Alt Går Bra

Contemporary art collective duo

Ongoing: Strandamalere 2024

Strandamalerne

Exhibition, performances, embroidery contest, workshops, seminar, talks, book

Solo exhibition, Kunst i dei tusen heimar: Strandamalerne, Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum, Førde, March 21st- August 11th, 2024. The exhibition shows over 50 new artworks produced by Alt Går Bra for a space of nearly 500 sqm. on three floors of the museum. Artworks include two large installations, Mona Lisa 1952, a 4x6x2m free reconstruction of a Louvre Museum display for Mona Lisa, and Heng på, an installation of growing size, showing Strandamalere paintings lent by the public.

For the performance Strandaparade, Alt Går Bra produced 12 large faner (banners), bearing images of one Strandamalere painting, ten Mona Lisa paintings, and a copy of Alt Går Bra's own fane--the original being in the National Museum's collection. Some forty people parade the 12 banners at Norway's national day parade in Bergen and the streets of Førde for Førdefestivalen. Performances also take the form of Augusto Boal's "Invisible Theater." In collaboration with DNT, the Norwegian Hiking Association, hikers carry Strandamalere paintings through landscapes and cityscapes, improvising tableaux vivant exhibitions and talks. "Invisible Theater" performances have also been staged for Strandabroderi, with participants embroidering in public spaces.

A nationwide embroidery contest, Strandabroderi, invites the public to embroider a Strandamalere motif created by Alt Går Bra. Participants are welcome to submit their finished embroderies to the museum to be included in Alt Går Bra's exhibition. For further information, please visit www.altgarbra.org/broderi (in Norwegian only).

Alt Går Bra also organizes embroidery workshops for participants to embroider a "mini" Strandabroderi. Painting workshops are also taught at Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum, introducing participants to the Strandamalere carrousel, conceived by the painters to quickly produce some of their landscapes.

In collaboration with the University of Bergen and Sogn og Fjordane Art Museum, Alt Går Bra organized a 3-day scholartistic seminar with professors and curators, discussing Alt Går Bra's artistic practice with the Strandamalere Project as a case study. Alt Går Bra also gives talks about its Strandamalere Project at a range of venues, including the University of Bergen and Førdefestivalen's conference.

Alt Går Bra is editing the first book dedicated to the Strandamalere, a 300 page volume to be published by Museumsforlaget in 2024. The publication sheds light on the Strandamalere phenomenon and Alt Går Bra's journey of discovery. The book will feature newly produced research by scholars, curators, and writers, together with photographs and material from Alt Går Bra's Strandamalere Archive. Book contributors include University of Bergen Tonje Haugland Sørensen and Hans Marius Hansteen, Sorbonne University Frédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre and Alessandra Ballotti, curators Geir Haraldseth (Nasjonalmuseet the National Museum of Norway) and Frode Sandvik (KODE Bergen Art Museum), art critic Susanne Christensen (Kunstkritikk), fiction writer Sandra Lillebø, Førde local historian Fridtjov Urdal, and Rutgers University Emeritus Professor Charles Russell (re-print of his article "Finding a Place for the Self-Taught in the Art World(s)").

VISUAL DOCUMENTATION:

Photo and video albums documenting Alt Går Bra's Strandamalere Project works in 2024 can be found on Flickr.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION:

RADIO AND TELEVISION COVERAGE:

In 2024, Alt Går Bra's Strandamalare Project was featured on the legendary national television program "Norge Rundt," twice on the regional radio and television news on the national network NRK, and the online television art channel KUNZT dedicated an episode to Alt Går Bra's exhibition.

SUPPORT:

The regional body Vestland Fylkeskommune funded research for this project with a three-year grant. The Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd supported this project with grants from both the Visual Arts and the Cultural Heritage programs in 2023. Two KORO Public Art Norway grants sponsored Invisible Theater performance, the Strandabroderi project, and the Strandaparade. The Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd, Fritt Ord Foundation, and the Bergen Municipality Bergen Kommune provided support for the Strandamalere book.

