Tightrope Walkers
2024-
Vintage ties, rice, aluminium tent poles
As shown at Sätra mini skulpturpark, Sätra, Stockholm, September 2025.
Not Smile for Some Days
2024
Guitar strings, found piano keys
Days of our lives
2024
Chinchilla sand, glue, paper, cork, clay, found drawing tubes
Group of 5 sculptures in hourglass-like shapes made of paper, sand and glue.
The sculptures are placed on top of readymade pedestals of drawing tubes from my father’s architecture practice.
Närbilder
2022
Carbon ink on paper
400 x 297 mm each
Närbilder (Close ups) are 10 drawings made using carbon paper, an old-fashioned method of copying, turning drawing into a form of rudimentary print-making. They are a series of self-portraits, where my face has been replaced by an enlargement of one of my fingerprints, and adorned with a hairstyle I have worn at some point over the years.
Photo: Lena Bergendahl
Persona, I, II, III
2021
“His secret… is written in his name: Pessoa means person in Portuguese and comes from persona, the mask worn by roman Roman actors. Mask, character from fiction, no one: Pessoa. His story could be reduced to the passage between the unreality of his daily life and the reality of his fictions.”
- Octavio Paz on Fernando Pessoa
Persona I, II, III are a series of self portraits. Three ‘masks’ have been made with knitted fishing line and small found objects to replicate facial features. A candle snuffer for a nose, a lightbulb eye, a cookie cutter mouth. A response to the conditions of making and artists’ roles, the masks refer to a hidden or blurred self or facade; a role to play in my part time job, while the ‘bodies’ of the sculptures are filled with materials and tools from the studio - as the ‘flesh’ or ‘innards’ of my person.
Persona I
Fishing line, candle snuffer, bush support, cardboard, copper tape, glass, rope, assorted materials from the artist’s studio
144x28x35cm
Persona II
Fishing line, light bulb, bush support, cardboard, copper tape, glass, assorted materials from the artist’s studio
142x38x36cm
Persona III
Fishing line, cookie cutter, magnets, bush support, cardboard, copper tape, slide projector case, assorted materials from the artist’s studio
151x29.5x40cm
Cabinessence (Alta)
2023
3% filmjölk on glass
Tamburmajoren
2021
Wood, cork, metal, cardboard, fishing line, copper tape, buskstöd, vintage hat stands, baking paper, clay, magnets, wire
The Tamburmajor is a guardian for the home, watching over the hall as an inbetween space. The assemblage is based on a coat stand, and combines leftover materials from previous works with found vintage hat stands, an old sketch of a face and an icicle-like form of knitted fishing line. This sculpture is part of a series of assemblage works that appropriate and refer to inadvertent moments of art and exhibition making based found at home.
It is also an exploration in circumstance, place and practice - letting materials and works saved and collected in studio come together intuitively and out of necessity, in a time of restrictions, making do and resourcefulness.
Tamburmajor is the Swedish word for both drum major (the leader of a marching band) and hat stand.
Photo: Lena Bergendahl
Andra arvet
2021
Embroidery thread and copper thread on linen, wood, rope, fishing line
Approximately 140x50x25cm.
Andra Arvet combines an assemblage structure of repurposed found materials with an embroidered textile work.
Through the title ‘Andra arvet’ (the second legacy) I refer to family, place and belonging. The work sees my six family members depicted as pine trees seen from above, surrounded by broken rings of copper thread. Copper thread is also used to connect together the pieces of linen to form a larger flag or banner-like canvas. The copper thread rings shift in representation of both land and sea: as contour lines or waves.
It can be seen as a starting point of a new, other legacy, once removed from its origins.
The work explores the physical and intangible after effects of relocation and how new structures of place and belonging are cultivated and constructed and talks of legacies and family ties as being ‘removed’ and ‘recreated’. The found materials are all sourced from my local second hand shop Andra varvet, inspiring the title as I give these materials a second life.
Photo: Lena Bergendahl
Passages
2021
2 35 mm colour slides, found metal fruit holder, cork, 2 panu-vue slide viewers, cardboard, vinyl decal
Assemblage sculptures, each holding a slide showing a photo of a room known as the studio in my family home in New Zealand. One view is taken from the door to the room, the other taken from the windows.
The sculptures are placed the same distance as the room in New Zealand, and may only be shown in Europe.
Photo: Lena Bergendahl
Maiden
(2017-2023)
Maiden is a rope of knitted fishing line. The form is specific to the site in which it is exhibited, and change each time it is shown.
The work weaves together associations between labour, endeavour, femininity and fiction as methods of escape and survival. I think of ‘The Bride’ in Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass - a body or figure, of different parts, made of other things. But here ‘The Bride’ is not in the heavens, in her ‘domain’, but anchored, fastened like a belt, to the world around us. Also inspired by Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope, and his attempts to make a seamless film, with no cuts, which, due to the nature of the technology, was not possible at the time. Instead he ‘hid’ his minimal cuts within the film, using close-ups, darkness, camouflage.
