Eva Ros. My Room
MYNDLISTASKÓLINN Í REYKJAVÍK / THE REYKJAVIK SCHOOL OF VISUAL ART, founded by artists in 1947, is an independent non-profit organization. It offers visual studies on many levels: an after school programme for children and young people, a full year foundation course for visual studies and three departments on fourth/academic level – in drawing, textiles and sculpting. This diversity makes the school unique, with a very broad age range in the student-group (three to eighty-three!) and an atmosphere of flow and exchange between departments. Students on higher levels get inspired by the works of the younger students and vice versa. Many teachers teach at all levels and all teachers are professional artists, architects and designers.
In the children and youth department students are between 3 and 16 years of age. They are divided into different age groups: 3-5, 6-9, 10-12 and 13-16. For the younger groups the programme is quite versatile and they get to try different mediums. The older students choose between courses in different mediums, such as painting and drawing, comics, animation, working with clay, video, sculpture, photography…
Alfred Magnusson. Line in Time and Space
THE REYKJAVIK SCHOOL OF VISUAL ART is the sole participant in Eksperimenta! on behalf of Iceland. It is by far the biggest school in the country offering studies in visual art to children and young people.
The young people taking part in Eksperimenta! come from two groups in the school, with two different teachers.
The theme of Eksperimenta! – SPACE – is very broad, and we decided to focus on the limitations of space. What defines or limits a space? One can look at space as some kind of a small world, limited by its borders or restrictions. Space can be physical or mental, private or public. What creates borders between different spaces? And what links different spaces together? That is the area we chose to work in: borders and links between different spaces – physical, mental or temporal. The terms used in the process that are linked to space were: private / public / your own / familiar / unknown / fictional / fantastical / fairytale / confined / restricted / present / past / conventional / traditional.
The first group worked with their most private space; their room. How does your room define you as a person? Can you look at your room as some kind of a self-portrait? Your room is like a set or back-drop for your private life and a place where you dream. The students made a scale model of their rooms that worked as blank canvases. Then they chose a term or a feeling to work with, and altered the space – made it into something different. The terms/feelings they chose were quite different from one another. For instance: nature, horror, fear, fantasy, cold, wet…
The second group focused on how to create a space with something as simple as a line. By drawing, both two-dimensionally and three-dimensionally, they created spaces with a simple line. They made constructions with lines made of small wooden sticks. Then they took their constructions and put them in a different context – exploring the borders and links between different spaces.
Þorbjörg Þorvaldsdóttir
Curator of Eksperimenta! Icelandic exhibition