Marthe Minde

Raknande kvardagsrytmar

24 September - 8 November 2020

Unravelling Everyday Rhythms

As a tool to create sculpture Marthe Minde uses the manual loom, in previous times employed to make tapestries, national costumes and everyday clothes. Through selfdeveloped techniques such as the pocket technique, the wandering warp and overriding of the shafts she weaves horizontally, vertically and sideways in the floor loom. Through many layers of thread, she builds large surfaces, where she then inserts wooden pieces, thus making pockets and twists. When the woven artifact is cut off the loom, the surface may be unfolded into a multi-dimensional body. Marthe Minde’s motifs rendered in the woven pieces are inspired by her own background. She is looking for intertwined objects in thoughts and memories, where familiar gentleness encounters the darkness of adversity. She weaves the bed after years of illness, she weaves the clock on the wall, she weaves the empty kitchen chair after the rhythms of everyday life unravelled and she weaves the hallway door ajar. The compact wooden constructions are transferred into complex systems of countless thin threads, and the objects are hanging in the warp threads from which they are made. The artist collects the weaving materials in the vicinity of her childhood home. The warp is handspun wool from short-tailed sheep at Borgo, while the weft includes slender birch roots from Solnipa, bear moss from Høljemyra, stinging nettles from Austlimyra, thistle from Træshaugen and resin from Haugo. In the exhibition Minde has united the indigenous materials into isolated everyday objects, presenting ideas of belonging and loss through the speech of thin thread.

Marthe Minde (b. 1984) lives and works in Arna, Vestland County. In the spring of 2018, she completed a Master’s Degree in Medium- and Material-Based Art at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She has exhibited in Trafo Kunsthall, Asker, and has completed an art commission for Eilert Sundt Upper Secondary School in Lyngdal. Next spring she will have work in the opening exhibition of the National Museum.