BRIDGE

When the BRIDGE founders, Pernilla Iggström and Christel Lundberg, were thinking about the ethos of BRIDGE and working towards the BRIDGE24 exhibition in Brixton in  September 2024, they asked themselves “What keeps the English people together?, What do they all share and have in common?” The answer was a mug of tea – a cuppa! Pernilla explains “There aren’t many things a mug of tea can’t solve… We thought carefully about the key values of BRIDGE – embracing diversity and building bridges –  and  we asked ourselves how could we best work to bring the locals of Brixton together with BRIDGE?… We didn’t just want to set up an exhibition that didn’t include the local community and then leave, so it was really important to us that we started explore and integrate Brixton and its community in some way. With its rich history, Brixton is really relevant to what BRIDGE is about.”

By knocking on the doors of people who live and/or work in Brixton  Christel and Pernilla initiated conversations by asking them if they could show them their favourite mug and if they could take a photo of them holding it. Many of the local people they met were open to this process and generously shared some quite personal stories about their lives.

The MUG project is a continuous process, with the two curators remaining in touch with the locals they interviewed. The curators’ experience of these encounters will be presented at BRIDGE24 in September at the historical venue of Downstairs at the Department Store on Ferndale Road.

Christel and Pernilla will continue this art intervention to gain deeper knowledge of the community and forge new friendships. For more information about the MUG Project and please contact Pernilla and Christel on the email [email protected].

BRIDGE24

Venue: Downstairs at the Department Store, 248 Ferndale Road, London SW9 8FR.

Dates: 20-25 September 2024.

Timings: Open 10am-5pm daily – free and all welcome!

For our inaugural BRIDGE exhibition in November 2023, 10 artists from ÖSKG and 10 from ArtCan were selected and paired together by curators Pernilla Iggstrom (ArtCan) and Christel Lundberg (ÖSKG). BRIDGE is an on-going project, encouraging cross-cultural artistic collaboration, where the purpose is to connect across physical and metaphorical borders and break down cultural, social and political barriers in order to increase diversity, understanding and inclusion. The process, rather than the end product, is the focal point of this on-going collaboration, and the results and friendships formed, speak for themselves.

This blog details the work of each of the ten pairings for the Tjörnedala Konsthall exhibition in Sweden in November 2023.

Marcus Bagge (SE) and Mirella Bandini (UK) entered into a dialogue of sorts – a journey of discovery; of pushing one another beyond the limits of their comfort zones; of challengingone another. It was an intuitive ‘conversation’ and the experimental and playful nature of this collaborative endeavour allowed both artists a measure of freedom in which to explore and grow.

Anna Rochegova (SE) and Daniel H Bell (UK) are both painters who take inspiration from nature. Together their work encompassed an assortment of characters, environments, flora and fauna. They had a common interest in the small details of the natural world, the harmony that exists there, and the non-human encounters that are often overlooked.

Molly Lambourn (UK) and Maria Björklund (SE) bonded over the fascinating life of Josephine Bonaparte. Their drawings explored the different sides to Josephine, from immigrant to empress and beloved figure – she was an intellectual force who they found endlessly intriguing. Josephine was famous for keeping lifelong friendships and in exploring her, the pair forged theirs.

Ben Thompson (SE) and Diane Frost (UK) used language as their primary material and tested the transformative power of words through myths, stories and poetry. Their installation dealt with the confusion around human/non-human tongues, the fragile pathways that we create through art and the illusory transparency of translation.

Susanna Gunnarson (SE) and Jane Higginbottom (UK) had a strong shared interest and fascination with plants. It became their source of inspiration. Working together, they played with colour – experimenting with Eco printing and dyeing yarn from a local alpaca farm, both using plants found in the garden. Their work was intuitive and full of surprises…

Bridging waterways from Sweden and the UK through the Baltic and North Seas, artists Catherine Jacobs (UK) and Jonas Rooth (SE) brought together their abstract responses to these natural worlds as expressed in glass, photography, mono-printing and video, producing a varied and poetic response to these landscapes.

