13 YEARS BACK AND 100 YEARS INTO THE FUTUREKonsthallen Engelska Magasinet
November 18th, 2022–February 11th, 2023
Rejmyre is a small industrial town with a population of about 1,000 people, centered around Reijmyre Glassworks. The glassworks was founded in 1810 and is still in operation today. In 2009, another initiative was started in the town: Rejmyre Art Lab, which also worked with the site as its point of departure, but from a different perspective. Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies was founded by Sissi Westerberg and Daniel Peltz, who wanted to create a platform for site-specific art that takes its starting point in the conditions of a small town and a non-urban perspective; a center in the periphery, where they and others could develop, come together, and learn from each other and the place.
“We saw that there was a space for us to fill. By creating an artist-run experimental platform in Rejmyre we could generate an exchange between the historical legacy represented by the Glass Museum, the industry represented by the glassworks, and the very latest developments in art and design, which we have access to through our networks and our positions as teachers at some of the world’s leading art academies.”
– Sissi Westerberg
“We started Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies because we wanted our own place where we could gather with colleagues to think in both complexities and simplicities, and to form micro-communities for intensive studies. We had all previously taken part of several international residency programs and workshops. We had also been both students and teachers at leading international art academies. We longed for something that was missing in all of those environments and saw an opportunity to test alternative ways of making art and working together as artists here in Rejmyre.”
– Daniel Peltz
The exhibition presents a number of highlights from Rejmyre Art Lab’s history, from its beginning in 2009 until today. Visitors will encounter material from residencies and research strands over the years, where both finished works and process-based explorations are shown through photography, sculpture, publications, video, sketches, and more. Rejmyre Art Lab has a solid foundation under it, and a strong drive forward, which is also present in the exhibition, particularly through the children’s perspectives on the place they live in and through the ongoing artistic research project Refuging in Rejmyre.
Participating artists: Sophie Barbasch (US), Mette Colberg Jensen (DK), Sissi Westerberg (SE), Daniel Peltz (SE/US), Kristoffer Tejlgaard (DK), David Larsson (SE), children and youth participating in the Konstlabbet autumn break workshop 2022, and participants in the KUNO course Rural Contextual Practice: Everything you want was already here for MA students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, and Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts (held in August 2022).
The purpose of Rejmyre Art Lab is to be a global meeting place for research in site-based, contextual contemporary art and craft. Our program activities are rooted in a long-term investment in and engagement with the community of Rejmyre in Östergötland. As an artist-run organization, our collective ambition has been to create a post-institutional space for teaching experimental creation and learning. A non-hierarchical meeting place for ourselves and others, where we can continue to grow, think critically, and explore questions of collective concern. Here, we develop new models for how art and society can collaborate through self-organized, thematic practices. Our research strands arise from what emerges during our time together, following a loosely associative line from one year to the next.
The exhibition is open every Saturday 11 am–4 pm (except during Christmas and New Year) and by appointment.