18 minute read
Events
Innipúkinn festival is a popular indoor music festival taking place during Verslunarmannahelgi (Merchant’s Weekend), a long weekend at the beginning of August. Innipúkinn is the Icelandic word for couch potato, and the festival is a counterpart of the many outdoor festivals traditionally taking place during the weekend. Among the artists playing this year are Reykjavíkurdætur, GDRN, Bríet, Mammút, Floni, and Inspector Spacetime. REYKJAVÍK PRIDE
AUGUST 3-8
The Reykjavík Pride started in the 1990s with around 1,500 visitors, and these days, the events attract over 100,000 guests from all over the world. It is the biggest annual event in Iceland. The theme this year is “Queers of all ages”, and you can expect a variety of entertainment, plus educational and cultural events catered to all age groups. The Pride Parade, which gets bigger and more fabulous every year, takes place on August 7 at 14:00.
PICNIC CONCERTS AT NORDIC HOUSE: HEIKKI RUOKANGAS
AUGUST 8
Heikki Ruokangas is an Oulu-based jazz and avant-garde guitarist and composer. By combining melody and noise, Ruokangas’ music spans from fragile and melodic to nearly violent. Ruokangas’ works are influenced by Northern Finnish nature and culture. During the Picnic Concerts, it’s possible to buy beverages and food at the in-house restaurant, and enjoy these outside. The concert takes place on a Sunday afternoon and is free of charge. The duo Sóley, consisting of Laufey Sigrún Haraldsdóttir and Sólborg Valdimarsdóttir, performs works from various periods of the Western music history. Next to this, the concert will include new Icelandic pieces that were specially composed for the duo. The Icelandic composers, together with Händel, Mozart, Ravel, Piazzolla, and Shostakovich will, in collaboration with the performers, take the audience on a journey – deep into the sounds of the grand piano.
CULTURE NIGHT
AUGUST 21
Culture Night marks the start of Reykjavík’s cultural year, when museums, theatres, and other cultural institutions launch their new programme. Festivities start in the early afternoon and end in the late evening, and cover a wide variety of events. Shows take place in streets, on squares, in museums, and even in residential gardens. Traditionally, the night ends with an impressive firework show by the harbour. All events are open to the public and free of charge.
REYKJAVÍK JAZZ FESTIVAL
FROM AUGUST 28
Reykjavík Jazz Festival is an eight-day music festival focusing on jazz, blues, funk, and improvisation. Leading international as well as Icelandic jazz musicians perform at different stages around town. Performers come from all over the world and this year’s edition includes 2020 Grammy nominee Ambrose Akinmusire Quartet, Melissa Aldana Quartet, Family Band, Broken Cycle Trio, Astra, Anna Gréta Tríó, and Blúsmenn Andreu.
A Story Unfolds
A variety of sculptures by Sigurjón Ólafsson, from his student years at the Royal Academy of the Arts in Copenhagen, till the year he died, 1982. Also to be seen are the sketches for some of his key works that have been enlarged and installed in public areas, e.g. Footballers (LSÓ 247) erected in Akranes, Mask (LSÓ 011) at the Reykjavík City Theater and the Viking (LSÓ 162) which Sigurjón also carved in dolerite and stands in the front of the National Gallery of Iceland.
REYKJAVIK ART MUSEUM ÁSMUNDARSAFN
Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir & Ásmundur Sveinsson: As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse Reykjavík Art Museum – Ásmundarsafn reopens with Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir’s exhibition of work in dialogue with Ásmundur Sveinsson and the building itself. Sirra’s works are cosmical, often connected to speculations about our position within the inner workings of nature, physics and the forces that drive the world. Her works often call upon our position as individuals, our significance and insignificance, and where the small is placed in the context of the large. Meaning is transformed from one phenomenon to another; a new perception, new vision. Many of Ásmundur’s works connect to his curiosity in the movement and law of the celestial bodies. Among works in the exhibition is the well-known Face of the Sun, an ode to the sun, our prerequisite for life on earth. This and other works by Ásmundur harmonise deeply in Sirra’s installation.
A Story Unfolds
A Story Unfolds
Design for sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson Exhibition of products designed by five product designers for the museum shop at Ásmundarsafn. Ásmundur Sveinsson’s visual world has been a source of ideas for new useful products dedicated to the artist’s memory and his contribution to Icelandic cultural and handicraft heritage.
Catch the Aurora Borealis All Year Round
There is perhaps nothing more magical than witnessing the beauty of a Northern Lights display. However, those unpredictable, ever dancing lights don’t always show up on cue – and fade away during the summer months. So, it is with great joy that we welcome Aurora Reykjavík – The Northern Lights Center, where the Northern Lights are always on display.