The collaboration between Svetlana Atlavina (UK) and Adrian Room (SE) represented a harmonious fusion of the intellectual, the emotional, and the universal – it was an ode to the enduring essence of human connection and the shared rhythm of life itself. They delved into a search for inner meaning, purpose and curiosity with questions about our limited time on Earth.

Melanie Jordan (UK) and Anja Richardt Krabbe (SE) both live and work in very rural locations that are beautifully inspiring yet isolated. Their collaboration was intuitive, allowing their works to gently interweave as their creative friendship grew through the regular sharing of thoughts and ideas. Anja’s vibrant abstract pieces and Melanie’s more subtle textiles, although different, managed to communicate their unique bond.

Peter Mammes (UK) and Jonas Larsen (SE) created an anti-war installation – made to juxtapose the broken and ugly side of war with the fancy and extravagant media image that is portrayed to us. The artwork was reminiscent of the backdrop used at glitzy award ceremonies like the Oscars, and the piece encouraged its audience to participate and take photos with it.

Teresa Rooth (SE) and Phillip McConnell (UK) have very different art practices, but both focus on the small details. Teresa worked by hand, painstakingly painting each detail, while Phillip’s Glitch art was created by corrupting the raw data and code of pictures digitally.

Hello,

I’m Pernilla Iggstrom, a Swedish Korean artist and curator based in Brentwood, Essex. Here in this space, I’m delighted to share the progress of a very special project I’ve co-founded and am co-curating called BRIDGE and will be writing alongside some of the fantastic creatives involved in this project.

I was born in Korea and was adopted to Sweden as a baby. I started to draw as soon as I could hold a pen and was sure I would go to art school. Propelled by my own cultural background, I soughed to see the world and its different cultures from a young age.   At college, I studied languages and then worked in the business world before I moved to London in 2007 to do a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting at City & Guilds of London Art School.   In my second year, I stared to explore the loss of my cultural heritage, using photos from my family albums as a starting point. I created collages that I then painted.  I became interested in the relation between our interior and exterior and how there is so much more to a person than what meets the eye. I often half jokingly say that although I look Asian on the outside, I am blond and blue-eyed on the inside. Referring to being European and specifically so, Swedish. I might use my own story as a springboard to execute my ideas but the aim is for my work to be universal, to spread diversity and break down stereotypical and preconceived ideas.

Likewise, my curatorial practice is imbued with diversity, inclusion and understanding, to connect across cultural and social borders – the main focus in BRIDGE.

The purpose of BRIDGE is to connect people who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily meet. To break down those barriers that hinders diversity and understanding, to connect and bring diverse groups of people closer culturally and socially.

It all started at the wonderful Supermarket Independent Art Fair  which takes place every Spring in Stockholm, Sweden. It’s brings international artist groups together to connect and collaborate. I first curated ArtCan’s booth a Supermarket in 2021 and again in 2022. It was there, at a speed networking event in 2022, I met Christel Lundberg, Manager of ÖSKG. We immediately connected and realised our art groups resonated and shared common ethos.

Christel shares “As the curator and director of the artist-run Tjörnedala Konsthall, run by ÖSKG (East Skåne Artists’ Group), South-Eastern Sweden, I am always in a networking state of mind, as I look for long-term exchanges and contacts that will change the art scene both for artists and for artists. Meeting with the brilliant curator Pernilla Iggström at the Supermarket Art Fair, was a memorable moment – our chemistry was immediate, and I felt from the beginning of our conversations that we could work together to create a beautiful project together with the participating artists from both groups”.

And so the BRIDGE collaboration between ArtCan artists and ÖSKG artists was born! The main purpose of BRIDGE is to build bridges across physical and metaphorical borders, and to dissolve cultural, social and political barriers.

For our inaugural BRIDGE exhibition in 2023 at Tjörnedala Konsthall, 10 artists from each group were selected and paired together. Initially strangers, their only guidelines were to communicate via email. Phone calls, video calls etc, beyond the studio space and exchange ideas – to take inspiration from each other’s art practice, life, working environment and culture. They had free hands to use any materials and processes to create a joint installation each. Friendships were formed. The result were 10 installations, showing their joint journey in November – December 2023. I will post more about that next time.