In us – Gunvor Nervold Antonsen at Nyfossum

In an experimental, energetic and rough-hewn style, Nervold Antonsen explores society, existence and identity, often with a personal and local anchoring, and always in interaction with the fundamental forces and cycles of nature. The rawness of the expression is central, and there is a power present in the artist's use of materials and techniques, a resistance that provides access to the themes of the works.

One of Nervold Antonsen's artistic goals is to create encounters where contrasts emerge: the material and the immaterial, growth and decay, what is buried and what emerges. Not least, the dimensions of the works are often crucial, where physical quantities such as mass, quantity and weight come into play, giving us families of works that can be experienced both closely and intimately, and at a distance in monumental contrast to our own bodies.  

«The meeting between this feeling that it is a matter of life and death and the physical and concrete things we experience and create, between the immaterial and the material, is for me the place of art.»

"For me, it is important that experiences of contradictions and resistance in our daily, but also spiritual, lives are made visible and become part of the concrete in art. Presence is projected through thematic content, but also lies in the physical challenges of the works and in their creation. The works make it clear that art, like humans, goes through struggles, both material and procedural.»

The exhibition at Nyfossum displays a selection of individual works from last year's series, featuring wooden sculptures and textile montages from The flexible ones (shown in 2023 at Kunstnernes hus, Oslo) is central.

Gunvor Nervold Antonsen

Gunvor Nervold Antonsen (born 1974) studied at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design and lives and works in Rollag in Numedal. Her works have previously been exhibited at Kunstnernes Hus Oslo, Trondheim Art Museum, Kunstnerforbundet, Kunsthall Stavanger, Lillehammer Art Museum, Vigeland Museum, Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall and Telemark Art Museum. Her works have been purchased by the National Museum, KODE, Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum, the Government Quarter, Norges Bank and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and she has carried out public commissions for KORO, among others. She has received a number of awards for her work, most recently the Ingeborg and Per Palle Storms Honorary Award (2024) for her sculptures. Nervold Antonsen has also been involved in the social and political role of textile art, and as chair of the Norwegian Textile Artists (2006-2009), she helped establish the SOFT gallery and summarised the history of Norwegian textile art in the long poem Ode to a washcloth, hymn to a tiger. Nervold Antonsen has published books and publications in collaboration with other authors, as well as his own poetry collections., We are the margin (2019), and In me you will find (2026), both published by H//O//F.

About the series of works on display at Nyfossum:

The flexible ones and Iconostasis (2023)
The starting point for the monumental exhibition The flexible ones, shown at Kunstnernes Hus 2023, were conversations that had taken place over time between the artist and people who in different ways had lived vulnerable lives. Based on the conversations about their life experiences, Nervold Antonsen created a pictorial epic consisting of monumental textile portraits, wooden sculptures and sound works, a visual narrative that conveyed both power and powerlessness, human conflicts and vulnerability, but also the ability to rise again. The subject matter and techniques express the brutality and ordinariness of being human, rather than idealised states.

From the sculpture series The flexible ones shows 4 works, consisting of monumental human figures. Roughly carved with a chainsaw from whole spruce trunks, they all bear visible wounds and cracks.

From the portrait series with textile montages, Iconostasis, 4 works are shown, in a wealth of materials and detail, where painterly and textile techniques meet in overwhelming sizes. The portraits with the collective title Iconostasis, refers to the tapestry of icons that separates the holy of holies from the rest of the church in Orthodox churches. For the artist, the picture wall also marks the distance inherent in a face and the impossibility of getting behind another human being. The portraits are stylised and essential in their expression - enigmatic and haunting.

From Complaint for the dead (2025) are reliefs carved in beech wood. The motifs are grouped in two triptychs and show portraits of people surrounded by natural elements. The title is related to the biblical motif Lamentation over the Dead or Christ's Lamentation, which has been depicted countless times in art history. But with its plural and its for, the lament can be understood as addressed to the victims of wars we experience today. The series of works was created as a tribute to Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970), an artist who so clearly visualised her despair, her anger and her social commitment to contemporary crises in her imagery.

From We are the margin (2019), first shown at Trondheim Art Museum, 3 wooden sculptures are displayed, titled One of them, and read poetry publication as an audio work, which is also available as a flip copy.

We are the Margin originally consisted of an installation of textile montages, wood sculptures, sound works and a poetry publication, all of which in different ways told the story of the outsourced cornerstone company KA-Rollag, which from the late 1970s until 2018 produced car parts for Kongsberg Automotive in the artists' hometown, Rollag in Numedal.

The titles One of them The project problematised the relocation and closure of Norwegian industry and the dilemma that arises when the spirit of community disappears due to private interests' desire for ever more profit.

In the accompanying poetry publication We are the margin, the voices of different workers emerge more clearly, and their words and opinions form a counter-language to the language of politics and capital. I We are the margin poetry brings out the voices of people who are not usually heard, and they get to talk about aspects of our social history and reality, from a productive periphery far from the central decision-makers.

Windfall, 2022.
The 2-channel, 18-minute film forms the backdrop for the wooden sculpture from The flexible ones lying on the floor. This sculpture was carved from a large spruce that fell in Rollag during Storm Hans in 2021, the same storm that the film shows the clean-up work in the forest after.

From a bird's eye view, we see a man, the forestry worker, manually cutting away windfalls to give the forestry machine easier access to clean up the damage caused by stormy weather. With mild winters, soil without frost, and forests with almost no snow cover and without the holding function of ice, trees are vulnerable to root rot and breakage from gusts of wind. The storm that hit south-eastern Norway on 19 November 2021 blew down around 1.7 million cubic metres of forest, joining the ranks of more severe and frequent storms in recent years.
In just a few hours that day, the entire forest belonging to the artist's partner also blew down. A managed stand of spruce and pine forest, managed with a view to realising value for the next generation, had to be removed.
The film can be seen as a snapshot in time of the vulnerability the climate situation creates for nature and mankind, and as an image of the small human being's demanding and impossible task of cleaning up his own man-made problems.