Hooray! I had a letter from the tax office saying that I’m now registered for tax and VAT in Sweden. Hopefully it’s a useful stage in getting myself “fully” registered here and getting that all-important personal number. I looked at joining a gym earlier this week and it’s not possible without a personal number! The personal number is used in place of utility bills and credit checks, once I have one the whole of Sweden seems to open up …
I’m hopeful that I’ll be subletting a studio at wip from either December or at the latest January. It will be very nice to back as I already know some artists there and the studios are very good. Things have changed since I did my residency, the residency programme didn’t continue after the second artist (I was the first) and the book-shop has gone too. Both of these are disappointing but I can see why they’ve happened.
Initially I’ll sub-letting for six months. After that there’s the possibility to share the studio with the artist who is sub-letting. Sharing the studio will entitle me to become a “full” member of the studio group which offers various benefits and opportunities. As a full member I can get involved in the committees that run the gallery and other projects. And there’s no reason why I can’t propose a new residency programme … . Nothing like thinking ahead!
This week’s event at Moderna Museet – The Friend’s Sculpture Prize. This was actually only one event in a busy evening’s schedule. Sofia Hultén was the recipient of this year’s prize, which is one of the biggest in Sweden (a rather nice 300 000 SEK – almost £30,000). There was short discussion with her about her practice and at the time I felt as if I understood quite a lot of it (it was in Swedish), it helped that the conversation was about the pieces that were in the show. Her use of video was particularly interesting to me, she recorded staged (performed?) interactions with objects. Each interaction was relatively brief and she continued to record the object after the interaction ended. I liked the amount of control the frame of the camera gave her, I liked the time and duration that was given to each interaction and object, I liked how both process and outcome were visible without any additional fuss or maintenance. The videos were shown in loops of about eight different interactions/objects. The pace of them was perfectly judged. I came away thinking that video or film might be an appropriate media for some of my work, it might be an interesting way to give longevity to something transient …
Other events that evening included a lecture related to the Turner, Monet Twombly show and the opening of Ulf Rollof’s exhibition in the Moment series. The discussion with Ulf Rollof was far too complex for my Swedish so I had a quick look at the new photography exhibition. The exhibition has temporarily replaced the permanent collection and is huge – I need to spend at least a day there (the 30 minutes I had before the museum closed were completely insufficient).
Looking forward to hearing a date for getting into the studio, and getting my stuff brought over from the UK …