Aurora Reykjavík’s pull and ace up its sleeve is its fantastic 4k time-lapse film of the Aurora Borealis.
Aurora Reykjavík’s latest addition are virtual reality goggles featuring the world’s first 360°movie of aurora displays entirely shot in Iceland. If you can’t catch the Northern Lights yourself, this utterly realistic experience is definitely the next best option to witness the beauty of this truly amazing phenomenon.
Capturing the Northern Lights with your own camera can be challenging, but, at Aurora Reykjavík, you get taught by the experts: bring your camera and try the right settings at the Northern Lights Photo Simulator.
In the exhibition you will find an entertaining selfie booth – have fun looking all fabulous under the Northern Lights!
For more information, see www.aurorareykjavik.is.
Aurora Reykjavík
Ásgrímur Jónsson
ÁSGRÍMUR JÓNSSON COLLECTION
KORRIRÓ OG DILLIDÓ - PICTURES OF FOLKLORE AND FAIRY TALES BY ÁSGRÍMUR JÓNSSON
Step into magic! The visual world of Icelandic folklore and fairy tales created by Ásgrímur Jónsson in his art is a truly enchanted realm. Elves, trolls and ghosts were given a clear form in Ásgrímur’s art. He first exhibited such pieces in Iceland in 1905. Ásgrímur’s works on folklore themes were well received; in the press, reviewers expressed delight that the folktale heritage was being addressed, for the first time, by an Icelandic artist. entire family to experience the unique supernatural world of elves in their finery, and terrifying trolls, as depicted with passionate sincerity by Ásgrímur Jónsson. The emphasis is on the visitor’s own imagination – offering the opportunity to enjoy this aspect of the cultural heritage, which can throw light upon the fears, dreams and desires of former generations – and their relationship with awe-inspiring Icelandic nature.
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INGÓLFSSTRÆTI 1A 101 REYKJAVÍK
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Death is Elsewhere During the bright summer months, the National Gallery of Iceland shows the video installation Death Is Elsewhere by Ragnar Kjartansson – filmed one Icelandic summer night, when darkness never falls. This seven-channel work is one of the large-scale video installations which have been prominent in Ragnar‘s art in recent years, where repetition, time and space play important roles. In Death Is Elsewhere the artist returns to familiar territory, where a romantic utopian spirit reigns. The ambiance is one of insouciance and melancholy as young couples wander through unvarying lowlands, singing to a guitar accompaniment. The symmetrical picture and constantly repeated melody entice the observer into the work’s unending circularity, shutting out impending doom while constantly alluding to it.
Hello Universe The far-distant spaces of the boundless universe have had a hold on the human mind from primeval times, and over the centuries artists have grappled with notions about space, and expressed and mediated them in diverse ways. The exhibition Hello Universe explores the fantastical world of outer space through the lens of works of art in the collection of the National Gallery of Iceland. pieces from the 1960s and 70s, when rapid advances in space technology took humans beyond the bounds of the Earth’s atmosphere for the first time.
Space and art share the common qualities of being interesting and mutable: they are in constant motion, and new discoveries are always being made when one looks at art. Tumi, the protagonist of artist Ásgerður Búadóttir’s book The Red Hat and the Raven, will guide the youngest visitors around the exhibition in an accessible way, to explore the scientific perspective and learn something new!
Of the North Steina’s gigantic video installation Of the North (2001) is an arresting and captivating work that touches all who see it. It is created from Steina’s archive of video recordings, mostly of Icelandic nature – either the surface of the earth, or microscopic views: microbes, as well as crashing waves and melting ice, landslips and an array of natural phenomena relating to geological formation and destruction of our planet. The work also reaches out into space, with spherical objects rotating around an imaginary axis in a hypnotic rhythm, with all the concomitant sounds. The beat and energy evoke imagery that may lead the observer’s thoughts in many directions – whether to magnificent beauty, or more
Death is elswhere Hello Universe
REYKJAVIK ART MUSEUM KJARVALSSTAÐIR
Eternal Recurrence In this extensive exhibition, the works of Jóhannes S. Kjarval (1885-1972) create a thread which connects different periods in time. His art is displayed along with the works of artists who have been prominent on the Icelandic art scene in recent years.
Kjarval’s most common and beloved subject was Icelandic nature and landscape, but he also painted many portraits and fantasy images where creatures and figures emerge, and various nature phenomena are personified. The artworks on display here are created in diverse media, expressing different approaches to these subjects.
Eternal Recurrence
The National Museum of Iceland’s permanent exhibition, Making of a Nation – Heritage and History in Iceland, is intended to provide insight into the history of the Icelandic nation from the settlement to the present day. The aim is to cast light on the Icelanders’ past by placing the cultural heritage preserved by the National Museum in a historical context, guided by the question: what makes a nation? The exhibition includes about 2,000 objects, dating from the Settlement Age to the present, as well as about 1,000 photographs from the 20th century. The exhibition is conceived as a journey through time: it begins with the ship in which medieval settlers crossed the ocean to their new home, it ends in a modern airport, the Icelanders’ gateway to the world..
Back Yards Back yards, sheds, clotheslines, and now and then a cat. Photographer Kristján Magnússon trains his lens exclusively on a narrow, enclosed swath of the urban environment: the back-lots of residential areas in the older parts of Reykjavik. He captures images of almost-deserted spaces that seem well thought-out despite the cluttered surroundings. This photo series strongly conveys the stylistic traits of this veteran ad photographer.
The National Museum Collection of Photographs and Prints received Kristján’s collected works in 2004. Among them was the series Back Yards. Kristján himself had selected, processed, and prepared the photographs for exhibition but they are now on view to the public for the first time. Spessi 1990-2020 The contemporary photographer Spessi – Sigurþór Hallbjörnsson – has forged a unique style within the field of fine-art photography. His work presents cold hard reality, unvarnished and uncensored, whether the subject is a person or a setting. Hidden pockets of society are prominent in his work, interspersed with cultural life. His choice and handling of material is provocative, yet also imbued with humanity and humour.
Spessi’s career spans more than 30 years and this retrospective offers a view of the countless stories his work presents. Proud everyday heroes, lonesome petrol pumps, abandoned spaces, dented weapons of revolution, gun owners, flat-dwellers, and artists, ill at ease or sure of themselves.
Spessi’s work is a mirror of Icelandic society and contains an important social critique.
Saga of Hofstaðir, Unearthing the Past in North Iceland AAt Hofstaðir in the district of Lake Mývatn, north Iceland, extensive archaeological excavations have been carried out over the past three decades. The site includes remains from the Viking Age to the 20th century. A huge VikingAge structure was excavated: a hall or longhouse where people gathered on social occasions, with other smaller buildings around it. The hall is one of the largest structures ever excavated in Iceland. In addition, a churchyard was excavated at Hofstaðir, which is one of the oldest churchyards unearthed in Iceland. Whole families were laid to rest in the cemetery, and their bones yield evidence about their lives. The face of one of the women buried at Hofstaðir has been reconstructed using DNA technology, and a drawing of her is included in the exhibition.
Making of a Nation
ÁRBÆR OPEN AIR MUSEUM
Árbær was an established farm well into the 20th century, and the museum opened there in 1957. Árbær is now an open air museum with more than 20 buildings which form a town square, a village and a farm. Most of the buildings have been relocated from central Reykjavik.
Árbær Open Air Museum tries to give a sense of the architecture and way of life and lifestyles of the past in Reykjavík and during summer visitors can see domestic animals. There are many exhibitions and events held at the Museum which highlight specific periods in Reykjavik’s history. These include craft days, vintage car displays, Christmas exhibitions and much more. There is something for everyone at Árbær Open Air Museum.
This is a museum in the heart of Reykjavík that houses the work of Iceland’s first sculptor Einar Jónsson. The museum contains close to 300 artworks spanning a 60-year career: carvings from the artist’s youth, sculpture, paintings and drawings. A beautiful tree-clad garden adorned with 26 bronze casts of the artist’s works is located behind the museum. The task of the museum is to collect, preserve and display the work of Einar as well as to conduct research on his life and art.
MUSEUM OF DESIGN AND APPLIED ART
Kristín Þorkelsdóttir Few designers in Iceland have created as many works that are present in Icelanders’ daily life as Kristín Þorkelsdóttir. They can be seen in the most mundane of places—in refrigerators, inside bags or at the dinner table—or in locations as inaccessible as the Central Bank’s vaults. Kristín is the designer behind the packaging of many popular foods, as well as the series of banknotes currently in use in Iceland, which she created together with the designer Stephen Fairbairn. Kristín has also designed countless advertisements, books, and nationally known logos, many of which have been in use for over five decades.
