Fortune Tellers at Kunsthall Grenland

Artists: Sofia Eliasson, Hanna Roloff, Astrid Sleire, Emily Weiner

Exhibition title: Fortune Tellers

Curated by: Randi Grov Berger

Venue: Kunsthall Grenland, Porsgrunn, Norway

Date: November 12, 2022 – January 15, 2023

Photography: Tor Simen Ulstein / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Kunsthall Grenland

Kunsthall Grenland is thrilled to welcome you to the opening of Fortune Tellers, an exhibition featuring the four material-based artists Sofia Eliasson, Hanna Roloff, Astrid Sleire and Emily Weiner. With the exhibition we explore how our geology and history can be linked to various artistic practices. One of the exhibition’s focal points is the Grenland region’s geological diversity, which stretches back over a billion years. We find ourselves in an area rich in various minerals such as sandstone, slate and limestone, key prerequisites for settlement and industrial establishments for several hundred years. Limestone is used today, among other things, in the production of cement, plastic, toothpaste, paint and paper – and also has a very central supporting role throughout the history of art. Printing techniques such as lithography, with limestone as the base material, monumental techniques such as fresco painting that is painted on wet lime, ancient Greek sculptures carved in limestone, and lime compounds that are included as an ingredient in porcelain, to name a few. Over millions of years under the right conditions, melted limestone has given us green and red Porsgrunn marble, a young marble where you can find traces of fossil sea animals that once swam around in tropical seas. Calcium is an element found in everything from our skeleton to glossy magazine surfaces. The eternal evolution and circulation of raw materials puts our own fragile history in a larger perspective – they connect us to the stars of the galaxy and deep cosmic time.

Fortune Tellers presents brand new sculptures, paintings and collages that explore geological conditions and archaeology, with several references to industrial- and art history. The artists Sofia Eliasson and Hanna Roloff have been on an excursion to the limestone quarry locally in Bjørntvedt, together with a geologist from Geopark UNESCO Gea Norvegica, which is based in Porsgrunn. Their local explorations have influenced the work in this exhibition, and local findings are put into dialogue with a larger global discourse about climate. Astrid Sleire has worked at 1400°, the Kunsthall’s own contemporary ceramics and porcelain workshop, located in the factory building of Porsgrunds Porselænsfabrik. Here, new sculptures have emerged with impulses from the industrial landscape at Herøya, Brevik and from the Porsgrunn river’s constant movement and changing surface, drifting through the nearby landscape. Emily Weiner draws connections to the Cumberland Mountains in Nashville, where she often picks up fossils and ancient remains from past cultures in the landscape rich of limestone around her. She is interested in material links between far-reaching phenomena such as historical Greek and Roman busts – early representations of growing empires and power – to modern designs, such as the terrazzo, which appeared more than 500 years ago, but now trends on top of interior designs yet again.

Emily Weiner (b. 1981) is concerned with Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of archetypes – universal, primal symbols and images that derive from the collective unconscious, which can be traced in symbolic form, in dreams, myths, fairy tales and legends. According to Jung, these unconscious ideas are passed down from generation to generation, common to all people. In her works, Weiner mixes various symbols from the past and present, and connects visual threads such as various archetypes and primal images from our shared cultural history. At the same time, she refers to art history – seen through a feminist lens. For the works in the exhibition, she combines oil paintings with ceramic frames and plays with different imitations of materials. Weiner holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City (2011).

Astrid Sleire (b. 1961) creates abstract sculptural landscapes in clay. The new works have been created at Kunsthall Grenland’s workshop 1400°. The forms she creates are fired and applied with underglaze and coating, which gives a dry and rough surface in contrast to more glazed surfaces. The ceramic works can be seen as fragments with references to changing surroundings, something that remains unfinished or is under development. The shapes can give associations to remains of or parts of architecture and nature. Sleire has a master’s degree in ceramics from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (1988). She is Associate Professor of Ceramics and Clay at the Academy of Fine Arts – Department of Contemporary Art, at KMD in Bergen.

Sofia Eliasson (b. 1981) works with what she calls fossils from the present, that geology is also about the present and how we leave unchanging traces in the landscape on a daily basis. Eliasson likes to collect things she finds, discarded objects and traces from our everyday life and fixes them in casts and prints. In the exhibition, she shows a series of sculptures with abstract map sections from the 350 km long mining system under Brevik engraved in soapstone. The engraved stones are also moulds for castings in recycled tin. The rare fly orchid (ophrys insectifera), found at Bjørntvedt lime quarry in Porsgrunn has become the subject of digital mutation. The orchid is shaped by artificial intelligence, 3d modelled and cast in reliefs from lime-based synthetic plaster. Eliasson has an MA from Bergen University of Art and Design (2017).

Hanna Roloff (b. 1985) shows a series of collages entitled Fortune Teller. The work relates formally and thematically to the folded paper fortune teller, a game for children to predict their future with, but in Roloff’s work the future resources of the earth are at stake. Abstract photographs show limestone in various phases, from coral reefs in the Indian Ocean to the limestone quarry in Porsgrunn. In her work, she is particularly concerned with questions related to the use of natural resources, and thoughts about a future that is moving towards a warmer and more tropical climate. Roloff is educated at the department of medium and material-based art at the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts (2017).