In the exhibition Time Matter Remains Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir exhibits two strands of work that are combined within an installation. Three works of watercolour, and three sculptures are installed in the space. The subject of these different series is magnetism.
The sculptural installation is titled “transmission” and is an analogy for the correlation between substance matter that might seem unconnected. The natural world is a hugely complex network of interwoven forces whose representation is sometimes beyond our senses and our understanding. These incredibly complex networks and correlations are the building blocks of the sustainability of life on the planet. The sculptures are a testament of one such force; Earth's geomagnetism. A force in constant flux, earth's geomagnetic function undergoes magnetic pole reversal regularly. When magma rises to the surface of the earth and cools down it records the magnetic direction of the current time. The installation bears witness to this force, the magnetic needles hanging above the rocks point in the polar magnetic direction of the time that this particular rock was formed.
The Rock pointing the magnetic needle North comes from Skálafell on Hellisheiði and is roughly 0.8 million years old.
The rock pointing the magnetic needle South comes from Korpuósar in Grafarvogur and is roughly 2 million years old.
The Rock pointing the magnetic needle West comes from Skálamælifell on the Reykjanes Peninsula. The rock is roughly 92.000 years old. It was formed under a magnetic polar abnormality of the planet known as the Skálamælifell Excursion. During which the magnetic poles were located around the equator.
Anna Run watercolor works titled “Nonsystemic Mapmaking” are documentations of a process where materials were guided into a causal relationship with the foundational forces of magnetism and gravity. In these series Anna Rún works with different pigments, one in particular which originates from the mineral world and is highly magnetic in function. Magnetism therefore influences the movement of the pigments on the paper while gravity affects how the paper reacts to fluid. By allowing such foundational forces to affect the materials the works become a record or representations of these intricate interactions and relationships.
Artist Bio
In her continued work with material performances the artist devises technologically driven systems that facilitate and explore kinetic and cyclical behaviour of natural elements. Chosen materials are located in a perpetual movement or forced into a collaborative gesture with one another. Without a fixed outcome, the process ‘the work’ is never fully predictable or under control. The work engages in a feminist perspective of vulnerability, focusing on processes rather than an end result. Speaking for physical, emotional and material spaces that are somehow in between, undefined, or against a monumental or even singular outcome. She addresses the politics of materials by playing with their properties and agency within a constructed situation. The artist is exploring these points of intersections as metaphors for the constituents of our lives, our connection to nature and the space between nature and the humanly constructed.