Gunvor Nervold Antonsen: The Adaptables / Aura Satz: Warnings in Waiting

This summer Kunstnernes Hus is pleased to present two solo exhibitions: The Adaptables by Gunvor Nervold Antonsen will be on view in the skylight halls, while the video installation Warnings in Waiting by Aura Satz will be presented in the lower exhibition hall.

Gunvor Nervold Antonsen: The Adaptables
The exhibition presents four new series of works created for Kunstnernes Hus. Through an energetic and rough-hewn style, Gunvor Nervold Antonsen takes a scrutinizing look at society, existence and identity, invariably in an interplay with the primal forces and cycles of nature. There is an underlying power in the artist’s use of materials and techniques, a form of resistance that provides an inroad into her themes. Monumental textile montages meet chainsaw-carved wood figures that bear traces of the creative process, evidence that art, like humanity, wages battle.

The point of departure for The Adaptables is conversations the artist has had over time with persons who have lived vulnerable lives. From conversations about their life experiences, Nervold Antonsen has created a narrative in visual form that conveys both power and powerlessness. And while the works evoke associations with archetypal representations in, for example, the icon tradition, the imagery the artist pursues is one that describes the brutal and ordinary aspects of being human rather than idealized states. Among Nervold Antonsen’s objectives is the juxtaposition of opposites: the material and the ethereal, growth and decay. The coarseness in her techniques, materials and execution, as well as the works’ dimensions, their mass, number and weight, play a considered role.

About the artist
Gunvor Nervold Antonsen (b. 1974) was educated at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, and lives and works in Norway. She has exhibited at Trondheim kunstmuseum, Kunstnerforbundet, Kunsthall Stavanger, Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Vigelandsmuseet and Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall, and her work is in the collections of Nasjonalmuseet, KODE, Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum, Norges Bank and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and she has made commissioned work for KORO, among others. Nervold Antonsen is also actively engaged in textile art’s social and political role.

The exhibition is kindly supported by Bergesenstiftelsen, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Ingrid Lindbäck Langaards Stiftelse, KiN - Kunstsentrene i Norge and Norsk kulturråd.

Aura Satz: Warnings in Waiting
Warnings in Waiting is a three-screen film and sound installation for Kunstnernes Hus’ lower exhibition hall. The project re-imagines sirens in order to forge a new understanding of present and long-term emergency. The siren serves as a worldwide symbol of potential trauma, an emblem warning of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management. Drawing on Aura Satz’s ongoing documentary film project Preemptive Listening (2017-ongoing), three segments of the feature film explore the lifecycle of a siren, with a soundtrack composed by an array of experimental musicians.

About the artist
Aura Satz (b. 1974, Barcelona) is a London-based artist who works with film, sound, performance and sculpture. Her works explore a distributed, expanded and shared notion of voice, and are made in conversation, using dialogue as both method and subject matter. Satz has made a body of work centred on various sound technologies in order to explore notation systems, code and encryption, and ways in which these might resist standardisation, generating new soundscapes, and in turn new forms of listening and attending to the other.

She has performed, exhibited and screened her work internationally, including Tate Modern, BFI Southbank, the New York Film Festival, Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Sydney Biennale, NTT InterCommunication Center Tokyo, High Line Art NY, the Rotterdam Film Festival, MoMA NY, Sharjah Art Foundation, Kadist San Francisco, Onassis Stegi, and Sonic Acts. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Wellcome Collection; the Hayward Gallery project space; John Hansard Gallery; George Eastman Museum; Dallas Contemporary; ARTIUM, Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo. Her films are distributed by LUX.

Warnings in Waiting is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Scandinavia. The project is a collaboration with the Walker Institute of Art, Minneapolis, and Tate Modern, London.