NEWS
On Sunday June 2 at 14:00 Bildmuseet opens a major exhibition with the work by film director and artist Agnès Varda. The exhibition, which fills three museum's floors, shows the breadth of Varda's oeuvre in which both documentary films and installations are included.
Welcome to press preview on Thursday, May 30th at 10:00 am. On the same occasion there will also be a preview of Jacob Hashimoto’s large scale installation Superabundant Atmosphere.
Agnès Varda (b. 1928) turns 85 two days prior to the exhibition opens at Bildmuseet. Behind her, she has a long and successful international career as filmmaker. Already with her first film she got established; La Pointe Courte from 1954 is considered the starting point of the French New Wave. In recent years, her work as visual artist has found new and experimental expressions and evolved into installations and thus gained new audiences.
The exhibition, her first in Scandinavia, displays a selection of documentary projects from the 1960s and 1970's along with more recent developments in which Varda’s ways of working; between the movie theatre and the exhibition space, between photography and film, between the moving and stationary are apparent. Many of her films have political and feminist undertones and are often characterized by documentary and fiction overlapping.
The documentary part shows the films Hi there Cubans (1962), Uncle Yanco (1967), Black Panther (1968) and Women Reply (1975). On another floor are the stills from Varda’s feature film Vagabond (1985) where frozen sequences of a violent scene, now shown in a new context, become a painterly gesture. A third part of the exhibition presents works where Varda explores video and photography. These more recent installations are combinations of moving and still images, of video and photography exploring new expressions. Several of these works is about the sea and about life on the island of Noirmoutier on the French Atlantic coast. Here is the video installation The Widows of Noirmoutier (2005) that tells the story of 14 women who live on the island and who all lost their husbands. The works Ulysses (1982) and The People on the Terrace (2007) are both presented with a still image and a video where the video tells the possible story about the event taking place in the photograph. The installation The Sea (2009) is a large wave that washes in over the viewer.
The exhibition is produced by Bildmuseet and is on view from 2 June to 31 October 2013.
Agnès Varda was born 1928 in Brussels but moved with her family to the south of France at the age of twelve. Since 1951 she lives in Paris. She has worked as an artist for over sixty years. From the beginning as still photographer in theatre but also as photojournalist covering China and Cuba, among other subjects. Agnès Varda has received numerous awards for her films including the Golden Lion 1985, the Legion of Honour 2009, César Award 2009, a lifetime award in conjunction with the Cannes Film Festival 2009 and a honourable mention at the University of Liege, Belgium. Her installations have been shown at, among others, the Biennale in Lyon and Venice, SMAK in Ghent, the Fondation Cartier in Paris and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville. In autumn 2013, she will be presented in an exhibition at LACMA in Los Angeles.
Agnès Varda’s films to be shown in collaboration with Folkets Bio
During the first week of the exhibition period, Bildmuseet collaborates with Folkets Bio in Umeå in order to present some of Varda’s feature films and a selection of shorts at the movie theatre on Gärdesvägen 6. Admission is free.
31 May at 19:00: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) 1 June at 19:00: One sings, the other doesn’t (1976) 2 June at 19:00: Vagabond (1985) 3 June at 19:00: The Gleaners and I (2000) 4 June at 19:00: The Beaches of Agnès (2008) 5 June at 19:00: Short films Oh seasons, oh castles (1957), Opera-mouffe (1958), Pleasure of love in Iran (1976), The so-called Caryatids (1984) and Seven rooms, kitchen and bath (1984).
