RIFFERAMA : JIM COLQUHOUN
RIFFERAMA: HRAFNHILDUR HALLDÓRSDÓTTIR
Hrafnhildur Halldorsdottir’s art cannot be strictly ‘relational’ as in Nicolas Bourriauds usage of the term, but nevertheless she is a catalyst, the still centre in a storm of provisional meaning played out in her strategic use and abuse of everyday materials. Her affinities lie with the stuff that others discard or disdain – cardboard, thread, string, cheap felt tip pens and garishly-coloured feathers. Her tactic is to force them into a kind of uncomfortable (and beautiful) rapprochement, wherein their bathetic, abject qualities are nullified through sheer force of will and a concomitant Sisyphean effort. The term ‘domestic conceptualism’ does not do her justice with its snide allusion to ‘womens work’, here instead we sense a rigorous and poetic sensibility, which, while playing out within a strict set of conceptual parameters, nevertheless holds the keys to its own ‘critical materialism’, a flurry of chance encounters between materials that forces us to reconsider our notion of art as a privileged subject. The many references to music and especially ‘rock’, re-emphasises the artists desire to lose her self, and us, within the sonic architecture of a thunderous riff.