Event Details
Dates
07/10/2011 – 07/10/2011
07 October – 29 October, 2011
Visual Art
Magnhild Opdøl
Dead Dog Farm- Magnhild Opdøl at Galway Arts Centre
This October sees a very special exhibition happening at Galway Arts Centre with new work by Norwegian artist Magnhild Opdøl. Drawing inspiration from both the nature in her home country as well as Norwegian history and kitch design from the middle class and middle aged. Her hometown Sunndalsøra is a friendship town of Twin Peaks and with this as a starting point for this body of work she explore narratives towards other connection between real life experience and the TV series Twin Peaks. She makes works investigating the sublime balance between life and death through the mediums of drawing, sculpture, taxidermy, photography and video.
Dead Dog Farm: “A dead dog attracts the attention of both the worst and the best types of people.”
This unique body of work engages with the artist’s larger remit of exposing “the poetics of the dead”. Though something we shy away from, Opdøl offers the viewer the opportunity to look again at death and decay, inspired by the tradition of Vanitas Paintings; a reminder of the certainty of death. Beyond this is the artists fascination with the beauty in the beastly; looking beyond the gore and grizzle of the physical to the natural rhythm and aesthetic awe involved in the organic recession of life. The darkness of this exhibition still has an underlying humor that comes from the Nordic mindset and arts history. Sourcing specimens humanely, Opdøl reuse the cast-offs of eaten or road-killed carcasses, making use of the inedible remains of game from Norwegian hunting teams.
Opdøl poises Ireland as a catalyst through which her homeland becomes more distinctive and definable. Having completed her MFA at National College of Arts & Design, Dublin, she has continued to show regularly both nationally and internationally. She sites classical drawing as template for her finely honed draftsman-ship skills, rendering her own personal balance between representative and abstracted works on paper. Other influences for the artist include; “storytellers like David Lynch and his strange world, the Dogma concept in choosing more DIY solutions in the production of works along with the authors such as Murakami and the Swedish crime-writing duo Roslund & Hellstrom”.
Opdøl has also recently exhibited at Roscommon Arts Centre and was selected for the RHA Futures 2010.
An important exhibition not to be missed, Dead Dog Farm opens from 6pm Friday the 7th of October to the 29th October, at Galway Arts Centre.
