Bergen, den 24. august 2011

 

 

Recommendation of Marit Benthe Norheim

 

As the exhibition manager at Hordadaland Art Center in Bergen in the 80’s, I had the pleasure of organising Marit Benthe Norheim’s first solo exhibition, Between Fighting and Dancing in 1986. Since then, I have followed her art career very closely. At the time, she was still a student at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and she was a new and different “voice” in Norwegian sculpture. Her figures made references to stylistic traditions other than the classical tradition which was still cultivated by many Norwegian sculptors at the time. This was noted positively in the academic community by critics such as Harald Flor in Dagbladet. But the thing that made this exhibition unforgettable for me was the audience who came to see it. People who had never been to an exhibition before, but who had met the artist in a train or lived in her neighbourhood, streamed to the exhibition. It told of a rare ability to communicate with all kinds of people, and this ability to create contact is something Marit Benthe Norheim has used actively in her art.

Several of her largest public commissions like the Rat Maiden sculpture in Skien (2006) and Campingwomen, which was created for the European City of Culture Stavanger (2008) directly involved children, young people, refugee women and friends. They contributed photos, stories and figures in glass and ceramics which she used as collage elements. I have been both moved and contemplative to see the pride and ownership in her sculptures that this has created amongst her audience, and it represents one dimension that I think is an important aspect of discussions about art in the public space.

 

 Many of Marit Benthe Norheim’s monumental sculptures are mobile. Campingwomen is built on top of caravans and they have thus driven far and wide from Finnmark in the North to Iceland in the West and Denmark in the South. It is art that appeals to people in the places where they are, and which tackles existential and humanistic themes which never go out of fashion. Now she is producing a new series of mobile sculptures, this time in the form of sailing figures (Life-boats), which represent a technical and artistic challenge of monumental proportions.

 

I am in no doubt that Marit Benthe Norheim will be able to realise this task. It represents the type of dreams that one wants to see realised and thus I hope that she will get the financial support that she is applying for.

 

Bergen, den 24. august 2011

 

Jorunn Veiteberg

Professor, at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts