September 5-20, 2020
Fri-Sun 12-16
The exhibition Hydrotop presents new artworks by ten students at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, addressing water in different ways.
During a year-long course with the same name, the students worked on questions of the artist’s role, science and ideology in the current environmental situation with melting ice and rising sea levels. The work has led them between places like the coal mine and the global seed vault in Longyearbyn on Svalbard, to dark evening swims at Veskijärve in the Sörmland forest and a floating seminar on Frösjön right next to Art Lab Gnesta. One’s own physical experience has been central to the work, as have the meetings with other researchers, authors and artists who have contributed to the course.
Water is the element that connects everything that lives. From Art Lab Gnesta’s large hall, the exhibition flows between the rooms, out through the greenhouse and down to the water’s edge, in a movement that reminds us of art’s ability to express what is not yet taken for granted.
Hydrotop is an independent continuation of previous courses Isotope (2017-2018) and Ekotop (2018-2019). Together, they form a larger whole and picture of the relationship between nature, industry and the current environmental situation and the consequences and effects of industrialization and human behavior.
Artists: Mattias Andersson, Sarali Borg, Sara Ekholm Eriksson, Elina Eriksson, Nicole Newsha Khadivi, Johanna Kindahl, Lina Lundquist, Lior Nønne Malue Hansen, Hannah Nyberg and Alex Valijani.
Initiator and course leaders: Lina Selander and Björn Larsson
Guest teachers: Signe Johannessen, Axel Andersson, Petra Carlsson Redell, Niklas Granström
Curator: Caroline Malmström
Exhibition design and installation: Erik Rören and Mikael Jonasson
Communication: Emanuel Hallklint
Exhibition text – Hydrotop (pdf)
