Steinunn Helga Sigurdardottir & Hanne Godtfeldt - endnu ikke...ikke mere - 9-10. til 6-11.1999
[not yet no more]

Hanne Godtfeldt og Steinunn Helga Sigurdárdottir

8. oktober - 6. november 1999

"not yet no more" is the last in the series of Dialogue Exhibitions held by North-udstillingssted in which each member of North invited an artist from outside the group to collaborate in a close, critical dialogue.
The foremost room of the exhibition hall contains Hanne Godtfeldt's text and audio installation. The text, which is in the form of lists of words in a stringent composition, occupies the walls. The sound comes from ten Walk-men which lie in a niche in a steel girder that runs for the full length of the room. Hanging from these in thin, black cables are ten miniature loudspeakers without cabinets, from each of which comes the sampled sound of a person's breathing. The loudspeakers are suspended at the same height and, emphasised by the character of the room, are reminiscent of an industrial assembly line or a store room. Cables, adapters and wires are visible and connected to the five sockets installed on the girder.

Steinunn Helga Sigurdardóttir's simple, minimalist installation is in the rearmost, big room. Several thousand square drawings are piled on the floor in a column. The drawings are almost identical. Sigurdardóttir has registered the passing of time minute by minute with pencil and paper. Written on the back of each drawing are the words: "1 minute", the year and her signature. A book, which is lying on a shelf, contains a precise, day-by-day record of when the artist was drawing and when she was taking a break. There are elastic bands by the side of the book to hold a rolled up drawing together - the artist is suggesting that the spectators can take a drawing with them.

A book containing texts and drawings, a joint production, lies on a shelf in the central corridor between the two exhibition rooms.
For several years Hanne Godtfeldt has been concerned with considerations regarding ethics, existence and identity in connection with developments in the field of biological engineering. She has asked questions regarding concepts of control and - with the point of departure in her fascination with the body's dual existence as experienced body and observed object - focused on the question of where the body and consciousness, with these developments, are going.

Steinunn Helga Sigurdardóttir's works possess a stubborn uncompromisingness in their unspectacular, minimalist form which manifests itself in an extremely tense relationship with the 'soft' themes she works with. As an Icelander, Sigurdardóttir has in recent years taken her point of departure in Icelandic history in particular when working with such subjects as the character of recollection and the loss of history and tradition. Her exhibitions have therefore - from a perspective different to that of Godtfeldt - been concerned with roots and identity.

With this exhibition the two artists wished to focus on the vulnerability of life and, not least, on the simple fact that we are here.
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