The Queen Sonja Print Award is proud to continue the exhibition Mellom rom by HM Queen Sonja & Håvard Homstvedt – a traveling exhibition in support of the Queen Sonja Print Award.
This is the third stop, where the exhibition will be on display from 19 April - 1 September 2024.
About the exhibition:
HM Queen Sonja and Håvard Homstvedt started their collaboration in March 2022. Both artists wished to support the Queen Sonja Print Award Foundation, through a shared project, where the starting point was still life, interiors and the familiar. The exhibition, which has already been displayed in Stavanger and Trondheim, is now opening in Oslo.
The project’s title «Mellom rom”, literally means “the room in-between”. It may refer to a physical space, but may also connote the more abstract, in the interval or interlude. Conceivably, suggesting distance and proximity or expressing the time or space between two stages and states. Maybe it is a breathing space or, in this case, a balancing point between two artistic practices, a meeting place for artistic partnership, where two artists meet, discuss, adjust, and explore.
Her Majesty the Queen, has, as in many previous projects, used the camera as a sketch book. This time the outset is not photos of nature, but rather a selection of interior segments from familiar rooms. Håvard Homstvedt has further remodeled the photographic segments into sketches and drawings. The two artists have experimented with the different sketch elements and created new distinctive works of art, with pronounced furnishings and settings. The art works are signed by both. The artists have challenged one another, have had engaging discussions on color, and formal choices, at the same time as they have worked on and with the same printing plates. Incorporated into the project are monotypes, as well as edition prints.
A recurrent element in the larger monotypes is a vase-shape, designed and used by the Queen in her ceramic production. Here the form is used as inspiration for the printed works, thereby referencing Her Majesty’s other artistic output. In combination with Homstvedt’s sophisticated and expansive use of color, still lifes are created in partnership. The project is an homage to the familiar and the intimate. The homely and the private, can be a breathing space. Art may also have that very same function. In the different series, both artists’ fascination with the tactile and textural, light and shade, as well as spatiality, come to the fore.
Queen Sonja and Håvard Homstvedt have visited three different print studios during the project; Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) on Long Island, New York, Edition Copenhagen in Denmark and Trafo kunstproduksjon in Asker. Different printing techniques, from more traditional lithographic prints on stone to monotypic stencil prints, have been explored and are incorporated into the project.
H.M. Queen Sonja and Håvard Homstvedt on the making of Mellom rom
The Locus portfolio
The Locus portfolio is part of a larger collaboration between HM Queen Sonja and Håvard Homstvedt in support of Queen Sonja Print Award.
Locus is Latin for place or location. Particularly a place of significance in a given context or situation. The Locus portfolio consist of 6 prints in black and white printed on a rare and exclusive paper from the 1950’s. The prints were created at the onset of HM the Queen and Homstvedt’ s collaboration. Some of their first experiments in nature morte; where their interests in texture, spatiality, juxtapositions, as well as light and shade, come to the fore.
The Locus portfolio, produced at the eminent Universal Limited Art Editions studios (ULAE) on Long Island, New York, were proof printed by Bill Goldston himself, ULAE’s longstanding owner and acclaimed master printer. A friend and a comrade-in-arms of the Queen Sonja Print Award.
HM Queen Sonja, Håvard Homstvedt and Bill Goldston have a mutual affection for graphic art and printmaking, expressed through their support of Queen Sonja Print Award. They share an understanding of the urgency in promoting this artistic practise. The art of printmaking, with all its unique facets, is explored by so many artists, not only as a means of experimentation, but as a vital and important part of many artistic oeuvres.
The Locus portfolio is a limited edition of 10, priced at NOK 80.000, + 5% tax to the Relief Found of Visual Artists. All proceeds are donated to the Queen Sonja Print Award.
For more information on the artworks available during this exhibition, please contact hello@queensonjaprintaward.no or visit us during opening hours
