Dejan Antonijevic, "Serbia, 1932" Pia Sandström "Where he came from"

Konstplats Kungsholmen (art-place Kungsholmen) A collaboration between Index and the newspaper Vårt Kungsholmen (Our Kungsholmen). 2 June - 23 June. In conjunction with the opening of Index new space on Kungsholmen, the newspaper ‘Our Kungsholmen’ is providing a full page at the disposal of four Stockholm-based artists for the entire month of June. Dejan Antonijevic, Lisa Jonasson, Martin Karlsson and Pia Sandström have been invited to create a work each with Kungsholmen as a theme.

The newspaper project provides the artists with a place in the same medium as the news and the social opinion, and it enables them to in a direct way become part of everyday events. The works are published in the news section of the newspaper under the headline Konstplats Kungsholmen. The artists have utilised the special conditions inherent in the newspaper format and use idioms familiar to the newspaper reader such as advertisements and comic strips. In the paper, the art works are released from expectations of sensational aesthetics and material value. The context of the newspaper permits art to be unobtrusive, while at the same time providing a thought-provoking element of surprise. ‘Our Kungsholmen’ is a free newspaper and is weekly distributed to 40,000 households on Kungsholmen and the Essinge Islands.

 
Lisa Jonasson "I´m having a nervous breakdown!" Martin Karlsson "Tomb of Birger Jarl"

Pia Sandström’s work deals with her father who grew up on Kungsholmen. With texts and images in a loosely arranged collage form, Pia Sandström freely associates around memories and stories about her father’s childhood address. The work deals with grief and a loss; but is at the same time a kind of monument in which the artist uses the public context of a newspaper to pay tribute to her father.

 
Pia Sandström "Where he came from" installation at Västermalmsgallerian, Stockholm June 2006

In a work that looks like an advertisement, Tomb of Birger Jarl, Martin Karlsson focuses on the problem around what is original or fake, an ongoing theme in his work. Tomb of Birger Jarl is the name given to a sarcophagus with a golden statue located at the eastern frontage of the City Hall designed by architect Ragnar Östberg. The City Hall was built 1911-1923, when the national-romantic fad for all things medieval was at its peak. Birger Jarl, who is claimed to have founded Stockholm, is actually buried in the Varnhem monastery in Västergötland.

Lisa Jonasson works with text and drawing with social and political undertones, paying attention to the meaning and limitations of language as a means of communication. In her cartoon strip, I am having a nervous breakdown! she touches with the aid of happy colours and a cute elephant on one of the most serious of all health problems: when your feelings make you physically ill but you don´t receive the help you need.

Dejan Antonijevic brings his Serbian family, who have never been in Sweden, to Kungsholmen. In the black and white photo from the early 30s, we see a group portrait with his grandfather, granduncle and what appears to be their neighbours or friends. The caption accompanying the photo reads: ‘The door to the West is always open’, a slogan used in Västermalm shopping mall’s advertising campaigns, a place the artist considers to be one of Kungsholmen’s centres of power.

2 June 2-5 p.m. In conjunction with the publication of the first of the four works, Index and Inner City Press are arranging a release event in the Västermalm shopping mall. In the glass-roof square, Pia Sandström will be exhibiting a large scale installation in paper.

This project has been initiated and curated by Sofia Curman, curator and intern at Index, spring 2006.

The Index exhibition programme is curated Markus Degerman, Andreas Gedin, Helena Holmberg, Mats Stjernstedt and Niklas Östholm.