Popular Landscapes, Strandamalere

Popular Paintings

Worldwide, Norway is known for its landscapes; less familiar is the Norwegian people’s relationship to nature. Rather than focusing on museal depictions of the landscape, Popular Landscapes looks at outsider art. During the Postwar period until the 1970s, a range of self-declared artists, predominantly from rural areas, gave a visual form to the nature that surrounded them. In their depictions, nature is home and inhabiting it is an act of balance: mountains, fjords, trees, little cabins, small fishing boats. These iconic canvases decorated nearly every Norwegian home. We disassemble these paintings, overlooked by art and academic institutions, to investigate how those inside the landscape and outside the artworld depicted nature as home.

Among these painters, a dozen families of farmers from Stranda in western Norway produced half a million paintings in two decades (1950-60s)--an unstudied phenomenon without ready-available sources. Since 2020, we have carried out research on the Strandamalere through oral history interviews, exhibitions, discursive events, performances, writing, and an embroidery contest, among others. In 2024, a seminar at the University of Bergen will survey our project and we will publish the first book on this subject, The Stranda Painters, The Most Popular Paintings in Norway (upcoming, Museumsforlaget).

STRANDABRODERI UTFORDRING:

Samtidskunst-kollektivet Alt Går Bra introduserer Strandabroderiet, et broderimotiv utviklet av kunstnerne i Alt Går Bra basert på Strandamalernes ikoniske malerier. Les mer her: www.altgarbra.org/broderi.
The Strandamaler National Embroidery contest is available only in Norway.

EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS:

SUPPORT:

The regional body Vestland Fylkeskommune funded research for this project with a three-year grant. The Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd supported this project with grants from both the Visual Arts and the Cultural Heritage programs in 2023. Two KORO Public Art Norway grants sponsored Invisible Theater performance, the Strandabroderi project, and the Strandaparade. The Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd, Fritt Ord Foundation, and the Bergen Municipality Bergen Kommune provided support for the Strandamalere book.

Vessels

Vessels

Interweaving fiction with history, we revisit pottery produced by civilizations in the South American continent and the Greco-Roman worlds. We repurpose ancient vessels to pour fictional narratives of the past into a shape-shifting present, irrigating histories, geographies, and mythologies to envisage speculative futures. Vessels activates our background in ancient archaeology and, together with Brazilian-Norwegian curator Adriana Alves, our South American exilic situatedness.

EXHIBITIONS:

SUPPORT:

Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter

Acanthus

Acanthus

In the Acanthus Project, we trace the diasporic movements of a plant, thought of as a weed. With an archaeological approach, we trace the acanthus germinating in ornaments and paintings—from Corinthian columns in Ancient Greece to Middle Eastern arabesques and Norwegian rosemaling—finding a planetarian expression in grotesques, where plants, animals, and humans intertwine and metamorphose into each other.

Instantiations of our Acanthus Project have taken the shape of exhibitions, city walks, talks, and an online database mapping acanthus ornaments on the facades of over 400 buildings in the city of Bergen. The Bergen City Archive Byarkiv has permanently archived our database with its over 3,000 photographs documenting the ornaments and their architectural settings.

EXHIBITIONS:

OTHER INSTANTIATIONS (SELECTED):

SUPPORT:

Project supported by the Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd (Heritage and Visual Arts programs), Vestland County, Bergen City Council, Production Stipendium from Bildende Kunstneres Hjelpefond (BKH), and the City of Bergen 400-year Anniversary Fund.

Den Norske Idealstaten

Den Norske Idealstaten

Alt Går Bra produced Den Norske Idealstaten through 2017-2022 across Norway. Thirty-one artworks resulting from this project are in the permanent collection of Nasjonalmuseet, the National Museum of Norway.

In conversation with communities, Den Norske Idealstaten produced collective reflections on our shared future. In collaboration with art centers and institutions, we engaged individuals and organizations at libraries, community centers, folkets hus, youth clubs, elderly cafes, unions, bars, factories, schools, gyms, universities, and so forth. Conversations took the shape of tête-à-tête exchanges, individual and group surveys, round table discussions, workshops, assemblies, and theatrical or performative actions.

