Gudrun Nielsen

Public art in a private space

Solo exhibition: SÍM Gallerí Reykjavík 2.-29.July
The site-specific sculpture ‘Layers’ was originally designed by Gudrun for a Nordic Exhibition in London 2015. The sculpture´s form in plan echoed the geometrical forms in the ground floor windows of Dora House, the Royal Society of Sculptors headquarters in London. The partly see-through glass panels that form the ground floor five windows bring to mind a simple but calculated drawing of the black lead holding the panels apart or together. Layers first came to be realized by Gudrun this year as a much smaller version of the original monumental idea, as well she executed the over life size sculpture Layers II, a detailed sculpture of Layers repeated form.
‘Layers’, a tabletop sculpture of the original design, is made up of eight towers in a four-part set, containing 312 repeated single form, from Dora House lead glass panels. It is an expression and an echo of both the simple geometry of the rectangle and trapezoid cut out panels. In Layers Gudrun uses plywood and black dye, a common material in some of her earlier sculptures. The edges of the horizontal layers are like a black line drawing a reference to the leaded glass panels and by looking between the layers one can find a constantly changing scenery.

Public art in a private space.

Solo exhibition: SÍM Gallerí Reykjavík 2.-29.July

The site-specific sculpture ‘Layers’ was originally designed by Gudrun for a Nordic Exhibition in London 2015. The sculpture´s form in plan echoed the geometrical forms in the ground floor windows of Dora House, the Royal Society of Sculptors headquarters in London. The partly see-through glass panels that form the ground floor five windows bring to mind a simple but calculated drawing of the black lead holding the panels apart or together. Layers first came to be realized by Gudrun this year as a much smaller version of the original monumental idea, as well she executed the over life size sculpture Layers II, a detailed sculpture of Layers repeated form.

The over life size sculpture ‘Layers II’ reflects on the repeated form of Layers. It is an echo of the geometrical forms and the visual effect of the previously mentioned stained-glass in Dora House. As M.Þ.Andrésson mentioned about Gudrun´s earlier work “Nielsen contests this detached association of the known with the new. Drawing on geometry and reflecting on Japanese aesthetics, she develops ways to reinvigorate attentiveness”. With the introduction of high walls with its narrow pathway in the gallery space, “the viewer's movements and experience are momentarily choreographed”. Therefore, Nielsen has carried through, and expanded upon, a feature of an earlier work to the piece discussed here.

Twist, miniature sculptures in wax 2020 the Bronze cast 2021 more than 200 miniature sculptures on display at Dora House, London as part of the 10gram Challenge. The Royal Society of Sculptors in partnership with Milwyn, a specialist bronze casting art foundry in Surrey

Two man Exhibition January 2020 in Reykjavík : the Environmental series of barren wasteland.

Daughter and father Gudrun and Ólafur W. Nielsen open the photographic exhibition AUÐN/The Barren Wasteland in Gallery Grásteinn, Reykjavík from 4th - 30th January 2020. A few images from Gudrun's Barren Wasteland series were exhibited in September 2019 in LE MARAIS Paris.
In the summer of 2019 Gudrun went on a journey with her father Ólafur, to the old trails of the Tungnaá barren wasteland and Jökulheimar, there Gudrun took photographs for her Barren wasteland series. In this exhibition they merge photographs 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”.

Group Exhibition September in LE MARAIS Paris: the Environmental series of barren wasteland.

Jökulheimar the home of glaciers, situated in the lower part of the Tungnaá River on the former edge of the Tungnaá Glacier, Iceland. The area around Jökulheimar is a barren wasteland of black sand and lava, Tungnaár-wilderness. Using Hasselblad Xpan

The Icelandic Sculptors Society Winter Exhibition in their Sculpture Garden Reykjavik 7th February - spring. On the agenda of the Winter lights Festival 7th - 10th February. Obi my sculpture on show was the first of many of the same, originally installed 2008 in England and is part of my Japanese tea-house series where I borrow well known Japanese functional forms, exhibit and perform where culture and customs are different.

Exhibited in Berlin 2017 and 2019, Reykjavík 2018, London 2019

Environmental installation, Gufunes, Reykjavík. The Mountain Series of recycled materials influenced Gudrun by working in her Reykjavík studio on the site of one of Iceland’s leading providers of environmental management services and clean energy.

“This waste are the ruins of consumerism in the contemporary world, ruins that are in constant motion, becoming mountains that lasts only for a certain amount of time, then moved or disappears by human involvement. Gudrun pauses at this momentum of transformation, in this gradual process that is on slow but constant drift. Like Robert Smithson, was fascinated by the impact of industry on the environment and the city, Gudrun points out to us the human impact within the city landscape”.

Aldís Arnardóttir art historian and curator.

the Temple is a stopover on people's journey and at the same time a place to meditate or ignore.

