Trude Westby Nordmark

My secret garden

5 May - 26 June 2022

‘[…] the message is simple, and its key ideas are reiterated again and again. Briefly they are: the unity and rhythm of nature, the correlating interdependence of nature and man; natural law as the basis for human law; the pervading power of prayer, ritual, art and concentration on the “good” … Order and rhythm are in the nature of things. It behoves man to study them, and to bring his life and his society into harmony with them. Only so may he be free…’ (Freya Mathews. The Ecological Self, 2021) 

‘My secret garden’ is a multi-year project whose origins can be traced back to an artist-in-residence stay at Ringebu during a few spring and summer months in 2021. Nordmark was invited by the Centre for Ceramic Art (CCA) to work at the newly established Monumental Studio (Monumentalverkstedet) and stay at Ringebu Vicarage (Ringebu Prestegard). Historical cultural landscapes dominate the surroundings from the river Gudbrandsdalslågen on the valley floor to the traditional pastures up in the Sør-Rondane mountains. When Nordmark arrived at Ringebu, she started by observing this green scenography, an ecology that came to pervade her perspective, work and thinking.

Nordmark develops module-based construction methods for clay based on biological systems. Her spatial installations illustrate how she is inspired by ideas about preserving nature’s biological diversity. The installation Underverk (Wonder), 2020, is an example of such a complex environment of subsea provenance. In the project ‘My secret garden’, she has changed habitats and grounded the layered meanings in the titles Ugress (Wild Growth) and Rotvekst (Root Crop). Underverk (Wonder) introduced parasites in a maritime architecture. In the botanical structures, weeds or wild growth display their invasive behaviour. The piece Blodsbånd (Blood Ties) implies an understanding of botany as a mirror image of our own existence. To be tied by blood – sanguine coniuncti – wrote the Roman author Cicero about the passing of the generations and other close personal relations. Within a larger cosmos, blood ties connect individuals in a universal system – since I matter to myself, so every part of the universal self or system matters to it. (Mathews, 2021)

Nordmark’s sculptures are put together from up to 2,000 extruded clay coils to form an architectural body. She cultivates a language in the material where even the smallest component follows a rhythm that has a bearing on the overall movement achieved in the building process. Unique to this exhibition are her vertical constructions of human height modelled in one piece in an intense flow (to quote the artist). Her residency period at CCA has resulted in monumentality of an exceptional format. Nordmark’s ceramic works are reformulated impressions from an almost monastic existence spent in the elevated realm of a heavenly mountain garden.

Text: Ingunn Svanes Almedal, Art Historian

Translation: Douglas Ferguson, Allegro språktjenester

The exhibition is supported by Regional project funds for visual arts and Arts Council Norway.

Trude Westby Nordmark (b. 1969) lives and works in Norway, Oslo. She completed her Masters degree in 1996 from the Department of Ceramics at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and has since received several grants. She has participated in exhibitions at home and abroad, and has done several commissions for art in public space, nationally and internationally. International projects include artist-in-residence engagements in Japan, China and Mali, with subsequent museum exhibitions. Her work has been purchased by collectors in Norway and abroad. Such as The National Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Trondheim, The National Museum in Oslo, Shiwan Ceramic Museum, Guangdong, China and The Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki, Japan.