Undoing the traditional principle of commissions, we produced material artwork rendering the ideas of the anonymous individuals and groups who participated in the conversations. We gave them form by deploying the communal formats and symbols of coats of arms and fane or banners.

We are currently working on the book, Den Norske Idealstaten, The Voice of a Collective, which recaptures some of the moments and processes of this project. .

EXHIBITIONS (SELECTED):

For further information and documentation, see Final Report.

INSTANTIATIONS (SELECTED):

For further information and documentation, see Final Report.

SUPPORT:

This project began with funding from KORO Public Art Norway. Funding was later granted by the Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd (Visual Arts and Performing Arts programs). The library tour was funded by the Fritt Ord Foundation. Events in Bergen were funded by the Bergen City Council Open Doors Program. Work in the Vestland Region was funded by Vestland County. Financial support for the events in Levanger was provided by LevArt/PARK/Levanger City Council and for the performances at Kunsthall 3.14 by BIT Teatergarasjen.

Mimeograph

Mimeograph

Ubiquitous throughout the 20th century, the mimeograph enabled countless poets, writers, and artists to print experimental works and publish radical literature—closely associated with political activism and clandestine publishing.

Since 2014, we have been reinventing mimeograph printing and publishing in the 21st century. We scrutinized mimeograph practices in our The Mimeograph, A Tool for Radical Art and Political Contestation, the first book devoted to this revolutionary printing technology. At an international conference we convened at the University of Westminster, we sketched out some of the core theoretical elements of mimeograph printing.

We use the mimeograph to make experimental prints and installations, and also run a mimeograph printing and publishing studio (see Writing and Publishing).

INSTANTIATIONS (SELECTED):

BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS:

All the publications below were conceived, designed, handbound, printed on two-drum Gestetner mimeograph machines, and published by Alt Går Bra Publishing.

SUPPORT:

Project funded by Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage Fund, OCA Office of Contemporary Art Norway, Fritt Ord Foundation, Norwegian Visual Artists Fund (BKV), the Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd (Visual Arts and Manuscript Development programs), the Bergen City Council Theory and Critique, Open Doors, and International programs.

Tout Va Bien

Tout Va Bien

Since the inception of our collective in 2015, we have been convening the series of talks Tout Va Bien with international guests in Bergen to discuss art and politics. From 2015 until 2018, we held the events at Bergen Kunsthall. We have also regularly organized study groups in connection with the series.

In 2018, we published the book Tout Va Bien with articles by our guests to mark the third anniversary of the series.

In 2023, we will be launching a new online edition of the series.

EVENTS (SELECTED):

SUPPORT:

Project funded by the Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd (Visual Art program), Fritt Ord Foundation, and Bergen City Council.

Writing and Publishing

Writing and Publishing

Much of our work fluctuates around our non-fictional writing in multiple formats, from thought maps to essays, and experimental pieces.

Our need to print and publish our own texts led us to discover mimeograph printing and to establish the Alt Går Bra publishing house, where we produce our own books and publications. We also write for journals, newspapers, and other outlets. Since 2021, we have been regular contributors to the Norwegian quarterly journal for the visual arts, Billedkunst, where we have our own column "Art & Society."

We have been exhibitors and speakers at book fairs, including Miss Read in Berlin, Ent'revues Salon de la Revue in Paris, and Frankfurter Buchmesse.

ARTICLES (SELECTED):

BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS:

Alt Går Bra is editing the first book dedicated to the Strandamalere, a 300 page volume to be published by Museumsforlaget in 2024. The publication sheds light on the Strandamalere phenomenon and Alt Går Bra's journey of discovery. The book will feature newly produced research by scholars, curators, and writers, together with photographs and material from Alt Går Bra's Strandamalere Archive. Book contributors include University of Bergen Tonje Haugland Sørensen and Hans Marius Hansteen, Sorbonne University Frédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre and Alessandra Ballotti, curators Geir Haraldseth (Nasjonalmuseet the National Museum of Norway) and Frode Sandvik (KODE Bergen Art Museum), art critic Susanne Christensen (Kunstkritikk), fiction writer Sandra Lillebø, Førde local historian Fridtjov Urdal, and Rutgers University Emeritus Professor Charles Russell (re-print of his article "Finding a Place for the Self-Taught in the Art World(s)").

