Located approximately 70 km south-west of Stockholm, is the art hub of Art Lab Gnesta. It's a "if you know, you know" kind of a place, anchored in the local community, running all kinds of truly inspiring collective initiatives. While it's been on our radar for years, our first visit to Art Lab Gnesta was only some mere weeks ago. Shame, yes we know, but in order to prevent others from making the same mistake, we recently invited artist Signe Johannessen and Caroline Malmström, curator and art historian, who have jointly helmed the artistic direction since 2011, to share their fascinating story.
Caroline Malmström & Signe Johannessen. Photo: Märta Thisner
C-P: Hello Caroline and Signe, so nice to be talking to you again. We recently met at Art Lab Gnesta, my very first time visiting. I left being so inspired by what you do but also the stunning site itself. There's so much I'd like to circle back to so let's dive right into it. The two of you are co-artistic directors of ALG. I know you've been working together for years but when and how did your paths first cross?
C.M: I was working at Botkyrka konsthall back in 2010, when Signe was invited to be part of a group show. Educated in art history and curating, my job at the time focused on creating artistic collaborations between students from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm with local high school students and professional artists. Suddenly we were an unpredictable group of people in different ages that found ourselves "larping" the end of the world on the empty shores of Fårö in late November. Actually I think that situation says a lot about how mine and Signe’s dialogue has continued since then.
ALG 10 years anniversary in 2021. Photo: Signe Johannessen
C-P: The site for ALG, a former brewery, has a very unique history. Signe, you partly grew up in Gnesta, and had the vision of turning it into an art space while still a student at the Royal Institute of Fine Art in Stockholm. Run me through the history again. The late Peter Geschwind, one of your professors, played a small role in all of this, right?
S.J: I moved to Gnesta from northern Norway when I was very young The impulse to create a production oriented platform and an inquiry driven collective space to work out from in our local context springs from a need that me and my partner, artist Erik Rören both shared. We wanted to create a place to work from, embedded in the site we had chosen to set down roots in. So many of my peers at Mejan expressed traction towards putting up their practices in big cities, but I had no such desire, I wanted to work from a point of view that brings me happiness, stuff like dark nights, morning dew, the ability to walk barefoot into a forest or take a morning dip in a lake. So we gravitated back to Gnesta when our first born was very young.
The process of starting up Art Lab Gnesta started 2009 and was kind of a digging and building where we stood kind of thing, we dreamed up different models of operation, and that's how the old brewery house called us in. It just stood there empty and full of potential, staring us in the face! Then, in 2010 it was nearly a ruin with no running water, electricity etc. and big gaping holes from ceiling to cellar. We collaborated with different local artists and enthusiasts already from the beginning and formed a discourse with local decision makers about what this place could be and how it could operate. I did this work parallel to the last years as a student, where both sculpture and performative practice was mainly at play.
As a student at KKH, Geschwind was very important to me because he directed my gaze very wisely towards how forming this platform, bringing Art Lab Gnesta up on it’s feet, fighting this fight, building this unrealistic and speculative place was indeed a part of my core practice, rather than a parallel separated world of organizing. He himself had also had a period of self organizing a space. He also wrote a letter to the local decision makers, urging them to listen to us and enable the birth of Art Lab Gnesta. Through that act he gave me strength and confidence to take the plunge. Around this time a man, Karl Schultz-Köln, then at an age of 87 years old sat on a commuter train towards Tungelsta. He picked up a free newspaper, Metro, laying on the seat next to him. In it he read a small article about this fiery art student wanting to create an art center in the countryside outside of Stockholm. He picked up the phone and we got to talking. He
himself had been an artist in what he described as the “periphery” all his life and he wanted to support our idea. He had lost his wife, industrial designer Marita Mörck- Shults a year earlier and he was looking for a way to contextualize his and Maritas lives, work and legacy. He basically sold his small house, and put the resources he had into his and his wife's foundation. He then invited us, me and Erik, to manage the foundation with him so we could buy the old brewery in Gnesta. He had no family on his own and this was such an unconventional leap of faith! We helped him pack down a long life of practice and in many
ways we became a sort of family until his death at the age of 93. He would get drunk at dinner parties at Art Lab Gnesta together with visiting artists, dance and play, shouting out: This is my grand finale!