The ‘rope’ of Maiden will continue to lengthen and be added to as an ongoing expression of my artistic practice.
Spiral Sea
2020
Hand-knitted fishing line, salvaged metal tiles from a disassembled materialbibliotek
A.A (Short wave, long wave)
2020
Hand-knitted fishing line, snigeltejp, moving box, glass containers, tissue paper shoe forms.
Made from the work Abulon (Avalon) (2011-2016).
Windrose
2020
Fishing line, candle snuffer, twigs, 9 pieces
Dimensions variable
as installed at Il Giardino, curated by Giulia Cairone, i partnership with Galleri Nos. Lidingö, Sweden.
Cast (in order of appearance)
North: One of the Poles, tall green
South: It’s opposite, long white cloud
East: large blue bowl
West: faded blue (of distance) with a green fringe
North East: feather fine with a crimped bottom
South East: wrinkled lettuce leaf dish
North West: dense white vase, a block of ice
South West: after the bowl on the wicker table at Royal Tce
This compass rose is a gesture of wayfinding. To find North, (one of the poles, tall green) follow the candle snuffer.
Cast Movements: Leitmotif
2017
Single channel video in six parts,10:51 min, no sound.
Cast Movements: Leitmotif is a silent, looped film where large, wobbling, clustering soap bubbles are blown through a net-like material of knitted fishing line. The work comprises of six, short scenes observing these bubbles from six different angles.
Cast Movements: Leitmotif became a visual interpretation of six short poetic texts. With its references to language, lyricality, repetition and translation - from internal to external, text to image, breath to bubble - this work combines ideas of materiality, language and time that I liken to the swirling mixture of the dish-washing liquid, water and gelatin bubble recipe recalled from my childhood, that is used in the work.
Photo 1 at Mason’s Screen, Wellington, NZ.
Photo 2 Installed in Mesh, Galleri CC, Malmö, Sweden. Photo Raffaele Piano.
Desire Paths
2019
Colour pencil on plissé blinds, 7 parts
Desire paths are those worn trails that cut across the ground, where people have stepped off the path laid out for them and made their own. Small repeated acts of disobedience across the urban landscape. A love letter to wanderings, deviations, and an attempt (perhaps in vain) to briefly disrupt our own daily, organised routes. The shortcuts, the knowledge of locals who are familiar in a place, made visible to everyone. They are a time line.
These works Desire Paths are made from a looping spiraling movement of the hand. Linked looping lines, like illegible handwriting, like when sketching the stitches of the knitted fishing line I often use in sculptures.
The work enfolds a number of references, both distant and close at hand: my walks through the disappearing landscape known as Ingenting that lies between the cities of Solna and Stockholm; the last remnant of Rörstrands porslinsfabrik - an overgrown mound of broken porcelain ‘landfill’; colour field painting and the landscape artists of my childhood; classic colour blind test cards designed by Shinobu Ishihara in the 1920’s; fabrics in the home: rugs, carpets, curtains, blankets. I think about these things as my hand draws across the plissé blinds, my face up so close to the surface that my eyes lose focus, I can’t see the line anymore and I rely on the learnt movement of my hand, as it becomes second nature.
Exhibited at Hackås Maskin och kultur, curated by Alva Willemark.
Abulon (Avalon), anchored
2017
Hand-knitted fishing line, found IKEA valet stand
As exhibited in Silver Tea Suite, Konstfack, Stockholm, Sweden, 2017.
Photo: Tomas Sinkevicius
Abulon (Avalon)
2011-2016
Hand-knitted fishing line
As exhibited in Silver Tea, Konstfack, Stockholm, Sweden, 2016.
I titled the piece Abulon (Avalon). Abulon after the brand of fishing line, and Avalon after the mystical isle of Arthurian legend. I wanted the title to contain both the mundanity of the material, and the incalculable mythical qualities in the hours of activity, ‘the weight’ of the intertwined stitches and loops, elevating a simple action to a perceived timelessness. While knitting I thought of the word mytomspunnen, to be literally spun in myth: surrounded, entangled, woven, shaped through language.
Photo: Tomas Sinkevicius
Cloud Skylight Mural
2016
81 35mm slides, carousel projector, portable screen, projector stand
Photo: Tomas Sinkevicius
Only at night was it I
2016
35 mm slide projection, single channel audio, filmjölk
09:28 min
On the night of June 18 2016, the sun was below the horizon for three hours and thirteen minutes, corresponding exactly to the running time of Jacques Rivette's 1974 film Celine and Julie Go Boating. This film was projected during this darkness, acting as a provisional light source. This performative gesture is the starting point in the installation Only at night was it I and the accompanying text Every movement brings peril, exploring ways unnatural light affects senses as a stranger in a strange land.