All the publications below were conceived, designed, handbound, printed on two-drum Gestetner mimeograph machines, and published by Alt Går Bra Publishing.

Alt Går Bra Lokale

Alt Går Bra Lokale

In September 2019, we moved into Alt Går Bra Lokale, which we officially opened in March 2020.

The space hosts our studio in Bergen, opening onto the street through large windows. At Alt Går Bra Lokale, we have a program of exhibitions, talks, and other events, including Kunst og Kaffe around waffles and coffee.

With the ambition of opening to the community, we conceived Alt Går Bra Lokale in conversation with urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg, known for having coined the concept of “third place.”

Alt Går Bra Lokale is located in the scenic and residential neighborhood of Nordnes, stretching over a small peninsula off central Bergen. This is a 100 sq.m. space with an exhibition room in the front and a flexible area upstairs.

SUPPORT:

We have been running Alt Går Bra Lokale with partial financial support from the Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd (Visual Arts program), Vestland County, and Bergen City Council.

Reviews/Press

Reviews/Press

Our work has been written about primarily in Norwegian newspapers and art publications, and featured on Norwegian national radio and television. An in-depth interview about our mimeograph practice has been published in Perspective, the French National Institute of Art History INHA—conducted by senior researcher Zanna Gilbert from the Getty Research Institute. The Norwegian Arts Council commissioned a sociological study about our dissemination practice engaging new and diverse audiences.

TEXTS/PRESS ABOUT ALT GÅR BRA’S SOLO WORK (SELECTED):


About


Alt Går Bra was founded by Agnes Nedregård and Branko Boero Imwinkelried in 2015. Run by the duo, Alt Går Bra is conceived as an art collective, exploring ways of organizing and working with others while transgressing borders between artist-run and institutional, art production and dissemination, artistic practice and art theory.

With roots in the opposite poles of the earth, South America and Scandinavia, Alt Går Bra interweaves situated latitudes into long-term and process-based projects.

The collective is based in Bergen and Paris. You can find us at our gallery and studio space Alt Går Bra Lokale in Bergen at Strandgaten 208 in the neighborhood of Nordnes. You can also make an appointment to visit our atelier in the second arrondissement of Paris.

Alt Går Bra has presented its work at over 200 spaces, ranging from small venues and community spaces to large institutions, including the National Museum of Norway Nasjonalmuseet, KODE Bergen Art Museum, Bergen Kunsthall, the University of Westminster, Palais de Tokyo, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Alt Går Bra’s work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the National Museum of Norway Nasjonalmuseet, KODE Bergen Art Museum, KORO Public Art Norway, Trondheim Kommune, Tate Archives and Library, and John Flaxman Library School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2022, Alt Går Bra was awarded the prize of Norwegian Visual Artist of the Year by Subjektprisen.

Alt Går Bra has received support from funding bodies including the Norwegian Arts Council Kulturråd, KORO Public Art Norway, OCA Office of Contemporary Art Norway, Vestland County, Bergen City Council, Fritt Ord, Billedkunstnernes Hjelpefond, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Barents Secretariat, Arts Council England, UK National Heritage Fund, and Pro Helvetia.

Online, you can learn more about our work by visiting our Acanthus Project portal akantus.no, viewing photo and video documentation and research on Flickr, watching our videos on Youtube and Vimeo, and reading our texts in Academia. You can get our updates and exchange with us on Instagram, Alt Går Bra Facebook, and Alt Går Bra Lokale Facebook.

E-mail: altgarbra (at) gmail (dot) com

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