Developed with Robert Bordo and Robert Holyhead
in collaboration with LNM
Residency Dates: 2 April to 27 April 2019
For the purposes of this residency, painters Robert Bordo (CA) and Robert Holyhead (UK) have identified three important dimensions of painting as medium: the painting’s materiality, its visual form, and the frameworks, uncertainties and reflections that mark its making.
In Painting Project: Out Looking Inwards Bordo and Holyhead aim to explore the intersections between perceivedly ‘internal’ painterly considerations and the wider world – including the vast virtual expanses of the digital realm. They will ask how painters mediate between the (often, but not always) intimate processes of thinking and making, and the realities of their works’ distribution, reception and interpretation in today’s complex cultural and socio-political environments. In the process, they plan to unpack some of contemporary painting’s dominant critical narratives, asking how they have arisen; whose views and interests they serve; to what extent they reflect the actualities of painters’ concepts and practices; and how they may be influencing future directions for the medium.
Places are available for a small group of between five and eight participants: applications are invited from painters and others with a strong interest in the residency’s specific theme and questions. The residency will include scheduled and informal opportunities for critical/theoretical discussion, independent practice or research time, and group activities, including public events addressing the residency’s foci; introductions to Oslo’s art scene and its artists; and expeditions into the superb rural and wild environments surrounding the city.
Robert Bordo will initiate the residency (present from 2 to 21 April), then hand over to Robert Holyhead (present from 15 to 27 April) mid-way through. Their stays will overlap for seven days.
From 2 to 15 April, Robert Bordo proposes that individual studio time be supplemented by in-depth one-to-one conversations and group excursions. Each week there will be between three and five group events investigating the artistic and cultural life of the city, and exploring residency themes while walking in the varied landscapes around the capital. Between 15 and 27 April, Robert Holyhead proposes a series of one-to-one conversations with participants, structured around their specific interests and perspectives in painting. He will devise a flexible daily programme that will allow time for residents to work independently, and to plan ad-hoc group activities and visits.
About Robert Bordo and Robert Holyhead
Robert Bordo makes thematic paintings that integrate a notion of formalism with a range of personal and theoretical narratives. Since the mid-1980s, his work has been exhibited extensively and internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Highlights include shows at the National Exemplar Gallery, Bortolami Gallery, Alexander and Bonin Gallery, MoMA PS1 and the Brooklyn Museum (all New York); The Suburban, Oak Park, IL, Mummery + Schnelle, London, the Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel, and Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Collections in which his work features include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE. Awards and fellowships he has received include the 2014 Robert de Niro Sr. Painting Prize, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Canada Council Arts Grant, the Tesuque Foundation Arts Fellowship Award, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Ballinglen Fellowship, a Hermitage Retreat Fellowship and a Painting Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has designed sets, costumes and posters for the Mark Morris Dance Company, including designs for Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2017 revival of Dido and Aeneas. As Associate Professor of Art he led the Cooper Union’s painting program from 1996 until 2017. He lives and works in Columbia County and Brooklyn, NY.
Robert Holyhead studied Fine Art at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, between 1993 and 96, and at the Chelsea School of Art and Design between 1996 and 97. Solo exhibitions include shows at Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris, in 2016; PARTS Project, The Hague, in 2016; Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, in 2014; PEER, London, in 2012; and Karsten Schubert, London, in 2009, 2010 and 2012. He was a recipient of the five-year ACME Fire Station live/work residency (2005) and in 2009/10 he was commissioned by the Government Art Collection to produce two site-specific works for the new British Embassy in Brussels. In July 2018, he completed a residency at SoART in Austria. He is represented by Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin and Paris. In 2018, he was selected for one of the Art Foundation’s 20th Anniversary awards. Public collections holding his work include the UK Arts Council Collection, the UK Government Art Collection, Tate and the Centre Georges Pompidou. Recent writing projects include What is Seen: a catalogue essay published by Tate for Patrick Heron’s retrospective at Tate St Ives.
About LNM
LNM (The Norwegian Society of Painters) is a national organization for professional painters in the expanded field of the visual arts with more than 600 members nation-wide. The organization was established in 1968 to promote the interests of painters and is affiliated with the Norwegian Artist Association (NBK). LNM's artist-led gallery is centrally located in Oslo's Kvadraturen district and annually produces 11 exhibitions aimed at reflecting the contemporary tendencies within the medium of painting.
