Geirthrudur Finnbogadottir Hjorvar (IS) uses methods ranging from text, drawing, installation, sculpture and photography to that of concept driven performances. It is an approach that relies on a range of materials, but is built upon a sceptical outlook towards the object. The goal would be for the object to become a set of associations unfolding in space which merges with the experience of being viewed. Currently Geirthrudur is working on the subject of historical revivals including the revisionist tendencies embodied in the Enlightenment and Renaissance. Besides the obvious banality of re-enacting a past which is obviously unbreachable, these revisions may be considered a renewed form of scepticism directed at the contemporary order.
They may even be considered as attempts to cast an objective gaze at a point in time where the world was confused by the limitations of its own reflection. Ultimately, what it implies is that the present order is merely an alternative within numerous variations of how history might have unfolded.
Geirthrudur has been living and working in Amsterdam since 2007, and attended the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten from 2007 to 2008. Recent works include: Civic Virtue I (installation / exhibition) at Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (2010); Home Delivery Service at SouthBySouth, Keflavik (2010), focusing amongst other things on the story the last Garefowl (Great Auk); and a re-staging of The Obvious, in ‘Following People and Drinking Milk’ (2010) at Hafnarborg, Hafnarfjordur, where identical twins were presented as a method for producing metaphors for the paradox of singularity.In 2011 - 2012 she will be attending the residency of Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Germany.
Proof of the Roman Empire - Via dei Gracchi; Photograph; 2008
Civic Virtue - A Marble Head of an Aphrodite Installation / Marble Head from 2nd century AD; 2010
Home Delivery Service - Claybird; Installation / Wet Clay; 2010