VANESSA BAIRD HAS BEEN COMMISSIONED FOR THE LARGEST ART PROJECT AT THE NEW GOVERNMENT BUILDING COMPLEX 6 (R6)

From left: Brit Bod Baardsen, Øystein Hauge, Elisabeth Tetens Jahn, Ane Hjort Guttu, Vanessa Baird, Gro Kraft, Hilde Skjeggestad and Knut Pedersen

The Art Committee for the Government Building Complex - R6 has decided to commission the artist Vanessa Baird for the largest indoor art project in R6: the walls of the Press Room and the two Cabinet Minister Units. At today's announcement of the artist commissioned for the Press Room and the two Cabinet Minister Units at R6, KORO director Gro Kraft underlined the importance of the quality and concept of the selected art project for these two spaces, which are of of great public interest as sites for the exercise and scrutiny of governmental power .

”Vanessa Baird is a highly competent and experienced artist. We are proud to have selected a contemporary artist, who has had little previous exposure within the realm of public art, to this important commission,” says Head of the Art Committee Hilde Skjeggestad, artistic consultant for Public Art Norway – KORO.

Vanessa Baird (born1963) lives and works in Oslo. She was educated at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo and has recently had a number of solo exhibitions in Norway and abroad including Galleri Wang (Oslo), Galleri MGM (Oslo), c/o Atle Gerhardsen (Berlin), and the Drawing Association (Oslo). She has also participated in a number of group shows including the National Museum in Oslo, Sørlandet Art Museum in Kristiansand, the Stenersen Museum in Oslo, and Lillehammer Art Museum.

Baird works primarily with pastels, watercolours and drawings; works on paper in varying formats. The works draw on a range of different motifs: from intimate scenes from daily life, via architecture, ornaments and landscapes to dreamlike, grotesque or surreal tableaux or scenes from fables and fairytales.

The Art Committee for R6 were looking for works of art that could deal with and develop the physical, political and historical connotations of the context of R6, while maintaining their aesthetic independence. The works could, for example, relate to the site by raising questions in relation to issues of power, the exercise of democracy or political history. The Art Committee stated in the initial plans for the Art Programme:

“In this way, one could imagine the work of art as a voice in the public space. That is why the Art Committee have invoked the term “expression”. Art often expresses its own time and place from its own specific point of view, which emerges at the intersection of the context and its multifaceted nature.”

Vanessa Baird is an artist who deals with the relationship between the public and the private in a particularly interesting way. At the core of her work lies an investigation into the relationship between the everyday, public life and history. The Art Committee for R6 see her expressed feminist approach and the emphasis she places on personal experience as important, critical statements, which simultaneously retain an element of humour.

It is important for the Art Committee to create a cohesive curatorial vision in relation to different artists selected for the commissions for R6. Do Ho Suh is about to complete his bronze sculpture Grass Roots Square on the paved area in front of R6. There are interesting parallels to be drawn between Do Ho Suh and Vanessa Baird in relation to their humanism, their treatment of power relations, and their interest in – and references to – traditional approaches to public art.

The Art Committee’s reasoning will be published on KORO’s website at 1 pm on Thursday 3 March 2011 to coincide with an open press conference with the artist and the Art Committee at KORO’s meeting room on the sixth floor of Kristian Augusts gate 23 in Oslo. All press materials are available upon request from KORO’s Head of Communications on the proviso that the deadline for the announcement is complied with. 

Download the Art Committee's reasoning

Contact information:

Hilde Skjeggestad, Head of the Art Committee, mobile: 97982084, hilde@skjeggestad.org

Elisabeth Tetens Jahn, Senior Adviser KORO, telephone: 22 99 11 93, etj@koro.no

Press material etc.

Beate Styri, Head of Communications KORO, telephone: 22 99 11 80, mobile: 906 06 661, bst@koro.no www.koro.no