AUÐN / THE BARREN WASTELAND SERIES 2019 catalogue IS
Selection from the catalogue, translated to English
SAMRUNI / MERGE text Arndís Arnardóttir freelance art historian
A journey to the old trails of the Tungnaá barren wasteland and Jökulheimar were taken in the summer of 2019 by Ólafur and Guðrún Nielsen, father and daughter, there Guðrún gathered material for her Barren Wasteland Series. They merge photographs in this exhibition taken up to 70 years apart.
As the art historian Aldís Arnardóttir describes: “The forces of nature are unpredictable and nowhere are the opposites as great as in this barren wasteland. Where the white glacier's edge has retreated and wide areas of black sand and wasteland appear. Gudrun looks to the past, stories of the land and personal memories, which provides her with the basis for the work of collage where the present lies harshly over the land. In the work Hvíld á jökli 1953/ Tungnaáröræfi 2019 the white snow dust of the past has retreated for the mystical sand dust of today”.