ELPRISET RUSAR-MED FLERA TUSEN
After a full week of screenings with my Malmö Students. The second week started with studio visits. Karen Gimle works in photography,short electronic media and performance. She is involved with a spirited art collective called Fine Art Union. Impressed with her rock n roll tableaux vivant set ups featured windsweptshe hair in face. Its a very high concept version of Helmut Newton ala Eyes of Laura Mars.
I adore cute and hunky Iraqi student Zardasht Faraj who came to Sweden as a refugee when he was 14. Zardasht does some stop motion animation art porn that would be great for the Porn Film Festival in Berlin or in Paris, must introduce Zardasht´s work to Jurgen Brunning in Berlin or Maxime Cervulle in Paris. I think they would love what he does. His stop motion animation videos are inspired Swedish artist Natalie Djurberg. He also has this marvelous series of Love Letter paintings that I find intriguing.
Ihra Lill Scharning is a very bright and sensitive Norwiegan girl who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheel chair. I adored her the first moment i saw her, and her art practice involves craftwork like knitting large sculptures, and obsessions like the one she has with these two young Norwiegan soldiers of fortune who are being held captive for murder charges in Africa. Ihra also has a crush on eccentric Hollywood actor Crispin Glover, which means the girl has good taste. She also works in photography and has created a wonderfully vulnerable series which features these beautiful boys from her hometown who function as substitutes to various aspects of her psyche. Its quite brilliant and done in an organic way that i relate to.
Young and pretty Catherine Helberg screened for me a delightful video with accompanying stills about eating ones femininity. I think she is on the way to creating a brand new feminist discourse. It feels so great to discover new emerging talent.
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I find myself seriously falling in love with this hot young French actor Tahor Rahim who just won a Cesar Award for the Jacques Audiard film Un Prophete. I can´t wait till I am in Paris with The Bad Breast in July. More about this relationship later, as I don’t want to jinx it.
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Tuesday i spent time with Jessica Sanderheim who works in sculpture, video and photography. She has an interesting background having lived in Iceland, Spain and Ireland. She is working on a series where she will create this underwater world via assemblage. She has also done this project where she has braided grass and made patterns in knolls and cornfields using an epilady. Don’t blame the aliens its actually Ms. Sanderheim. She also sewed a cheshire cat smile with thread into her palm as if it was stigmata. Take that you modern primitives.
Stine Midstaeter who is Norweigan, has a lovely Kenneth Anger obessession. Mr. Anger, the godfather of experimental film would appreciate a sweet little ditty that Stine has devoted to the superstar. She also is working with an art boy band. I loved her presentation with Maxmillian Ockborn called Washing Horses to Be Able to Understand Their Past. She also does performances as a duo, and these funny pieces remind me of Chicks on Speed crossed with NO BRA and that wild Berlin girl group Cobra Killer.
Petite Maria Norman has been working on this very personal project about a distant relative who was a silent film starlet in Hollywood during the 1920s under contract to Paramount between 1921-1925. She left Hollywood and married in Australia where she spent the rest of her life. The Silent film star’s name is Sigrid Holmquist and she was Maria´s grandmothers cousin. She also showed me a film about this movie palace that was run by her grandfather and grandmother. The movie theatre is now a national treasure.
Elsine Hoff Levinsen is very young at 18 with long Repunzel like hair, she has only been painting for a short time in oils, very old school but has a very distinct style and a fantastic voice that comes through in a mature fashion with a series of humous self portraits.
Helena Olsson, treated me to fruit and juices as we talked. She was a little bit in crisis mode and needed some encouragement that only the Doll can provide to students. Really loved her photo shape shifting series where she impersonates friends and acquaintances wearing their clothes and doing portraits as them in their homes. Also her staging of parental portraits is quite startling and moody.
Johanna Stillman is quite personable and sparkly. She showed me some epic pencil drawings that play off the Manga universe and the pop music world of Japanese and Korean boy bands and their homoeroticism. This is certainly work up my alley, as I am a perenial tween who has never managed to mature into adulthood.
One of my students came down with the flu so we werent able to have a studio visit. But this morning I saw some of Natalie Sanchez´s work. Natalie is Chilean via Bulgaria and Norway. She comes from a very politically active family in South America, and works in sculpture, photography and assemblage. Her work has a mischieveous edge to it. Some of her photocollages are strewn with poetic manifestos.

ELPRISET RUSAR-MED FLERA TUSEN
Took a day trip to Copenhagan which is only 30 minutes by train from Malmö Central Station. Copenhagen is major Ms. Gorgeous in all its Nordic splendour. Was really impressed by how lovely a jewel of a city it is. The weather was bright and sunny with the bluest of blue skies. Chilly and crisp but warmish in the direct sun. I came back to Malmö at 9:30pm just in time to catch a march through the city center by a nice group of young ladies intent on smashing patriarchy. Lovely way to end a lovely day on International Women´s Day.
Continuing on that thema you might appreciate knowing that New Zealand was the first country to give women the voting right in 1893 followed by Norway in 1913. The tired USA didn´t ratify the 19th Amendment until 1920 giving women the rights to vote.
Madame Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and in Chemistry in 1911.Madame Curie was portrayed by Greer Garson in the 1943 film. The blind/deaf activist Helen Keller was not only a radical socialist but a supporter of birth control, a suffragette and the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920, besides being an advocate for people with disabilities.
Gabrielle ”Coco”Chanel introduces her signature little black dress in 1925 making female elegance simple and accessible to more social classes.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead publishes ”Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies” challenging western assumptions about gender relations. Simone de Beauvoir in 1949 publishes the controversial ”Le Deuxieme Sexe”(The Second Sex) which argues that society has branded women as inferior to men and outlines how women can shift the balance of power.
The Birth Control Pill is introduced in 1960.
Betty Friedan publishes the Feminine Mystique and Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union becomes the first woman pilot in space in 1963. Abortion becomes legal in Britain in 1967, and six years later with Roe vs Wade it becomes legal in America.
Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei is first woman to climb the top of Mt. Everest as part of an all-female expedition. Isabel Peron becomes first woman president of Argentina and first woman to become a head of state in the western hemisphere.
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Those of you who like me worship singer, songwriter Nina Simone will be delighted to know of a new book about her called Princess Noire-The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone by Nadine Cohodas.

