This year’s festival exhibition offers experiences you won’t soon forget. It appeals to all the senses. It is the renowned Norwegian artist Camille Norment who this year has been given the honorable festival assignment. She has created an aesthetic and sound-painting installation that fills the entire Bergen Kunsthall. I remember Norment’s composition for the glass accordion at the Venice Biennale in 2015, which reminded me of how as children we played with water on crystal glass. BROKEN ART: At the Venice Biennale in 2015, Camille Norment created a powerful installation with broken glass. It looked like she had destroyed the iconic Fehn Pavilion. Here, too, sound played a decisive role. Among other things, she played her glass harmonica, which she will also do in Grieghallen this year in connection with the Bergen Festival. Here we see Crown Princess Mette-Marit visiting Camille Norment’s installation during the Venice Biennale in 2015. Photo: Cornelius Poppe Enjoying the sounds The first thing that meets us in the entrance area are bright wooden benches in organic shapes. I lie down and close my eyes, and feel how my body is filled with sound. BREATHE IN THE GROUND: The exhibition begins with a powerful sound massage. Here you can lie down and lean your head and whole body against the sounds, rhythms and sounds. Photo: Petter Pahle Bjerke-Bjørang There are murmuring, humming tones that are replaced by more mechanical sounds. There are rhythms, harmonies and dissonances, and where I lie I suddenly become very aware of my own skeleton: The sound-painting bench below me makes my spine sing. My skull feels like a cathedral filled with sound. LET IT REST: Here she has created a beautiful rust-brown circle of old railway sleepers. Sounds and sounds travel notes through the old iron. It makes me think of how you can stand on the platform and listen expectantly to the song of the rail corridor, as a forewarning of the train that will soon arrive. Photo: Thor Brødreskift / Bergen Kunsthall A song of sound It starts powerfully and continues even stronger. In the largest of the halls, a large brass sculpture is enthroned. It looks like some kind of instrument, a brass of some kind, but it is much larger than the largest tuba. Besides, it’s just the big spout with the opening up, like a giant bowl. BRASS AND MYSTICISM: The sculpture has something almost ritualistic about it. It can be reminiscent of a chalice that gives associations to the Catholic mass with the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Photo: Thor Brødreskift / Bergen Kunsthall WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT? The drop hanging from the ceiling may resemble a pendulum, which is a well-known device in the art of divination. There is something about this richness of association that I love about the project. Photo: Thor Brødreskift / Bergen Kunsthall Photo: Thor Brødreskift / Bergen Kunsthall A large drop-shaped speaker, also made of brass, hangs down from the ceiling towards the brass bell. It resembles the sounding staff inside a church bell, or the type of silencers that trumpeters use when practicing. BIG BANG-BOULDRING: In the innermost hall we experience the harmony with a large mirror globe on the floor. From this comes a deep rumbling that is supposed to be inspired by the sound scientists believe the big bang produced in its time. The deep rumbling is replaced by the metallic clang of steel balls which, with the help of magnetism, move in a so-called singing bowl of the type used for meditation. Photo: Thor Brødreskift / Bergen Kunsthall In this way it gives associations both to something that creates and dampens sound and sound. If you sing, clap or whistle, the sound will come back to you in a transformed form. We are invited into the creative process in the same way as the public. An exhibition that touches As always, I am deeply fascinated by how aesthetic and initiating Camille Norment’s projects are, even if the visuals really only play a secondary role in the whole. The exhibition “Gyre” will touch you in a purely physical sense through sounds and vibrations that resonate in your body and that vibrate in the diaphragm. This is one of the strongest festival performances I have experienced in my seventeen years as a critic! news reviews Photo: Thor Brødreskift / Bergen Kunsthall What: Festival exhibition 2023 Title: “Gyre” By: Camille Norment Where: Bergen Kunsthall Date: 25 May – 13 August 2023
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“Gyre” by Camille Norment – Reviews and recommendations
