This week Radio Tenthaus hosts a live conversation with artist Germain Ngoma and curator Drew Snyder.

Germain and Drew are working together on an exhibition that is scheduled to take place at Tenthaus in September of next year. Currently, Germain has been offered the space at Tenthaus to work in as a temporary studio, where he has also been meeting regularly with Drew to prepare for the show. Here is an excerpt from Drew’s journal documenting the process. Tune in to find out more!

“Germain dropboxes me around a hundred images representing a small slice of his work from over the last thirty years. I print them out and bring them into the gallery one afternoon. We talk for some hours about the large truck tires he split open and reconstructed in the early 1980s, the Grand Theft Auto billboard he found and used in the large sculpture Gangsters Paradise in 2006, about negative space, about industrial packaging, about the marks skateboarders make on walls, about Oslo’s central river Akerselva and how it looks after a lot of rain, about dead pianos, about mixing graphite with epoxy, about Naum Gabo, about speakers that don’t make any sound, about making bronze casting test rods into artworks, about the posture of an abstract sculpture. I think about how nice it is to have these conversations sitting in the gallery where we will make an exhibition a year from now; that the artist is given unfettered access so far in advance to play around and see how the space feels. While I don’t think any of us know quite where it will all go, I can report that a process has begun within Tenthaus’ generous walls.” – Drew Snyder

Also in this episode, hear James Finucane speak to Latin-Amerikagruppene (LAG) about their recent collaboration in public space, as well as Matilde Balatti speaking to artist Lisa Bjørne Linnert about her ongoing workshop ‘Colors for Equality’. The workshop Colors for Equality with the artist Lise Bjørne Linnert that started in 2019 at Møllergata skole continues the reflection upon violence against woman, equality and aims to raise awareness on the ways violence infiltrates into relationships. During the workshop the participants are going to decorate triangular scarves, the same kind used by protestants and similar to the face masks we are using to protect ourselves. These uses add value and references to these objects that are going to be exhibited in the garden of Møllergata skole on November 25^th for one week. On November 23^rd from 16.00 to 17.30 Tenthaus will be open and the public can preview the results of the workshop.  

GERMAIN NGOMA Germain Ngoma has exhibited widely and continues an experimental practice in many different media. His contribution to the Norwegian art scene is far beyond his exhibition activities. He is considered
teacher and mentor to many students that have passed through the Academy of Art in Oslo. Ngoma was instrumental in establishing Norad funded workshops that have resulted in Zambian MA students studying in
Oslo and establishing a strong European cultural network.

DREW SNYDER is a curator and art historian and has been Programme Manager at OCA since August 2018. He holds a PhD in modern/contemporary art history, theory, and criticism from the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego under the supervision of Grant Kester and Norman Bryson. His dissertation reconsidered the development of postwar visual culture, public discourse, and the avant-garde in the U.S. in the context of geopolitics and nuclear culture. He has a broad set of research interests across the arts which include questions of historical narrative, political ecology, discourses of life, and new forms of international exchange.

LISE BJØRNE LINNERT is an artist interested in the collaboration and participation of the public in the making of artworks. She is committed to use art to create arenas and spaces for dialog, reflections, and possibly actions. In 2017 she started the project Ni en more (Not one more), where she established a sewing studio in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, with the purpose of empowering woman and provide safe working conditions for all. 

Foto: Christina Leithe Hansen/Oslo kunstforening.