Oslo Kunstforening is pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition Posthumous Tales by Signe Johannessen.

Signe Johannessen (born 1978 in Alstahaug, Norway) lives and works in Gnesta outside of Stockholm. She was educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Johannessen has been active as an artist in Sweden for more than fifteen years, and this is her first solo exhibition in Norway.

In recent years, Johannessen has been in close dialogue with curator Caroline Malmström about a series of works based on the 1949 archaeological find at Kvarntorp outside Örebro, Sweden, where the skull of a human was found together with: canine jaws; bones from a foal and a pig; a shoulder blade from a cow; and two unidentifiable ribs, all dated to varying time periods.

The first version of the exhibition The Resurrection in Kvarntorp was presented at Örebro Konsthall in April-May this year. The second version is now being presented at Oslo Kunstforening, and a third version will be shown at The North Norwegian Art Centre, where Johannessen will exhibit in November.

Posthumous Tales is formed from artistic investigations into museum archives and artefacts from archaeological finds, including the Kvarntorp find. In these artistic investigations Johannessen attempts to repatriate, correct, or de-classify the objects from the archives in which they have been held. The exhibition intertwines the strange Kvarntorp find, with bestiaries from the Middle Ages and with local history into works taking the form of large-scale wooden sculptures, body-adapted, portable works, drawings, and videos.