The whole experience of both taking on the responsibility of the foundation and the brewery house and building up Art Lab Gnesta has been an enormous exercise of risk taking, trust and speculative thinking. There were no stats or graphs to support the success of this aim, just raw fire, personal risk and the belief that one must build the world that you want! Over the years the people working with Art Lab Gnesta have changed many times, and our positions and mandates have fluctuated. Caroline came in 2011 – very early on though, and has been steering this ship with me through many changes and rough weathers. Currently we are a crew of seven working in different capacities. In many ways Art Lab Gnesta has matured and formed through the people working there throughout the years!
Caroline Malmström & Signe Johannessen. Photo: Märta Thisner
C-P: I was struck by several things you said when we met a while back, but one for sure is how you recognize that life and art are intertwined. A telling example is how the team brought their families along to an excursion to Italy by way of train.
C.M: We knew we wanted to go on a research trip together, and the most honest way of doing it would be to bring our closest ones. Not only as a way for us as parents to admit what constitutes everyday life, but also as a method – to be able to conduct this research with the help of the children. All in all, we were 12 kids and 11 adults that took the train from Gnesta to Italy. I guess it's a way to acknowledge the transformative power of art. The trip to Florence was part of a collective research in an ongoing project focusing on monsters. That Florence is described as the cradle of the Renaissance and humanism, is very interesting if one sees the representation of (cultural) monsters as an excluding practice to describe the civilized and the uncivilized respectively. It is a city filled to the brim with depictions of historical monsters, where we met with researchers from the university and the impressive Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. We also visited Il Parco dei Mostri, an incredible sculpture park from the 16th century with large-scale stone sculptures depicting various wonders in Bomarzo, a couple of hours away. The older kids were documenting the
trip through filming everything, and the younger ones were drawing wherever they came,
and making costumes for themselves and us adults.
S.J: The trip to Florence and how we did it was indeed a celebration of the methods that make up how we work at Art Lab Gnesta. Creating collective experiences with our bodies and senses has always shaped our way of working. We often explore our topics through sensory practices together with invited artists, like during the years when we sunk into post catastrophic wetlands and intertidal zones in our project Swamp storytelling. This time around we wanted to go on this research trip in the name of the monster together as a team and honour the reality of our lives, with kids, partners and all the equations that come with
that.
Extended ALG team at Parco dei Mostri, Bomarzo, 2023. Photo: Emanuel Hallklint
C-P: Also, the story of how some local kids entered the premises and “never left”. Children today seem integral to most of your activities. Tell me a little about this symbiotic work.
S.J: Yes, that is such a telling story of how we get shaped by our participants and our local community. Almost four years back a group of girls, then at the age of 8, walked into our house and demanded space. They had formed a separatist group in the garden of one of the girls, now fall was incoming and they needed a place to work from once a week, a clubhouse. They had named their club Rädda Jorden-klubben, RJK, (Save the Earth Club) and they were engaged in finding ways to disturb the procrastination of the adult world and decision makers in regard to our climate reality. They felt very strongly that they were not heard or taken seriously and wanted to change that. All their work, both through civil disobedience, protesting and through formulating what a decent future for them could look like, were permeated by their unique playful gaze, due to their age, knowledge and their dynamic. They kept on suggesting new ways of human existence. I was very affected by this encounter. We gave them everything we had of resources, knowledge and support. Their presence and know-how was so inspiring and led to a many year long collaboration between me and them, but even more importantly so, an ongoing collaboration and exchange between RJK and Art Lab Gnesta at large. We are now implementing their methods and visions into our operation, letting them influence and guide us in this unruly times. RJK still meets once a week in different capacities.
We are aiming to make a filmic experiment this spring, directing the gaze upon our self and how collaborating with RJK and the rest of the children in our Art Lab Gnesta life has affected us, trying to investigate how this new generation are co-art makers through their speculative expertise.
Rädda jorden-klubben, 2022. Photo: Signe Johannessen
Still frame from Signe Johannessen's 'Prey/Pray' (video, 2023) featuring members of Rädda jorden-klubben
C-P: Aside from the two of you, who else makes part of the core team?