And please check out the latest event by Elly Clark

Scroll down for English

Carte Blanche
Ausstellung / Salon / Performance mit
Elly Clarke, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, Linda Franke, Anne Kathrin Greiner, Elisabeth Jugert, Anna-Myga Kasten, Katja Kollowa, Michelle-Marie Letelier, Silvia Marzall, Lätitia Norkeit, Bettina Rave, Karen Scheper De Aquirre, Miriam Steinhauser, Kymberley Ward

Samstag, 13. März 2010 von 16.00-22.00 Uhr

Wer glaubt, Salonkultur sei Vergangenheit, irrt. In generöser Manier lädt Clarke Gallery 15 Damen ein, ihr aktuelles kuenstlerisches Schaffen, ganz im Sinne der Salonkultur des 17. bis 20. Jahrhunderts, zu präsentieren.
Die Kuenstlerinnen, diesjährige Stipendiatinnen des Goldrausch-Projektes, formierten sich im Januar 2010 zu einer neuen Schicksalsgemeinschaft. Es ist dies die erste gemeinsame Ausstellung, die sie auf eigene Initiative realisieren.

Der Anlass mit dem Titel Carte Blanche bietet den Kuenstlerinnen die Möglichkeit, in den Räumlichkeiten der Clarke Gallery –eine Privatwohnung - zu schalten und walten wie es ihnen beliebt.
Neben Videos und Arbeiten auf Papier werden auch Positionen, die direkt auf den privaten Wohnraum Bezug nehmen, zu sehen sein. Die Grenze zwischen Mobiliar und Kunstwerk verschwimmt, da das gesamte Interieur von den Künstlerinnen vereinnahmt wird.

Des Weiteren werden mehrere Performances stattfinden, das genaue Programm wird ab 12. März auf der Website www.clarkegallery.de abrufbar sein.
Fuer Speisen, Getränke, einen Hauch Anarchie und Noblesse ist gesorgt.

Wir freuen uns auf Euren Besuch!

Clarke Gallery und die 15 Salondamen

Elly Clarke
Pauline Curnier Jardin
Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez
Linda Franke
Anne Kathrin Greiner
Lisa Jugert
Anna-Myga Kasten
Katja Kollowa
Michelle-Marie Letelier
Silvia Marzall
Lätitia Norkeit
Bettina Rave
Karen Scheper De Aquirre
Miriam Steinhauser
Kimberley Ward

translation for carte blanche: Unrestricted power to act at one's own discretion

Die Clarke Gallery befindet sich in einer Wohnung im 4. Stock des Hinterhauses an der Friedelstr. 52 in Berlin/ Neukölln (Nähe Hermannplatz). Sie wurde von Elly Clarke im Oktober 2008 gegruendet.

ENGLISH

Carte Blanche
Exhibition / Salon / Performance with
Elly Clarke, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, Linda Franke, Anne Kathrin Greiner, Elisabeth Jugert, Anna-Myga Kasten, Katja Kollowa, Michelle-Marie Letelier, Silvia Marzall, Lätitia Norkeit, Bettina Rave, Karen Scheper De Aquirre, Miriam Steinhauser, Kymberley Ward

Saturday 13th March 2010, 4pm - 10pm

Anyone who thinks Salon Culture belongs to the past is mistaken! Generously (perhaps foolishly?) Clarke Gallery opens its doors to fifteen Ladies, inviting them to present their work in the style of a Salon - as practiced during the 17th-20th centuries.

These fifteen artists met in January 2010. They brought together through their shared "fateful destiny" of the Goldrausch Kunstlerinnen Projekt - of which they are all Stipendium recipients this year. This is the first exhibition these artists have done together and is organised independently of the programme.

With the exhibition title Carte Blanche artists are offered free rein to do whatever they want within the private apartment of Clarke Gallery.

Alongside videos and works on paper are other works created in direct response to the immediate environment of the gallery. The border between furniture and art becomes blurred as the whole flat is monopolised by the artists.

Performances and readings will also take place. The complete line up will be published on the Clarke Gallery website on Friday 12th March.

Food, drink, a touch of anarchy and a sense of nobel refinement will all be present.

We look forward to seeing you!

Clarke Gallery and the 15 Salon Ladies.

Elly Clarke
Pauline Curnier Jardin
Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez
Linda Franke
Anne Kathrin Greiner
Lisa Jugert
Anna-Myga Kasten
Katja Kollowa
Michelle-Marie Letelier
Silvia Marzall
Lätitia Norkeit
Bettina Rave
Karen Scheper De Aquirre
Miriam Steinhauser
Kimberley Ward

Carte blanche definition: unrestricted power to act at one's own discretion.

Clarke Gallery was set up by Elly Clarke in October 2008 and is located in a 4th Floor Hinterhaus apartment in Neukoelln, Berlin, near Hermanplatz.

Text: Miriam Steinhauser, Translation to English: Elly Clarke

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