hangmenProjects is delighted to present
Lyndal Walker: Changing Room
Ninna Berger: You Should Have Thought of That Before
29 September - 21 October, 2017
Opening Friday 29 September at 17.00-21.00
With great pleasure we have invited Ninna Berger to show for the first time in hangmenProjects and Lyndal Walker for her second exhibition at the gallery. Walker was our first artist in residence at NKF where she produced the work for the exhibition "The Artist's Model" in 2015. For the past year she has been residence at Kûnstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Ninna Berger investigates how to use narrated text and installation in order to create a state of mind; an investigation she started in her last solo show ”From the Same Mother”, at Galerie A.M.180 in Prague 2016.
For many years Lyndal Walker’s photographs and installations have explored fashion and states of undress in order to contemplate identity, emotion and the nature of time. Her portraits of both men and women dressing and undressing have challenged gender roles and power dynamics between model and photographer. She is interested in the role of photographs in our lives and through her series ‘Silk Cut’ brought the digital phenomena of the ‘dick pic’ back into the realm of touch by printing images of erect penises onto luxurious silk scarves that are designed to be worn.
‘Changing Room’ extends her interests onto paravent screens, which are associated with fashion and undress and imply privacy and transformation. The images that appear on Walker’s screens refer to themes presented in paintings from the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. Time is represented uncovering truth but the standard personifications of an old man and young woman are revised in Walker’s images. The work is situated firmly in the contemporary world where the nature of truth has become increasingly slippery. Concerns such as the censorship and shaming of female bodies on social media and the exposure of corruption and abuse by our patriarchal institutions are brought into this critique of enlightenment imagery.
Walker also continues her interests in the ambiguous nature of mirrors, which are associated with glamour and vanity, but also with truth and objective observation. In this installation the images are reflected and fragmented by mirrors but so are the bodies of the audience as they walk amongst the paravent screens.
Born in Melbourne 1973, Walker’s photographs and installations have been exhibited at galleries including Hangmen Projects, Stockholm, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Modern Culture, New York and La Panaderia, Mexico City. Art Forum, Art & Text, Beaux Arts Magazine and numerous Australian newspapers. Walker lives in Berlin.
In her new exhibition “You Should Have Thought of That Before,” Ninna Berger present works, both installations and text, in compositions of layered fragments.
- The texts are there to offer context and an additional way to take part in my work. They are minimal, micro stories, flash-fiction fragments, thoughts, edits and distortions, kept as they are, a line or two, from the loop where information is constantly added and never withdrawn. I have been in a process of detoxing, cleansing (body), and renewing thoughts (mind) – and of course failing in this – and making this work at the same time. In preparing for this exhibition I’ve also been without a muse. He is usually there, keeping me productive (often through frustration), but not this time. I blame myself for the absence of any emotional obsession; I have gotten pickier. But then I am, without exception, independent of any type of event, as a personal zeitgeist – unsatisfied. Reflecting on my work I have put a lot of energy into making it non-linear. There should be no beginning, no middle, and no end. If someone picks up on the charisma of indecisiveness I will be happy.
Ninna Berger (b. 1980) lives and works in Stockholm. She has a BFA and an MFA in Textiles from University College of Arts and Crafts, Stockholm. Berger works with sculpture, installation and text, with activities connected to memory playing a large role. Found material, artefacts and stories transform into work (words and objects), which form an interconnecting composition. Failure (honesty), time (expectations), and space (movement) are used as tools in her method and as connecting parameters in her work. Berger’s recent activity includes a spring residency at Flaggfabrikken in Bergen, Norway and a public art installation commissioned by the County Council of Jönköping.
