Exhibitions - Peach Corner

Photo Ole Akhøj

Everything Flows

Bente Skjøttgaard & Anne Damgaard

21st January - 26th February 2022

The exhibition Everything Flows (Heraclitus 540–480 BCE) offers a sensuous and dramatic immersive experience of light, sound, flowing garments and undulating forms.

Ceramic artist Bente Skjøttgaard’s and fashion designer Anne Damgaard’s distinctly different artworks are presented in a close interplay, tied together by a shared underwater theme that unfolds in fluid shapes and colours. Skjøttgaard’s large ceramic abstractions on nature contain references to jellyfish and other marine species captured in fluid motion, while Damgaard’s sculptural textile constructions include transparent materials and seaweed as well as experiments with photographic shadow images that produce a shimmering sensation of light under water.

The two artists’ collaboration springs from a common artistic approach driven by experimental lightness. They both work with clear formal contrasts, such as gravity versus lightness and taut structure versus the dissolved and diffuse. Each in their way, they also both challenge the relationship between spontaneity and control and allow chance to play a deciding role. Damgaard’s work is based on basic geometric shapes that are cut into gauzy textiles, which are then draped and hung in a varying interplay of lines, while Skjøttgaard hands a measure control to the high temperatures in the kiln during firing, allowing gravity and the flow of the glazes to influence the outcome.

Sound: Søren Buhl Lassen

The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, Danmarks Nationalbanks Jubilæumsfond and the Danish Art Workshops.

Photo Ole Akhøj

Download press release + images

Photo Ole Akhøj

About the artists:

Fashion designer Anne Damgaard creates textile constructions and unique dresses disconnected from time and place, fashion or functional purpose. In tulle and gauze and mesmerizing interplays of colour they float freely in their own magical universe.

Anne Damgaard (b. 1968) trained at the Royal Danish Academy, 1992–97. Selected exhibitions: All Solid Melts into Air, duo with Bente Skjøttgaard, Kunstpakhuset, Ikast, 2020; Structured, group show, Site131, Dallas, TX, 2019; Revner og Sprækker (Cracks and Crevices), trio, Gammelgaard, Herlev, 2018; Biennale for Craft & Design, Koldinghus, 2021; Rococo Mania, Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen, 2012; BLACK ANGELS 13–7, solo, Øksnehallen, Copenhagen. Awards and grants: awards from the Danish Arts Foundation for the solo exhibitions Constructions With Circles Spirals Light, 2010 and A.D.1997–04, 2004; Nordic Award in Textiles, 2008; Inga og Ejvind Kold Christensens Hæderslegat 2007; the Danish Arts Foundation’s three-year working grant 2007–09. Representations: Designmuseum Danmark; Röhsska Museum, Gothenburg; Textilmuseet, Borås; Abecita Konstmuseum, Borås; 100W Corsicana, TX.

Ceramic artist Bente Skjøttgaard challenges the gravity of clay to create organic formations and structures that strive for weightlessness. She balances on the edge of the impossible in explorations that develop into large amorphous nature abstractions with lots of glaze.

Bente Skjøttgaard (b. 1961) trained at Kolding Design School 1982–86. Selected exhibitions: Tableaux, Galerie Maria Lund, Paris, 2021; Bend Bubble and Shine, Copenhagen Ceramics at Hostler & Burrows, New York, NY, and Los Angeles, CA, 2021; All Solid Melts into Air, Anne Damgaard and Bente Skjøttgaard, Kunstpakhuset, Ikast, 2020; Glowing in the Dark, Jason Jacques Gallery, New York, NY, 2020. Representations: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; V&A, London; Musée National de Céramique de Sèvres, France; Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen. Awards and grants: Inga og Ejvind Kold Christensens pris, Nationalbankens påskønnelseslegat, Danish Arts Foundation’s three-year working grant 2001–03, Annie & Otto Johs. Detlefs’ Keramikpris, Ole Haslunds Kunstnerfond. Founding member of the artist-run exhibition spaces Copenhagen Ceramics and Peach Corner.

Photo Ole Akhøj

Installation view by Ole Akhøj