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Rondo

 

Exhibition

National Museum of Iceland | 2007

 

Installation

Installation of chanted rhymes, wood-carving, wall-paper, painting on wall, print on windows and on wall, post-cards and an artist book.

 

Text
Oddny Eir

Rondo is a homage to Bolu-Hjalmar. In her installation Gudrun projects to seven windows of the museum room patterns from an old handcarved wooden box which the farmer gave to his welldoer on his travels, In a small artist book, Gudrun gathers and covers Bolu-Hjalmars poetry and she then covers the museum wall by a pattern by Bolu-Hjalmar, leaving the original handcrafted wooden closet on the wall, opening it, letting the chanting of his poetry flow from within it.

 

In Rondo Gudrun explores the correspondance of the rhythm of nature and the rhythm of the Icelandic rhymes as chanted in the 19th century Iceland where each individual had his own rhyme-tune to accord to various lyrics. Gudrun collected great volumes of Icelandic rymes, in text and on old recordings, sung by elderly people in Iceland, in order to select rymes that correspond to her sense of the rhythm of nature. Gudrun looks at the rhymes, tunes, floral handcraft, handwriting and book-making of the 19th century farmer, poet and craftsman Bolu-Hjalmar. She pictures his different creations as interwoven and tries to capture the movement of his disciplined and provocative repetitiveness of creation which takes force from both harsh weather and a mature heart.