Oslo Kunstforening is pleased to open the autumn season with the solo exhibition Look Who's Talking by Michael O'Donnell.

Thrusday September 1st at 6 pm. Opening speech by artists Lotte Konow Lund and Victor Mutelekesha.

English-born O'Donnell (b.1950) has been a prominent figure on the Norwegian art scene since the end of the 1970s, both as an artist and as a long-standing professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo. With education from the Royal College of Art in London and influence from international currents, especially new British sculpture, O'Donnell added something new to the Norwegian art scene. From his first solo exhibition at UKS (Young Artists’ Society) in 1979 with the title That Precious Object Again, he has been keen to explore and challenge sculpture's position as a monument and carrier of meaning, often through a combination of non-traditional materials and a political commitment.

For the exhibition at Oslo Kunstforening, he shows three larger installations with new sculpture and video works. In Look Who's Talking we are presented with dark chapters in world history where, among other, the nuclear threat, the death penalty and the Second World War form the backdrop for three different narratives. A ventriloquist doll is a repetitive element and takes on different roles, both as a person of authority and audience, and as a representative of morality, religion and the state. The doll casts doubt on who is speaking, on whose behalf and for what purpose.