Filmjölk shrouded the windows, creating a half-light: the disintegration of the window as a portal and platform for projection and transportation; the reiteration of the construct of the slide frame and the slide projector as a vessel for removal from one's place and one's time; a distruption. The windows of the space are decommissioned as a new window, a new source of light and image, is activated.
Exhibited in the exhibition Parallel Lines, Galleri Verkligheten, Umeå, 2016.
Cabinessence
2016
filmjölk, glass, fishing line
Platform Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden.
Photos by Guilia Cairone.
Two pieces intervene with the existing architecture of the gallery Platform in Stockholm. First, selected window panes are modified by 'installing' filmy venetian blinds made of filmjölk, stuck in between open and closed, filtering sunlight into the space, and subtly shifting the impression of the stairwell as an empty, lost space by including traces of homeliness or previous habitation.
Inside the gallery space a rectangle of knitted fishing line is suspended from the ceiling; the stiff stitches mimicking condensation and textured glass. Positioned like a skylight and reflecting the peeling paint of the ceiling above it.
Invisible Touch
2015
pine, citronella oil, Dove deodorant.
A scent fills a space. Rising up, pressing against the walls, wafting, pungent, expectant. Familiar to some, foreign to others, or else provoking a nagging feeling of, I know this. A window or a door is ajar, an escape route, after an undetermined period of time, the scent slips away. Or perhaps,we are all just so used to it now, that it has become a part of our surroundings.
Sensory gardens, or scented gardens for the blind, are gardens where visual aesthetics are unimportant. Plants present have instead be chosen for their fragrance, texture or taste. Lavender, herbs, aloe vera, succulents, grasses and ferns often feature. These garden are often built at waist height with a handrail for vision impaired people to hold on to, and allow the plants to be a comfortable distance from the nose as the rail guides them around beds.
Invisible Touch applies this methodology as a critique upon the sensory hierarchies within the art world, which is still being described as 'visual', a term perhaps no longer current. Small pine planting sticks skirt the skirting board in the space; they are infused with citronella oil, a common essential oil used in New Zealand as a mosquito repellent, easily recognised, full of past associations and recollections.
Scent is the sense most closely connected to memory.
Waterfront Morals
2009-2010
embroidery thread, jute, lemon juice, newsprint, heat
Window, University of Auckland, Auckland, NZ
Window Online: The Faecesbook Slideshow, facebook graffiti wall works by Florence Wild and Clara Chon, curated by Mythily Meher.
...the Crocker Land mirage could symbolise the loneliness of the sea in another way. It is almost like a delusion instead of an illusion, something Donald Crowhurst may have imagined seeing, to convince himself of his sanity (or lack thereof). The sense of false hope a mirage can cause, just like how a weary traveller in the desert believes the mirage he is seeing is an oasis, it is uncanny how it appears to take the form of the thing one most desires, and the opposite of what is actually there - in the desert one believes he is seeing water, whereas at sea, one thinks he has sighted land.
- notes from my journal on Crocker Land and mirages.
The love I saw in you was just a mirage
2011-2012
200x180cm
embroidery on shower curtain
as seen in Circuits, with Signe Rose, Harriet Stockman and Eleanor Cooper, RM, Auckland, NZ
first image courtesy of artsdiary.co.nz
Elvis Lives! (In a Silent Way)
2009
cassette tape,fishing line, touch lights
as part of Elam Art Upfront
LIMBS
2010
nylon stockings, felt pen, wire coathanger
Physics Room Kiosk, Christchurch, NZ
LIMBS
prosthetics. faux bois. artificial limb. stumpy. peg leg. wooden leg.
pairs of wooden legs like detachable limbs. turning a sea of legs into a wood of limbs.
Chameleon like, camouflage. enabling one to blend in to their surrounds and then peeled off like a discarded skin.
faux bois, tacky and fake, a woody façade. fashionably kitsch, false wood for a false leg.
norwegian wood like the cheap panelling found in cheap british flats. like the beatles song and the murakami book, which always remind me of the way girlsused to hang their stockings up to dry in the bathroom after being washed. and the way one would undo their prosthetic before going to bed.
apparently, when paul mccartney was married to heather mills, the dog would sleep on the floor next to the bed on paul’s side, and heather’s false leg would sleep on hers.
Purple Reign (From Prince to Queen and back again)
2009
digital projection of images from Life Magazines' archives
as part of Magazine (edited by Tahi Moore), Gambia Castle, Auckland, NZ
Modern Love
with Ash Kilmartin
2008
Colin Wilson in conversation with Allan Wild
plywood
Love Letters
2008
single channel video, audio
Harp by Clara Chon
You were at the wrong place at the right time
BFA graduation show, 2008
cotton, jute, chess table made by my father, vinyl adhesive, papier maché, cardboard, paper, ink, cassette tape, nails, acrylic paint, found wooden frames, chalk, found chalkboard.
Dimensions variable