Gallery Visit: Nordic noir - British Museum, London

The exhibition Nordic noir provides a welcome insight into the distinctive art made around themes about the flora and fauna, the landscape and the preservation of the environment of the fjords, mountains and forests, identity and heritage closely associated with the Scandinavian countries.

The British Museum's landmark collecting project, has been supported by a substantial grant from charitable organisation AKO Foundation. The grant has enabled the acquisition of almost 400 works by artists from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, which has added significantly to the existing collection of work on paper from Nordic countries.

As well as Edvard Munch and Mamma Andersson, featured artists are:

Olafur Eliasson, John Savio, Vanessa Baird, Yuichiro Sato, Fatima Moallim, John Kørner, Mette Stausland and many more.

One of the artists whose drawings have been purchased with this extremely generous donation by the AKO Foundation, is Mette Stausland, an artist we worked with many years ago, and whose career we have followed ever since.

Paul and I held the first exhibition of her beautiful, intensely coloured drawings at our apartment in Islington, London almost twenty years ago! The drawings shown above are three of the set of four, now included in the British Museum's collection.

Visit the museum website for more information by clicking on the link below. The Nordic noir exhibition has an accompanying catalogue written by Jennifer Ramkalawon, and published by the British Museum Press. It is paperback, £35, ISBN 9780714136509.

More about Nordic noir

About the author

Paul Barratt

Paul Barratt started working in contemporary art galleries in 1989, having graduated in Fine Art from Goldmsith’s, London University. He initially worked at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, one of the contemporary art dealers, who dominated the London art market in the 80s and 90s. He was approached by the Lisson Gallery to be gallery manager for the influential art dealer Nicholas Logsdail. This was followed by a short period in New York at Gladstone Gallery, to work for visionary art dealer Barbara Gladstone, working with the artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney.

 

On his return to London, Paul secured a place on the postgraduate curatorial course at the Royal College of Art, to complete an MA. After graduation in 2001, he worked as an independent curator on several projects in Oslo, London, Brighton and Basel, before joining Paul Vater at his design agency Sugarfree in 2004. He has worked with Paul ever since.

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