A solo exhibition featuring new work in felt by Olivier Cornet Gallery artist Annika Berglund.
Within the last year and a half, Covid has changed many aspects of our lives.
Most of us retreated into the safety of the domestic space except for those whose essential occupations meant they had to risk venturing out in society.
The world seemed to shrink to fit inside square walls. It consisted of the circles we walked inside these walls and the bubbles we embraced.
The connections to the world outside the squares and circles felt both much more tenuous and infinitely more important as the barriers to physical encounters grew.
Life had to continue inside these confines. In our minds and in the virtual world we reached out to connect with a whole new urgency.
Creativity and making became more complicated, impossible for some art forms, but bringing forth innovation and change in many instances.
“This new reality led me to focus my practice on the immediate and the simple; the square I felt confined, but also protected me, the circle – the nurturing bubble, but also the sinister round spiky shape of the Corona virus.
Before the pandemic I had already been looking at a shift in materials from clay, glass and bronze to less energy hungry ways of expression. Textiles and fibre arts worked well in that context and proved to work much better in my new, more confined creative space.
My work has always been informed by the character of different materials and in a dialog with their specific possibilities and constraints. Working with felt and mulberry paper turned out to be well suited for making in the domestic setting, but also appealed to me due to the symbology of how these materials come together.
In creating this new series, fluffy wisps of wool and soft sheets of Mulberry paper are put loosely together, wetted down with soapy water and agitated to create a very strong fabric of interlocked fibres. The mulberry and wool fibres, through soap, water, rubbing and being knocked around, create connections that hold them together so tightly they can no longer be pulled apart and they become a unified whole. Cohesion through adversity if you will…“
Please note that the exhibition will also feature the artist’s Corona pieces which were recently acquired by the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin for their Covid-related collection. The artist and the gallery would like to thank the National Museum of Ireland for allowing us to include these works in the show.
Launch of the show:
– At the gallery, Sunday 14 November, 2pm to 6pm in the presence of the artist (visitors are required to book a time that suits them by calling/texting or emailing us)
– On line in our 3D Virtual Space, Sunday 14 November from 12 noon onwards.
Availability of the show:
– Tuesdays to Sundays at the gallery from 16 November to 03 December (visitors to book a time).
– Online in our 3D Virtual Space from Sunday 14 November onwards.
The exhibition will run at the Olivier Cornet Gallery until the 3rd of December 2021.
