Liv Blåvarp

Ornaments for Venus

11 November - 19 December 2021

Liv Blåvarp (born 1956) is one of Norway’s most prominent, recognized, and internationally known jewellery artists. As she now exhibits at Galleri Format, she presents a series of necklaces that breaks away from the compact format and open up for airier structures and constructions. In several of these new pieces, Blåvarp defies the inherent qualities of her signature materials in spectacular compositions that are almost unreal in their colours, forms and in the way the materials are used.

Blåvarp is aware that the necklaces have a feminist starting point, and it is precisely at the junction between storytelling and the exploration of materials and techniques that there is a space where the presence of these works is so striking. There is no doubt that Blåvarp’s jewellery pieces have qualities over and above being symbolic and decorative, and it is precisely here that her involvement in feminism and craft is conveyed so strongly. At the same time, we also experience why jewellery art is a unique form of communication that Blåvarp, through her long career, masters better than most.

Blåvarp gathers inspiration from nature – mountains, oceans, forests – but also plays with a universe of ingredients from films, music and texts. She embraces a slow and time-consuming process and produces very few works per year. Her exhibitions therefore often include older works alongside the new. She herself says the body and the mind must be present in each work. It is therefore natural that the new structures that have emerged in the latest works reflect a hefty dialogue between the artist and the material, intensity and sensitivity, impulses and process – as a commentary on the times in which we live. Blåvarp balances on an edge and wants the works to contain so much resistance that a reaction arises in both the person who wears a work and, in the viewer, an experience of conflicting emotions and reflections that activate us.

She does not focus on titles but believes the works are rooted in the course of the forms, the constructions and colours. And it is here that we read them – in an open associative process. And as Liv Blåvarp says: they can only be worn by someone who dares to stand out in a crowd – with opinions, character and strength.

Text by Camilla Luihn.
Translated by Arlyne Moi.

Liv Blåvarp (b. 1956) has been awarded numerous outstanding prizes and awards, including the Bavarian State Award, the Prince Eugen Medal, and the Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize. She is represented in numerous museums, including LACMA (US), Museum Angewandte Kunst (DE), KODE (NO), National Museum of Scotland (UK), Nationalmuseum (SE), Röhsska Museum (SE), The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Houston (US), The Mint Museum (US), Designmuseum Danmark (DK), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (CA), The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (NO) and the Powerhouse Museum (AU).