Sweden), Martin Karlsson (Sweden), Fabian Kastner (Sweden), Joachim Koester (Denmark), Robert Kusmirowski (Poland), Lotta Lotass (Sweden), Ján Mancuska (Czech Republic), Melvin Moti (The Netherlands), Gerald Murnane (Australia), Lina Selander (Sweden), Marie Silkeberg (Sweden), Johan Thurfjell (Sweden), Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia), Per Wizén (Sweden), Ulrika Minami Wärmling (Sweden)

Curator for the exhibition is director of Bonniers Konsthall, Sara Arrhenius.

For more information and high-resolution images please visit http://www.bonnierskonsthall.se

Wednesday Evenings at Bonniers Konsthall
Five Wednesday evenings during Against Time.
Upcoming evenings in October:

Wed 24/10
The Confiscation of Memory
In contemporary Europe we see evidence of how historical writing and language are used as political tools. The writer Dubravka Ugresic left Croatia for political reasons in 1993. She now lives in Amsterdam. Her writing is a resistance against oblivion, as well as a critique of how the construction of a common past can be used for nationalist purposes. Dubravka Ugresic talks about her writing.

Introduced and concluded by assistant curator Caroline Elgh.

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