Anthropology Archaeology Apology

We are thrilled to commence our spring season with the exhibition Anthropology Archaeology Apology by the artist duo Bakketun & Norum. The duo was awarded the Savings Bank Foundation DNB’s art grant at Oslo Kunstforening in 2015.

In Bakketun’s array of work physical changes and tensions in our surroundings are connected to the human psyche. New intersections and connections are drawn up between different realities by exploring objects with kinesthetic and metaphysical potensial, often with reference to science, occultism and the everyday. Her practice involves installation, sculpture and video based work. 



Norum alternates between different formats as well; most notably painting, drawing, graphic work and installation. He formulates a profound homage to the arts and the artist - a homage housing empathy for the artist studio where the art comes to life and to the institutions that puts it on display and stores it for eternity to come. The complexity of time, the vastness of approach and perspectives are reflected throughout Norum’s work. 



Bakketun & Norum have operated as an artist duo sidelining their own practices since 2012. Their collaboration, where two wide-scoping practices both come together and collide, forms a third expression. Anthropology Archeology Apology presents a total installation which moves throughout Oslo Kunstforening’s three rooms. The installation includes sculpture, video, oil painting, acrylics and chemicals on paper amongst other things.

Associations and hints are given the uttermost attention as their realities and narratives are interlaced together through a mutual base of references. This base is built on experiences, interests and travels – like observations made during a joint residency stay.

The exhibition presents both arranged as well as ongoing processes in the form of crystallizations put into frames and salt solutions in quiet transformation. We are met by reflections connected to the solitary, outward-reaching processes that go on in an atelier. 

In Bakketun’s video work Hun som ruller (trans. She who rolls) (2018) the idyllic, yet strictly regulated, landscape of the Rhône valley functions like a nerve throughout a fragmented visual diary. In the sound piece Turbulente år (trans. Turbulent Years) (2018) a distanced voice-over quotes narratives about historic events and relations as told in the books 1913 and 1947, interlaced with personal notes from Bakketun’s own life. With Norum, the dramaturgy of painting is apparent, as he operates freely between the before and the now, the known and the unknown. In Detective I-II (2017) he comments on an investigative nature, in this case emerged from a meeting taken place at the Orkney Islands.

By digging in the past and in the soil, we are able to learn more about ourselves and about our constructions of memory and of our surroundings. The works might come across as kaleidoscopic, operating in different forms of time and space simultaneously – zooming in on the smallest of details, with universal perspectives in mind. The duo explores their surroundings in an intuitive manner, the architectural and physical qualities of place, as well as objects, traces of a personal stories or historical events. 

This consitutes the duo’s first separate show in Norway.



Bakketun & Norum have operated as an artist duo sidelining their own practices since 2012. Their exhibitions and performances have found place in amongst other places Kunstforeningen GL STRAND, Copenhagen; UKS (Young Artists' Society), Oslo; Papay Gyro Nights Art Festival, Orkney Islands and Cattle Depot Artist Village, Hong Kong.



An artist talk will take place Wednesday 21 February at 6 pm with artist Henrik Plenge Jakobsen.