Artists are often on the lookout to discover new and exciting ways to express their thoughts, ideas and creativity. Experimenting with different mediums, Norwegian artist and musician (better known as A-ha's keyboardist) Magne Furuholmen, visited the Edinburgh-based Dovecot Tapestry Studio in early 2013 to consider a project radically different from his previous ones and inspired by the idea of exposing his own work to the craft and perspectives of other artists.
Known for his ceramic, glass, woodcut and dry-point print works and for large-scale public art commissions, including designs for sails and architectural installations, as well as performance and music interventions, Furuholmen developed after his visit to Dovecot Studio a woodcut print designed specifically for a tapestry, working in close collaboration with the weavers to hone the final choice of design and colour directions.
Artist and weavers remained in touch throughout the process of weaving the tapestry and, nearly two years after their first interaction, the result of this collaboration - a piece entitled "Glass Onion" - is finally on display.
The tapestry forms indeed the centre piece of a compact exhibition - entitled "Peeling a Glass Onion" - currently on at Dovecot. The piece was woven by Rudi Richardson and Freya Sewell using cotton warp, wool, linen, jute and metallic flat wrapped yarn.
There is actually a very musical inspiration behind this piece that directly moves from the lyrics of John Lennon's eponymous song. Furuholmen played with the ambiguity of the lyrics and the layers of self-quotation and references, reflecting them in his work.
Text, interpreted as a poetic construction or as lyrics as well as a series of shapes and forms, was the main inspiration for Furuholmen's first solo exhibition entitled "KUTT" (Norwegian for cut/s) at the Henie Onstad Art Center in Oslo in 1995.
This theme returns in this event, not just in "Glass Onion", but also in "Norwegian Wood" (2014) and "Everybody's Got Something To Hide" (2014), works that are directly inspired by Beatles' tracks.
While he developed the work for the tapestry, Furuholmen also focused on creating further text-based pieces using his lettering and mark making processes. "Peeling a Glass Onion" (2015) and "Oh Scotia" (2015) were drawn from the artist's experiences of visiting Scotland to work on the tapestry during the independence debate where the phrase "peeling a glass onion" took further meanings.
The experience of being in and around Dovecot also inspired large ceramic pieces. While his earliest woodcut prints integrated marks made with a chainsaw and other cutting equipment, the ceramic pieces entitled "Literary Constructs" (2015) were instead physically assaulted and beaten with a baseball bat.
These pieces are accompanied by a new monotype print suite simply entitled "Literary" (2015) and incorporating the image of the ceramics into the print, starting from the principle of working with words entirely constructed from the letters of the title to create new and associated meanings.
The ceramic pieces in Dovecot's North Gallery space are instead examples of the artist's earliest experiments in working with dark Eastern European clay and they explore the process of making, stamping and scratching text into the ceramic surface.
The artist conceives these works as 3D paintings, with the shape of the vase inspiring different poetic associations of words that move around the circumference. The exhibition also includes a series of self-portraits which play with the idea of what a portrait should be.
"Myself as a crowd II" (2014) and "Myself as a failed painting" (2014) are versions of the artist's self but also represent the opposite and therefore what the artist believes he is not. "Myself as a dead bug II "(2014) is a homage to John Lennon and "Self-portrait as a landscape" (2014) is a tribute to the artist's late friend and mentor, Norwegian contemporary artist Kjell Nupen.
Magne Furuholmen's "Peeling a Glass Onion", is on at the Dovecot Gallery, 10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, until 25th April 2015.
If you're looking instead for something Beatles-inspired coming from the Scandinavian countries that you may want to listen to as a pre-Easter holiday soundtrack, check out The Beatles' single "She Loves You / Twist and Shout (Live in Stockholm 1963)".
Unreleased for over 50 years, the single - now out on Kutmusic - is part of a set recorded in October 1963 at Sveriges Radio's Karlaplansstudio for the program "Pop '63". Though the single is largely sold out, there are still a few copies left on Amazon.
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