Permanent installation in 101 Reykjavík

Exhibited in the Factory Hjalteyri north Iceland

Labyrinth in the sheltered Prince’s Gardens square, with its landscape garden, is hidden and tranquil though very central and found just off Exhibition Road where countless people pass through every day. The fenced square invites visitors, or passers-by, to walk the path across the green. The path guides one to it’s destination, making entry onto the lawn unnecessary when passing through. But if staying and enjoying the enclosed area, the grass or a garden bench invites one to rest and reflect.

Within the square near the south entrance to Exhibition Road is the installation site for the over life size sculpture Labyrinth. As one walks around the work to view it from a distance, one finds its form and depth change constantly and gets the feeling of its enclosure, the inner space with help from walls opening, entrances or exits and the see through hessian walls. It has been stated that I “choreograph the viewer’s movements and experience, diverting the focus points and resisting the notion of a full overview”. I invite people on a journey to enter the seven wall structure or to just ignore it. On that journey one will have to go out of one’s way from the path to enter the Labyrinth where it expresses it’s being both by form and name.

A publication accompanying the exhibition June 2015.

Hatje Cantz ISBN 978-3-7757-4043-2

On show at the Nordic Exhibition SKULPTUR in London http://rbs.org.uk/exhibitions/skulptur

Previously exhibited in Leicester England, Guernsey, Torino Italy and Reykjavíkin 2010, 2011 and 2015

The work of Gudrun Nielsen attempts to thwart people’s routine sense for their surroundings. We project the identity of a place onto it, depending on recognition and experience. Nielsen contests this detached association of the known with the new. Drawing on geometry and reflecting on Japanese aesthetics, she develops ways to reinvigorate attentiveness. Her background studies in the relationship of art and architecture motivate her position for the sculpture, Labyrinth. She introduces a maze in the Botanic Garden, a structure that momentarily choreographs the viewer’s movements and experience, diverting the focus points and resisting the notion of a full overview. A subtle moment of indeterminacy alerts our senses and gives way to a conscious engagement with the immediate environment.

Catalogue 27.June, 2010 text by Markús Þór Andrésson

Absent Core is a reference to the way of Zen Buddhism the temples inner world, the core. In this work visitors are led on a journey through blocked corridor and open veranda, partly surrounding the absent core. The repeated row of blocked Noren gates represent the mystic behind entering into the world of Zen the temple with it’s corridors and verandas, courtyard- and the dry landscape gardens the hidden inner world, the unknown behind removable walls of the Shoji paper doors and windows or the Noren that gently moves by a touch or the weather. After each of the five entries one might think, you are there but you are not. The unexpected is still waiting to appear and the past folds gently behind you on the journey. As you are guided slowly further along and higher up to the open veranda, the direction changing and the path leads you along to the steps, that guide’s you down to the ground again. As you turn the Zen garden presents the big ocean... it welcomes you with its inner cam and the previous footpath is the place to rest and reflect to capture the cam of the Zen and joy the end of the journey.

The idea for the sculpture “Blocked View” is a continuation from my previous work Borrowed View 231, 2012 and Borrowed View 2013 There the installation refers to the Japanese expression „borrowed landscape“ a technique where vistas extend beyond a structure, into the distance. In the case of Blocked View, we have the opposite. Completely blocked view, an influence and a reference to the land and man made structures closest to the volcanic eruption in Ejafjallajökull, in south Iceland early 2010 where millions of tons of ash came from the volcano.  The entrapped ash can be looked at as the wall that changed day into night in an instance “Blocked View” Exhibited in Edsvik Konsthall Sweden 19. October – 10.November

Borrowed View on show and work in progress, The  Borrowed View sculptural form constructed for the first time over life size. The installation refers to the Japanese expression „borrowed landscape“. A technique where vistas extend beyond a structure, into the distance.  Art Exhibition UNDIR BERUM HIMNI / IN THE OPEN AIR 25th May – 25th August - in Þingholtin and Skólavörðuholt.  100 Artists Exhibiting their work in public and private spaces in the heart of Reykjavík. Curator of the exhibition Gudrun Erla Geirsdottir Art Historian.

My sculptural installation Gálgahraun 2012 refers to the lava flow that ran from the askja Búrfell, Hafnarfirði Iceland in 6000 BC a kind and giving neighbour all my life. Búrfellshraun is a place to visit on cold and dark winter days or on bright summers days or nights. This neighbour of mine that is now under a threat has been here for a considerable time and should be allowed to stay on. In days gone by younger lava flows have covered part of Búrfellshraun. Group Exhibition in SÍM Hafnarstræti, Reykjavík 30th November to 20th of December.

