BRIDGE PROJECT, SWEDEN & LONDON, 2023-24
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BRIDGE is a cross-cultural collaboration between two established artist-run organisations, ArtCan (UK) and ÖSKG (Sweden). For each exhibition artists are selected from each organisation and paired up. Each pair was asked to connect through email, messages, phone calls and video calls, and were encouraged to meet up in person. Our only guidelines were to communicate beyond the studio space, exchange ideas and to take inspiration from each other’s lives and culture. The focus was on each duo’s shared journey, which results in a joint installation. Paired with ÖSKG glass artist Jonas Rooth, I've been working for the first two BRIDGE exhibitions:-
BRIDGE 23, Tjörnedala konsthall, East Skåne, Sweden, Nov-Dec 2023 BRIDGE 24, Downstairs at the Department Store, Brixton, London, Sept 2024 BRIDGE 24
Below installation views from BRIDGE 24 In terms of our process, I showed a slo mo film which I made whilst visiting Skåne for BRIDGE 23 on the way to Rooth's studio, where I came away with glass off cuts and I started to work with off cuts from Rooth's studio, 'finding' seascapes and mountains in them. In the Spring 2024, meeting up in London, we decided to work with the idea of fungi and the idea of making mycelial links if I broke his glass up further and linking them between my photograph of a childhood willow tree and his fruiting blown glass mushrooms emerged. |
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BRIDGE24 Installation view Catherine Jacobs & Jonas Rooth.
BRIDGE24 Installation view Catherine Jacobs & Phil Cope
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50 mixed media ‘mycelial’ fibres made from glass offcuts from Jonas Rooth’s studio, glue and fabric strands
Skåne Slo-Mo, Edition of 5 and 1 A/P. 5.13 minutes duration.
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BRIDGE24 artist Pamphlet - each with an original watercolour.
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For a view of all the BRIDGE 24 pair works please see https://oskg.se/bridge-2024-artcan-oskg/
BRIDGE is the result of the shared vision of Pernilla Iggström, artist and curator at ArtCan, and Christel Lundberg, manager of ÖSKG/Tjörnedala konsthall. They met at Supermarket Independent Art Fair in Stockholm in 2022, and immediately found common ground and the idea of BRIDGE was born. BRIDGE is a long-term collaboration. Tjörnedala konsthall is situated in the rural landscape of East Skåne (East Scania) while ArtCan is active internationally with its base in metropolitan London – contrasts that create interesting dynamics in the project. The purpose of the collaboration is to connect across physical and metaphorical borders, and break down cultural, social and political boundaries. The aim is to increase diversity, inclusion and an understanding of artists’ different working conditions.
'Crystal Cosmos 1', Photograph on Hahnemühle Bamboo, 420 x 297 mm,
Edition of 15 & 1 A/P. |
Seeing Seascapes 1 (from Jonas’s Rooth’s Glass offcuts) 19x13cm, Edition of 15 and 1 A/P
Seeing Seascapes 2 (from Jonas’s Rooth’s Glass offcuts) 19x13cm, Edition of 15 and 1 A/P
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BRIDGE 23
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For BRIDGE 23 Jonas and I presented an installation based on both our work with the ponds and rivers in our lives in the UK and Sweden. I filmed the reeds the Stockholm archipelago Midsummer 2023 and visited the East Anglian Coast.
The premise of BRIDGE being all about the process and what developed was very freeing - I experimented with showing video, monoprints and a photograph on silk for the first time. For more on BRIDGE23 please see https://oskg.se/utbytesutstallning-bridge-artcan/
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Tjörnedala Konsthall, East Skåne, Sweden
Installation view, Catherine Jacobs & Jonas Rooth
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Alone & Together, Artist video, Edition of 5 & 1 A/P.
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'Rorschach Reeds' mirrored monoprints, A4 each side.
TRANSPARENT AS A DRAGONFLY, ROME & LONDON, 2023-24
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Italo Calvino’s birth, ‘Transparent as a Dragonfly’. was a joint Arte Borgo | ArtCan exhibition, which first took place in Arte Borgo Gallery Rome during Rome Art Week 2023 before travelling to Bermondsey Project Space in London 2024.Curators Anna Isopo & Martina Scavone of Arte Borgo, and Rita Carta Manias & Lesley Bunch of ArtCan, invited artists to choose a line, passage or chapter from Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’, and propose work in response to it. The responses were diverse, exploring the power and limits of language, the relationship between language and things, memory, perception and place. The title for the exhibition is taken from a passage in Calvino’s Invisible Cities:
“Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone’s gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.” Calvino, Invisible Cities, (1972).
Better At A Distance ? 1
Inspired by Italo Calvino’s descriptions of distant cities and playing with the open-ended readings and scaling that photography offers, the series Better At A Distance? invites us to see where our own narratives and stories take us. The cityscape was staged using a table-top sculpture using everyday office material with no digital manipulation used. It is presented as an archival limited-edition print without a frame, mounted on aluminium.
The cloud dissolved at times in a wisp of wind, or else remained suspended in mid-air; and the answer was in that cloud. As the puff carried the smoke away, the answer was in that cloud. As the puff carried the smoke away, Marco thought of the mists that cloud the expanse of the sea and the mountain ranges and, when dispelled, leave the air dry and diaphanous, revealing distant cities.it was beyond that screen of fickle humors that his gaze wished to arrive: the form of things can be discerned better at a distance. Cities & the Sky 1 (Page 88, Vintage Classics, 1997)
“Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone’s gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.” Calvino, Invisible Cities, (1972).
Better At A Distance ? 1
Inspired by Italo Calvino’s descriptions of distant cities and playing with the open-ended readings and scaling that photography offers, the series Better At A Distance? invites us to see where our own narratives and stories take us. The cityscape was staged using a table-top sculpture using everyday office material with no digital manipulation used. It is presented as an archival limited-edition print without a frame, mounted on aluminium.
The cloud dissolved at times in a wisp of wind, or else remained suspended in mid-air; and the answer was in that cloud. As the puff carried the smoke away, the answer was in that cloud. As the puff carried the smoke away, Marco thought of the mists that cloud the expanse of the sea and the mountain ranges and, when dispelled, leave the air dry and diaphanous, revealing distant cities.it was beyond that screen of fickle humors that his gaze wished to arrive: the form of things can be discerned better at a distance. Cities & the Sky 1 (Page 88, Vintage Classics, 1997)
Photographic print on Fuji Matt
mounted on aluminium 20x16cm.
Edition of 15 and 1 A/P.
Editions 1-5 £395.