Questions the artists will try to answer are: What is it that you are searching for in your artistic work? Why are you exploring the things you are exploring – and why through the use of clay and ceramics?

Our aim is to offer a diverse compilation of examples – not a conclusive answer. By zooming in on selected individual practises we will present a broad set of approaches highlighting the questions that make out the core of an artistic investigation. Questions that only can be answered through material based investigation.

Moreover, the topic has relevance within the field of artistic research, where a well-formulated and rhetorically solid research question can, as soon as you try to approach it artistically turn out to be quite meaningless. Through verbalising questions closely connected to the actual making process, our aim is to open up a discussion around what constitutes relevant artistic research questions from an artistic perspective.

Agenda is a cooperation between department Art and Craft, Oslo National Academy of the Arts and Kunstnernes Hus, facilitated by professor Lotte Konow Lund. Agenda Art and Craft: What is your question?, has been programmed by the specialisation Ceramics.

9:30 Morning Coffee
10:00 Welcome by Lotte Konow Lund
10:10 Phoebe Cummings
10:40 Kjell Rylander
10:55 Caroline Slotte
11:10 Short break
11:20 Mårten Medbo
11:50 Irene Nordli

12:05-13:00 LUNCH
(It will be possible to buy lunch at Kunstnernes Hus.)

13:00 Anders Ruhwald
13:30 Katrine Köster Holst
13:45-14:30 Panel discussion, questions and comments from the audience

Phoebe Cummings studied Three-Dimensional Crafts at the University of Brighton, before completing an MA in Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art in 2005. She has undertaken artist-residencies, in the UK, USA and Greenland, including six months at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2010. Cummings was the winner of the British Ceramics Biennial Award, 2011 and has exhibited at the Museum of Arts & Design, New York, University of Hawaii Art Gallery, Honolulu and Jerwood Space, London. Cummings was awarded a ceramics fellowship at Camden Arts Centre, 2012 and was the inaugural winner of the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize 2017. She is Research Associate at the University of Westminster – Ceramics Research Centre UK.

Kjell Rylander lives and works in Stockholm and Oslo. He is currently Associate Professor of Ceramic Art at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway. Rylander holds an BA and MFA in Ceramics from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden, in addition to education at preparing art schools. From 2009 to 2012 Rylander was a research fellow in the Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme. Connected with Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Dept of Specialized Art, he was also a member of the interdisciplinary research project Creating Art Value, funded by the Research Council of Norway. Rylander´s works have been exhibited internationally and acquired by, among others, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway.
The National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm, Sweden. KODE, Art Museums of Bergen, Norway. The Röhsska Museum of Fashion, Design and Decorative Arts, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Caroline Slotte holds an MA in Ceramics from Bergen Academy of Art and Design, in addition to education from Denmark and Finland. From 2007 to 2011 Slotte was a research fellow in the Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme. Affiliated with Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Dept of Specialised Art, she was also a member of the interdisciplinary research project Creating Art Value, funded by the Research Council of Norway. Slotte´s works have been exhibited internationally and acquired by, among others, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, the Design Museum in Helsinki and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Oslo. Caroline Slotte is currently Professor of Ceramic Art at Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Mårten Medbo was educated at Konstfack University Collage at the department of glass and ceramics. In 2010 he was accepted as a doctoral student in crafts at HDK, Gothenburg University and in 2016 he became Swedens first doctor in crafts. Since 1992 he has been working as a free artist mainly with ceramics but also with public comissions, design assignments and a studio production in glass. Mårten Medbo is well renown and has exhibithed both nationally and internationally. He is represented in collections at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, John Michael Kholer Art Center in Sheboygan, Rhösska Musset in Gotheburg, Swedens Art Council and The Islandic Museum of Applied Art and Design among others.

Irene Nordli is a Norwegian visual artist and sculptor living and working in Oslo and in Heestrand, Sweden. She works with ceramic sculptures and larger scale works where she among other themes works with animal and human hybrids in various degrees of abstraction. She has had a number of solo exhibitions and has been part of a large number of group exhibitions both in Norway and internationally. She has also been commissioned to produce a number of public works in Norway - in Asker, Lillestrøm, Halden prison and Bodø amongst others. Irene Nordli graduated from Bergen Academy of Art and Design in 1996 and currently teaches at the Art and craft department at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Oslo. She was awarded a Norwegian Government Grant for Artists in 2010.

Anders Ruhwald is a sculptor and installation artist whose practice is grounded in ceramics. He lives and works between Detroit and Chicago and received his MFA from the Royal College of Art in London in 2005. He has exhibited extensively all around the world and his work is represented in over 20 public collections internationally including The Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Denver Art Museum, Musée des Arts décoratifs (France), Sevres (France), The National Museum (Sweden) and The Museum of Art and Design (Denmark). In 2011 he was awarded the Gold Prize at the Icheon Biennale in South Korea, as well as receiving a Danish Art Foundation three-year work-stipend in 2010 and the Sotheby’s Prize (UK) in 2007. From 2008-2017 he was the Head of the Ceramics Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA. Currently he is a visiting professor at the National Academy of Arts in Oslo, Norway.

Katrine Køster Holst was educated at Design School Kolding DK (1999-2003) and Bergen Academy of the Arts (KHiB) (2003-2006). Research Fellow at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2014 – ). The research project “Minerals and natural phenomena – Artistic expression through rule-based investigations” explores how ceramic art can be developed using techniques based on basic natural principles of landscape formation. The investigations are based on several years’ experience in the ceramic field, and revolves around questions such as how do formations grow, move and/or disappear when subjected to natural circumstances like erosion, depositions of sediments and weathering? What is the connection between the core and the surface of an object? What is the basis of my emotional attachment to clay and landscapes?