The monumental work "Borrowed View 231" is a 2012 sculptural, video and sound installation. The work consists of 231 repeated sculptural forms, displayed in straight lines on three perspex forms suspended from the ceiling.  Under each sculptural form are equally as many coloured drawings each different from the next one. The installation refers to the Japanese expression „borrowed landscape“. A technique where vistas extend beyond a structure, into the distance. On each coloured drawing is one line from the poem Borrowed View 231 by Gudrun repeated differently on each drawing twohundredandthirtyone times  A vital part of the installation is the projection of the drawings on the gallery wall, constant changes of scenery "the borrowed landscape".  Edsvik Konsthall Sweden - Sunday, January 06, 2013

The Tamarama Coast, Bondi Australia, March

A Decade of Sculpture in the Garden exhibition. Work by more than sixty sculptors on display, from the USA, Germany, Iceland, Italy, France and the UK, with a number of sculptures by members of the Royal British Society of Sculptors.

The Absent Belfry Shö-Rö is a non-functional sculpture influenced by the bell tower within the Töfuku-Ji Temple in Kyoto. The 12 column platform invites spectators on a journey up the steps to an inner raised platform of the belfry where there is no sound source or protection from the elements, what you find there is their absence. On that journey your mind might wonder about the unanticipated changing dimensions of the stairs, with the increasing step working in tandem with the decreasing foothold as you ascend and thus making you work to enter the absent belfry.

Changes. Site Specific Sculpture at New Greenham Park, Berkshire, England.

1st prize in the International Greenham Common Sculpture Competition, UK

The unveiling of the art work by Sir Peter Michael on the 24th September 2010 in the precence of the Icelandic Ambassador Mr.Benedikt Jónsson

images by Leigh Quinell

BBC News 10 November, 1999, “A statement published by the Greenham Common Trust in July 1999 said: "Greenham Common was once one of the most important strategic military sites in the world”.

Greenham - a long time achangin'

This is Changes by the Icelandic sculptor Gudrun Nielsen, a monumental piece that has just been unveiled at Greenham Common where US bombers used to land – you get the references just by looking at it. Since the Greenham Common women saw off the last of the Right Stuff in 1988 the trees have returned along with the birds and the rest of the flora and fauna, and the military buildings have either been demolished or converted by the Greenham Common Trust which now owns it.  Nielsen won a competition along with the late Michael Kenny, but that was 12 years ago and while Kenny’s large geometric form, Broken Symmetry, was unveiled almost immediately by Ringo Starr (a Kenny fan and local resident), Gudrun’s was a little tardy in taking off, as it were............... 17.11.2010 / Simon Tait's Diary http://www.artsindustry.co.uk/features/simon-taits-diary/45

CHANGES New Greenham Park 2010

Steel and concrete may not be among the elements that first come to mind in relation to the term ‘changes’. However, creating her public artwork with the same title, Icelandic artist Gudrun Nielsen used these very materials in a remarkable manner. Nine Cor-ten steel plates were folded differently, placed on as many concrete slabs and lined up in the New Greenham Park. Visitors can walk along the massive yet playful objects or follow them back and forth with their eyes from a distance. On each end of the line the abstract shapes are simple, becoming more elaborate in the center where one of them takes the clear form of a fighter plane. The heavy-metal origami reminds us of the fact that this park was once a military airbase and the regular sculpture plinths are in fact recycled from the debris of the old landing strip. Together with the direct material reference, the systematic growth and unfurling of the geometric shapes symbolize the park’s history of renovation and improvement. Expressing the folding and unfolding of the past, Nielsen’s visual loop brings material life to the words of the poet William Cowper describing the wheel of time: ‘Still ending, and beginning still.’ Markús Þór Andrésson

The work of Gudrun Nielsen attempts to thwart people’s routine sense for their surroundings. We project the identity of a place onto it, depending on recognition and experience. Nielsen contests this detached association of the known with the new. Drawing on geometry and reflecting on Japanese aesthetics, she develops ways to reinvigorate attentiveness. Her background studies in the relationship of art and architecture motivate her position for the sculpture, Labyrinth. She introduces a maze in the Botanic Garden, a structure that momentarily choreographs the viewer’s movements and experience, diverting the focus points and resisting the notion of a full overview. A subtle moment of indeterminacy alerts our senses and gives way to a conscious engagement with the immediate environment.

Catalogue 27.June, Leaflet 16.Sept. 2010 text by Markús Þór Andrésson

Labyrinth exhibited:

2010 in the Heart Head and Hands Sculpture in the Garden exhibition, Harold Martin Botanic Garden University of Leicester, England 27th June - 19th September

European Sculpture:  Diversity and difference in practice “Nave Gallery“ parco culturale Le Serre Grugliasco, Turin, Italy.  martin Martini Arte Internazionale in collaboration with Sculpture Network 16th September - 6th November. Curated by Patrizia Bottallo.

