Will — intention is the key word when it comes to the exhibition community "Province".

The group began working together during their studies at the academy in Oslo. Gradually we discovered that we shared many thoughts about the present, about "art" in our time's society.

We studied at the academy towards the end of the seventies, a time when social realism won great respect among artists as well as the public in Norway. Now one could really "see" what was art, who could, and what one should think of the world. In "Province" we were aware that this was possibly a dead end. We soon got tired of the "lonely wanderer" in empty streets and long corridors, the eternal reactions to the sad, cold world. Art can be more than a negative reaction.

We felt that the kind of attitude that these social realist works represented did not challenge people to think positively. That a different idiom was needed to provide impulses for constructive action. In the artists of the New York School we found a historical starting point for our perceptions of art, and a number of Rauchenbergs and Jasper Johns were produced in this period. We were also interested in Marcel Duchamp and his objects that expressed action/choice more than the art product. Instead of reproducing the sad aspects of the world in more or less sad figurative images, we wanted to create a new visual world. Build a visual environment of simple basic forms, "simplified" aesthetics, and try formal visual tools again. In this process, there was a natural transition from painting to three-dimensional for the majority of the group, while painting is still utilized and the dynamic of the action shows itself in expressionist abstract and figurative paintings. A desire for objective analysis can be sensed behind the concrete sculptures. Objectivity and imagination. Beauty. Antimonumentalism. Anti-sentimentality. Attitudes we believe are relevant and fundamental for the development of a good society. There is no prostitution of one's ideas and one's understanding of life acceptable to any extent. "Province" artists would rather do other work to "survive", rather than attract the public for commercial reasons. But it is a fact that people will be deceived by artists as well as others.

We had our first exhibition in the spring of 1980 at Kjell Varvin's "Galleri Musk" in Lommedalen outside Oslo. Mainly paintings and collages. The following year there was a new exhibition, winter 1981, in the Bergen Art Association. Now the interest in the three-dimensional and architectural possibilities of the object in the room had become prominent, also the floor as an exhibition place became more and more natural - perhaps a consequence of the idea of anti-monumentalism. 1 In 1982, "Province" exhibited at Blomquist Kunsthandel in Oslo and at Nordiska Kunstsenter in Helsinki. The floor was associated with the sculptures, the wall the painting. Much of the same attitude towards objects and spaces will be seen in the premises of the Tromsø Art Association.

"Province" members are: Synnøve Ellingsen, Svanhild Heggedal, Ingunn Hvalø Hansen, Helge Korvald, Reidar Kraugerud, Tom Lid, Jon Mørk.

We have invited three guest exhibitors who are connected to our vision and whom we greatly appreciate as artists:

J. O. Mallander, art critic, artist, cultural activist from Helsinki, Paul Brand, Swiss, lives in Norway, teaches at the Academy in Oslo, Jørgen Dobloug, Norwegian, lives in Germany.

Synnøve Ellingsen