S.J: So, Carro, you have been with Art Lab Gnesta for the longest time. You came on board when the project was still very raw and unformulated. In many ways you have really shaped the methods that define Art Lab Gnesta. How we think and work through artistic production. You have this way of moving through an artistic process together with the artist. Caring for the process and the outcome, such bliss. In many ways the crew have never been a more vibrant and highly qualified as the current one. Emanuel Hallklint has worked with us for a very long time and takes on our communication and some of our documentation, he also has had our riso printer under his wing. Erik Viklund is an artist and photographer and does all kinds of things that are needed in our operation, like in the processes of building exhibitions etc but also has this key
knowledge about our risograph. Viklund has also guest-curated a couple of shows the recent years. The latest example is Nattalgebra that he co-curated with artist and photographer Lisa Grip. Lisa is also very involved in our Konstverkstan that is formulated and run together with artist and art educator Olle Halvars. Konstverkstan is a place where hoards of local kids come to create and think through making art together at our premises. This new and vibrant strand of Art Lab Gnesta has been very much enabled by our current manager of operations, Maline Casta. She is a performance artist with a broad knowledge of stage work, both on the stage and behind the curtains. She came on board the Art Lab Gnesta ship a few years back when Erik Rören decided to leave our day-to-day operation for a while.
C.M: So, apart from this super team we also try to work with a special sensitivity towards the young people more or less growing up at the house. Our current exhibition hosts have run in the stairs of the building since they were toddlers, and we are always trying to recruit younger talents from our different projects into the board of the organization.
Horse croquis with Konstverkstan and the specially invited horse Astor, 2024. Photo: Olle Halvars
Ongoing workshop in the building. Photo: Maline Casta
C-P: Having operated for years, what are some of the other key projects you would like to
highlight?
C.M: Since 2019 we’ve dived into the history of the local landscape. Moving through Sörmland you can’t avoid the manors and castles sprinkled around just about everywhere, and its adjacent cottages where the workers used to live. In the collaborative project Tänka med jorden, artists were invited to produce new artworks at Nynäs slott, an old manor with roots from the 14th century but since the 1980’s owned by the county council. As almost every other manor in the county is privately owned, this was a very special opportunity. Trying to expand this specific site and the history of our local surroundings, we were digging where we stood in a collaboration with the staff of Nynäs slott and Sörmlands museum. Since we are a bit obsessed with the future, we also chose to involve young people from different parts of Sörmland. Some permanent, others more temporary, the artworks by artists like Sara Ekholm Eriksson, Mariana Silva Varela and Kultivator among others, are commenting on the relations within the manor culture that has characterized the region for centuries. Over time, these new artworks have laid the foundation for an experimental sculpture park based on collective processes as we invited schools to be part of the production. In 2023, the project was awarded the Spotlight of the Year by the Swedish Board of Housing, Building and Planning, the Swedish National Heritage Board, ArkDes and the Swedish Public Arts Council, but because of regional budget cuts, the future of the project is now very uncertain.
Parforce by Mariana Silva Varela, 2024, produced within Tänka med jorden and presented in the cellar of Nynäs castle. Photo: Caroline Malmström
C-P: Another pillar of ALG is the residency programme. The site is set with two spacious studios. Would you like to share some words on how this started and who might have passed the premises over the years?
CM: The residency and the support of new production of art has always been the core of Art
Lab Gnesta; I would say it's the main reason we exist. We’ve always seen ourselves as a sort of maternity refuge for new art, where feeling relaxed, getting the right push at the right time and having support in various sensitive needs can help birth new works of art. Sometimes they will be exhibited in our exhibition program, and often they will end up at other institutions and galleries. We’ve tried to be what we thought was lacking: a fertile ground for new works that shapes itself after the needs of the specific project rather than applying a set format. Usually we invite artists to delve into projects and themes that we already started and have resources to finance, sometimes in collaboration with much larger institutions. But we also let artists in need of space use the studios for shorter projects.
S.J: I am really proud of how our operation has become a production hotspot for so many artists over the years. Both through us inviting artists into practice based research or productions but also through artists using us when they are in need of a permissive and open minded space to enable their work. Art Lab Gnesta and the brewery as a site has this tendency to enable large scale productions and experiments. One of the most beautiful things is to experience is how many artists keep on coming back. They start thinking of us as
a place where things and ideas can be made alive. Some artists have been back in the residency more times than we can count! In a way the range of artists researching and producing with us make up this extended family of thinkers through their presence and practice. The list is very long, normally up to 20 artists pass through our residency in a year. Early on some of my peers from KKH frequented the building, now the crowd is more formed by recurring visiting artists that orbit around our research, and which we share core interests with. Mark Frygell, Ingela Ihrman, Ida-Johanna Lundqvist, Johanna Billing, Åsa Elzén, Kultivator, Cajsa von Zeipel, and Mariana Silva Varela to mention a few of the once residing with us throughout the years. We also have had many fruitful collaborations with art students in our residency in collaboration with for example Konstfack and KKH.