2011

Sausmarez Manor Sculpture festival, International Art Parks, Guernsey May – October

Listasalurinn / Art Gallery in IÐA Lækjargötu, Reykjavík 10th January - 5th of February

2015

The Nordic Exhibition SKULPTUR in London.

A publication accompanying the exhibition June 2015.
Hatje Cantz ISBN 978-3-7757-4043-2

Obi V in the exhibition A Celebration of British Sculpture, Harold Martin Botanic Garden, Leicester, England 27th June - 27th September. Selected

Images by Gudrun Nielsen and Stuart Hollis

Skylight in the exhibition A Celebration of British Sculpture, Harold Martin Botanic Garden, Leicester, England 27th June - 27th September.

Images by Gudrun Nielsen and Stuart Hollis

After visits to Japan some of my recent work is influenced by the old Japanese wooden architecture and their traditions. This is part of my “Japanese Teahouse series” I  borrow well known functional forms, exhibit and perform where culture and customs are different.

Exhibited at the International Art Parks, Sausmarez Manor, Guernsey May - October

The exhibition Figure Burghley Sculpture Garden, Stamford, England 1st April - 31st October Curator Mike Shaw

The sculpture sited within a Japanese Garden in the Mount Pleasant Gardens, Kelsall, Cheshire.

The sculpture photographed outside my studio in Reykjavik before transport to England, Mount Esja in the background.

This is my “Japanese Teahouse series” I borrow well known functional forms, exhibits and perform where culture and customs are different.  There have been many different structures.  A teahouse on show in an art gallery in Iceland became functional for a day, another teahouse on show in an English Garden in Leicester.  A teagarden gate where there is no Teahouse, freestanding windowed walls without a purpose, or a structure for drying the Obi that just hangs there day after day, wet or dry.

After visits to Japan some of my recent work is influenced by the old Japanese wooden architecture and their traditions. This is part of my “Japanese Teahouse series” I  borrow well known functional forms, exhibit and perform where culture and customs are different.

Installed in Krísuvík Iceland and exhibited at Fortezza da basso, Florence Biennale Italy 1st - 9th December

Amigasamon a permanent installation at the Abbey House Gardens, Malmesbury, England. In Spectrum the RBS exhibition in the gardens 23rd July - September

Images from Countryfile BBC1 17.May 2009

After visits to Japan some of my recent work is influenced by the old Japanese wooden architecture and their traditions. This is part of my “Japanese Teahouse series” I  borrow well known functional forms, exhibit and perform where culture and customs are different.

After visits to Japan some of my recent work is influenced by the old Japanese wooden architecture and their traditions. This is part of my “Japanese Teahouse series” I  borrow well known functional forms, exhibit and perform where culture and customs are different.

In the Time exhibition at Burghley Sculpture Garden, Stamford, England 1st April - 31st October and at International Art Parks, Sausmarez Manor, Guernsey April - September

the coloured drawings are part of the JAPANESE TEAHOUSE SERIES 2005 - 2019 exhibited in England, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Iceland

After visits to Japan 2003 and 2005 some of my recent work is influenced by the old Japanese wooden architecture and their traditions. This is part of my “Japanese Teahouse series” I  borrow well known functional forms, exhibit and perform where culture and customs are different.

Japanese Teahouse eight mat exhibited in a Solo show Sculpture and Drawings Gallery Sævars Karls, Reykjavík and a performance a Japanese tea ceremony.

After visits to Japan 2003 and 2005 some of my recent work is influenced by the old Japanese wooden architecture and their traditions. This is part of my “Japanese Teahouse series” I  borrow well known functional forms, exhibit and perform where culture and customs are different.

Sculpture in the Garden: A Celebration of the RBS Centenary   Harold Martin Botanic Garden, University of Leicester, England.

Core site specific water sculpture. University College London, the British Heart Foundation Laboratories, Rayne Institute,  University Street.

Stainless steel, water

Site specific sculpture in Harold Martin Botanic Garden, University of Leicester 80th Anniversary. It is sited on each side of a garden path, echoing the forms in the paving and each other.

“Time” monumental 3D, site specific mural.  Westwood High School for Girls London.

The Millennium Dome, Greenwich, London.

Childhood memory 2000
In this sculpture I express memories from when I was very young. I looked out on the world from inside an outdoor staircase.
Here we have the opposite; I look in from the world outside

1997 The Henley Festival of Music and the Arts, Oxfordshire, England.

Narrow Path site specific sculpture at the Tidal Basin London.

Mixed media, monumental

Wheel of Progress site specific sculpture at the Design Museum, London. In the exhibition Festival of Scandinavian Design.

The sculpture refers to its surroundings by name and form.  It expresses movement along a path, referring both to the near by river Thames and the Museum. Monumental, mixed media.