Norwegian Arts and Crafts Exhibition "Handmade stories"

A presentation of the works of nine Norwegian artists specializing in glassware, jewellery, textiles and ceramics

                               Exhibition opening - August 10, 2023, at 17.00, Mazovian Museum in Płock, ul. Kolegialna 6

This will be an exhibition of handmade stories. Working with glass, ceramics, textiles, wood and metal, nine Norwegian artists will be presenting contemporary arts and crafts from the county of Innlandet. Norwegian arts and crafts are generally of a very high quality, and several of the artists participating in the exhibition are among the best ones in their field in Norway. Some of the artists are also highly sought after internationally, invited to exhibitions abroad and awarded with international prizes. 

The nine artists are Inga Blix (textiles), Liv Blåvarp (wooden jewellery), Ragnhild Enge (textiles), Tor Alex Erichsen (ceramics), Kari Håkonsen (glassware), Ingun Kleppan (metal jewellery), Vidar Koksvik (glassware), Torbjørn Kvasbø (ceramics) and Kari Mølstad (glassware).

In the Norwegian context, arts and crafts were established as an independent art form in the 1970s. The artists are responsible for the entire artistic process, from ideas to finished works. The starting point is a craft product that is consciously infused with aesthetic values. These values have increasingly come to the fore, so the aspect of use takes a back seat or disappears, and the material becomes the key attribute when the product is classified.

Torbjørn Kvasbø’s artistic production is a good example of this development. He started out as a potter and has gradually been moving away from the utility function so now his works are ceramic sculptures.

The fact that this material-based exhibition is displayed in the Mazovian Museum, whose collections of art and design items from the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods are rich, puts both the contemporary arts and crafts and the older collections in perspective. It opens for extended reflections on material-based art across the centuries, on new connections, contrasts and stories.

The exhibition will also be shown at the Ullinsvin Gallery in Norway.

The exhibition is produced and curated by Ingrid Blekastad, director of Kunstbanken Centre for Contemporary Art.

The curator of the exhibition held at the Mazovian Museum in Płock is Małgorzata Szadkowska, head of its Art Department.

Ingrid Blekastad
Director and artistic leader of Kunstbanken Hedmark Kunstsenter since 2000. Kunstbanken is a contemporary art centre situated in Hamar. Blekastad is the initiator of Kunstbanken’s commitment to performance art, and, since 2003, she has been the curator of the art centre’s international performance festival and numerous exhibitions of contemporary art.
She holds an MA in art history from the University of Bergen and has 11 years of experience as a curator at Lillehammer Art Museum. She has been a lecturer in recent art history at Lillehammer University College and published a lot of articles about contemporary art in various art magazines, exhibition catalogues and books.

Małgorzata Szadkowska

A curator at the Mazovian Museum in Płock (MMP). On a daily basis, she looks after the art collections of the MMP’s Art Department as its manager. A lover of all types of issues related to women’s fashion and beauty as well as the customs and traditions of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and the interwar period (the 1920s and 1930s). She also deals with the museum’s collections of fashion and accessories — including mainly objects dating back to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and the interwar period — and arts and crafts (items from the end of the 19th century to the 1970s). Curator of temporary exhibitions, including “Józef Mehoffer. From Graphics to Stained Glass” (2011) and “The Discreet Charm of the Boudoir. Women’s fashion from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1930s from the collection of the MMP” (2013). Co-curator of exhibitions, including: “Art Déco items from the collection of the MMP” (2011), “In the labyrinth of impressions. Polish and foreign graphic art 1873-1984 from the collection of the MMP” (2018), “Post-war design. The direction of the Mazovian Museum’s development” (2021), and “Glassware from the Niemen Glassworks” (2022). Curator of the permanent exhibition “The Art of the 1920s and 1930s — Art Deco” (2021) and co-author of its programme.