Behind each of Kristín’s nationally known works are a myriad of sketches, experiments and reflections, which have not been shown publicly until now. This exhibition therefore presents both familiar and previously unseen works, which together gradually turned a young artist into one of the pioneers of Icelandic graphic design. Natural dyes: a modern perspective We seldom think about the origin of colours in textiles, and most are chemical. The project shows the large range of colours one can produce from natural material from Icelandic environment. Over the last year Sigmundur has experimented with over 40 different types of material to produce natural colours in textile, from plants, seaweed and food waste. The outcome is a comprehensive series of natural colours from Icelandic environment. The aim of the project is to explore possibilities of Icelandic natural dyeing as an environmentally friendly alternative to dye textiles for modern design. The project is based on Icelandic traditions in natural dyeing and looks towards the future for how we develop better knowledge of what Iceland can give in this respect.
Einar Jónsson Museum
Kristín Þorkelsdóttir
BEST STEAKS IN REYKJAVÍK... ...WE AGREE
The Settlement Exhibition
An open excavation where Viking ruins meet multimedia technology. Just below ground in downtown Reykjavík, this open excavation uncovers the city’s Viking Age history. Discovered during building work in 2001, these archaeological remains turned out to be the earliest evidence of human settlement in the city, with some dating to before AD 872. Careful excavation revealed a 10thcentury hall or longhouse, which is now preserved in its original location as the focal point of the exhibition. Interactive technology immerses you in the world of the Reykjavík farm at the time of the first settlers, including information on how Viking Age buildings were constructed and what life was like in the hall. The Settlement Exhibition is part of Reykjavík City Museum.
REYKJAVIK MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY
UNTIL AUGUST 13
Peter Stridsberg - The border between nature and the scene The exhibition presents photographic scenes featuring four separate works from the summer of 2020.
“Through my work, I seek to understand my roots and belonging by exploring places connected to my family history and the romantic memory I have of the locations I use in my imagery. I seek to answer that which lies behind a sentimental gaze and its effect on the storytelling. The Silent but Noble Art The Silent but Noble Art is a retrospective exhibition featuring the career of Sigurhans Vignir (1894-1975), who worked as a photographer from 1917 to 1965, mostly in Reykjavík.
Vignir left behind a valuable photographic archive, now preserved at the Reykjavík Museum of Photography, which comprises around 40,000 photographs – most of them taken between 1940 and 1965. Many of the images are significant
Settlemen Exhibition
Peter Stridberg
documents of Icelandic society and how it developed in the years after the Republic of Iceland was founded in 1944. Vignir photographed a wide range of subjects, often focussing on individuals on every kind of occasion from cradle to grave: a christening, the foundation of the Republic, labourers at work, people skating, the occupation of Iceland during World War II by British troops, a beauty pageant, a birthday party, a wigmaker… and so on.
Iðavöllur: Icelandic Art in the 21st Century In 2021, Reykjavík Art Museum focuses on the microenvironment, with an aim of displaying the growth of the Icelandic art scene. The whole Hafnarhús becomes the setting for a powerful exhibition of new works by young artists who may be considered to be in the lead for their generation, and assumptions can also be made about the larger context of Icelandic and international contemporary art. It’s been a while since we checked in with what’s brewing among the fastest growing and most prominent artists and reflects subjects and approaches of the present.
Erró Guðmundur Guðmundsson (b. 1932), better known as Erró, is one of the best known contemporary artist of Iceland. Erró quickly became one of the pioneers of Pop Art and European narrative figuration. Erró has lived in Paris for more than fifty years; he usually spends part of the winter in Thailand and in summer he stays at his house in Formentera, Spain.
In 1989 Erró gave the City of Reykjavík a large collection of his works, a total of about 2,000 items, including paintings, watercolours, graphic art, sculptures, collages and other works spanning the artist’s entire career from his youth. Exhibitions from the Erró collection are a regular fixture at the Hafnarhús site of the Reykjavík Art Museum, with the purpose of giving as clear an image as possible of the diverse character of the artist’s works.
The Icelandic Punk Museum is located at Bankastræti 0, an underground location that served as public toilets from 1930 to 2006. The museum honours the music and the spirit that has shaped musicians and bands to this day; people who dared to be different. Objects, photographs, videos, posters, etc. from roughly 1978 to 1992 are on display with texts in Icelandic and English, and the main music from the period is available to guests.
CULTURE HOUSE
Treasures of a Nation
The National Gallery of Iceland’s collection contains over eleven thousand works. In the exhibition Treasures of a Nation, a selection of works from the collection displays the evolution of art in Iceland from the early nineteenth century to our times.
Punk Museum
Culture House
Welcome to Jómfrúin, the home of Danish smørrebrød in Reykjavik. It all began in 1888 with Oscars Davidsen’s highly praised smørrebrød restaurant in Copenhagen. An unbroken tradition of quality and Danish culinary culture for the past 100 years. Enjoy!