Out of the sea, you have come, 2024, stained-glass window by Saskia Gullstrand permanently installed in the building. Photo: Caroline Malmström
Cygnus Pulmonaria by Ida-Johanna Lundqvist, 2024. Solo show with works produced in ALG residency. Photo: Ida-Johanna Lundqvist
C-P: Signe, lately having been on an exhibition odyssey with several institutional shows in Norway, what are you currently working on?
S.J: I am currently working towards my solo Time is my body at Bohusläns museum opening on March 1. The exhibition will be curated by Julia Björnberg and comprised of new and old works and make up a sort of semi retrospective. I am starting an obsession about time and how our bodies are actually vessels transporting matter from one point in time to the other, something that I will start investigating in this upcoming show. It has been a buzzy couple of years with a lot of output . I am looking forward to having more studio time, following where my practice takes me, and giving more space to input. I am also stepping
into a production based year long artist in residency position with Uppsala university which is very exciting. Working in dialogue and collaboration with other fields of knowledge and archives is a consistent method of mine so I am happy for this invitation from their end. To be fully able to focus on my own artistic practice and my duo practice Rören/Johannessen (With Erik Rören) in public space for a while, I will be stepping out of the daily Art Lab Gnesta machinery during 2025, but I am staying on as artistic advisor. This will also be a much needed time for me, after working on this project for over 15 years to examine what I have done from some distance, and speculate freely and without restraint about Art Lab Gnesta’s possible futures, and of course keep on talking to Caroline and Erik about it.
Caroline Malmström & Signe Johannessen. Photo: Märta Thisner
C-P: Caroline, you are currently working at Göteborg Konsthall that is in the process of relocating from the iconic Götaplatsen to a new site. Would you like to share some words on this exciting project?
C.M: I'm co-curating the project Field Studies, working closely with artistic leader Petra Johansson and producer Daniel Terres. The work will go public during 2025 when the konsthall has left the old building at Götaplatsen, and before they reopen in 2026 in the old slaughterhouse of Gamlestan. We are inviting six artists to understand this new space together with us, to create a sort of memory of the site before we move in while collaborating with local organisations as well as city archives and other institutions. Our curatorial concept builds upon the history of the site: in 1619, the crown donated land to Gothenburg's bourgeoisie to secure access to land for the common good. These donated lands were initially used for food production, but were later often developed in the public interest with schools, hospitals and parks. In 1905 the city's municipal slaughterhouse was built here and is now transformed into the new premises of Göteborgs konsthall, as part of major changes of the whole borough.
During next year, different localities and layers of histories will be interconnected in unexpected constellations through these artists' work, presented as staged city walks, workshops and performances. We are trying to connect our work to a historical ”logic” of the site, that it’s supposed to be used as a sort of commons, while asking how a konsthall can be contemporary commons of the future and of today.
C-P: Lastly, with a new year around the corner, where do you see ALG in the upcoming
years?
S.J: Art Lab Gnesta has evolved through many different forms and stages during its lifespan.
I think this is one of our strong suits: the ability to move, respond, change without losing eyes
on our mission: Being an experimental place for artistic production and risk taking, embedded in various collaborations and co-productions in our local community. Art must lead the way. The cultural political Armageddon sweeping over Sweden is no joke, so it will be crucial how we metamorphose and respond during the coming years. At this moment I think it is of utter importance to stay true to our core mission and not let us be formulated by the increasingly hostile rhetoric of for example measurability towards art and the cultural field at large. I would like to quote RJK here, they have recently developed a manifesto to which we have sworn allegiance. These words can be thought of as an overall vision for our upcoming
years.
1) Occupy space
2) Build the world you want
3) Protest when something is wrong
4) Become an animal when it is to hard to be human
5) Stay a child forever
As oracles of the future, their words of wisdom are clear. This is what we should aim for. But with such punk and playful vision, great flexibility and mobility is needed. It is hard rules to obey, in a good way, so with them guiding us, our role must first and foremost be to continuously be an experimental birth center for artistic production and risk taking. This role has never been more important, regarding the current climate in Sweden. In my opinion, this must be our priority.
For more info on Art Lab Gnesta, please visit: https://www.artlabgnesta.se/