ARTIST STATEMENT 2022

Jennifer Spångerud is not specialised or trained in a particular material or technique. She rather uses her lack of expertise as part of her methodology, a methodology open to both cheating and detours and which comes with varying results. She has created dance partners in sackcloth and dance tokens of potatoes for a dance floor made of cardboards (2020), and has done passive aggressive performances while silently watching the visitor through behind a mask or a bag covering her head (2016). She is currently working with website-based projects for random and direction-less scrolling on the Web. She wants to see if it is possible to repurpose the use of the Web today, through trying to understand the early Web’s positive connotations. She often works together or in dialogue with other practitioners.

Spångerud has collaborated with Jonathan Dewoon on commissioned projects for the City of Linköping Stad i Ljus (2018) and Tranås Municipality / Kultivera's project Konstavenyn (2020). In 2016, she produced a new public work for Artists in Arches in (Glasgow) and, together with Morgan E. Russell, she was selected to participate in the Royal Scottish Academy — New Contemporaries (2016). Spångerud has received scholarships from the Bertha and Gösta Stenman Memorial Fund (2020), Östergötland's Cultural Scholarship (2015), and Marta Wivi & Åke Liljessons Stiftelse (2015). 

She is currently participating in a residency project led by Östegötlands Museum, in rebuilding a dance floor located at Öna Kulturreservat. It is a project which tends to be postponed and changed time and time again, due to unlucky circumstances. Actually, kind of in true spirit to the story of the original dance floor.

Jennifer Spångerud is a multidisciplinary artist who is currently studying for a Master in Fine Arts at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design at the University of Gothenburg. 

ARTIST STATEMENT 2020

Ever since I saw my first vampire- and werewolf-movie at my friends house (illicit, as a child), I have been struck by the feeling of obsession and uncontrollable desire these two human hybrids possess. I can only recall a few setups, but this intense feeling of thirst has been clinging as something mysteriously familiar and tangent to my artistic practice.

2010 was the first time I saw Shewolf, the examination project by Sara-Vide Ericson. Shewolf is a series of paintings of occasional relations. The relations are unbalanced and the woman clings on the partner, attention seeking without response. The faces is inarticulated and the movements short and precise, intimate. The paintings are accompanied by a large number of drawings/sketches of werewolves. What struck me was the intensive obsessiveness, again, in which the work was founded, and by the contradictory but still natural connection between sexual confusion and control.

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Obsession and excess of appetite are key entrances into my work. An intensive play of the internal contradictions and the feeling of being trapped and depending on the environment, while one is longing for more. In the book The Wounded Diva: On the Aesthetics of the Psyche, Karin Johannisson is writing on the Swedish mental hospitals in the early 1900s. She argues medical journals to function as moral training programs for non-controllable (women). Obsession and dash of wild temper is something naturally human, but when given the epithet hysteric it is considered sick, rabid. 

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My work resides in a silent confrontation, with connections to exhibitionism/voyeurism - whom is watching whom, and why? The figurative expression of severed or covered heads, loosened hair and cut open stomachs are expressions of anonymousness but also relates to Julia Kristeva’s concept of the Abject. Something that is lingering in between different definitions, and is therefore evoking feelings of fatuousness and unpleasancy. It is correlating with the sexual desire and the concept of moral decay as something luring filled by emptiness. 

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Materialwise I use fur and human hair, fake hair and fake fur. A row of materials lively and quite alike, but containing widely different associations like the ones of immediate disgust, soft feeling of being secure or snotty indulgence. It is also a lively kind of material in contrast to the concrete and plaster in my work, which instead is associated with immobility and stagnation.

CV
 

Education

2020-2022 MFA Fine Art programme at HDK-Valand, Gothenburg

2016 BFA Fine Art – Sculpture and Environmental Art, The Glasgow School of Art, UK

2013 Öland's School of Art year 2, (Ölands Konstskola 2), Skogsby, SWE

2011 Exhibition Knowledge (7,5hp), Linköpings Universitet, SWE

2008 Öland's School of Art year 2 (Ölands Konstskola 2), Skogsby, SWE
 

Selected Solo/Duo Exhibitions

2020 Push Puppet, Radar I, duo exhibition at Passagen with Jonathan Dewoon, Linköping

2019 Definierad Mark (Defined Ground), duo exhibition with Jonathan Dewoon at Galleri Fiskhuset, Nyköping, SWE

2017 The Principle of Internal Rejection, with Viktor Lysell Smålänning, at Laurieston Arches, Glasgow,UK

2016 One is not born, but rather becomes, with Rebecca Lindsmyr, at The Art School, Glasgow, UK

2016 New Flesh, with Morgan Russell, in Garage Space, Glasgow, UK

2014 In the Flesh, with Beatrice Johansson, The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow, UK

2013 Skepnadsskiftare (Shape Shifter), Oskarshamns Konsthall, SWE

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Selected Group Exhibitions

2020 Dekadansbanan (continuation of collaborative project), group exhibition at Verkstad Konsthall, Norrköping, SWE

2019 Skulpturfestivalen (Sculpture Festival), in Stjärnholm and Oxelösund, Nyköping, SWE

Skulptur på Löfstad (Sculpture at Löfstad), exhibition at the castle of Löfstad, Norrköping, SWE

2018 Östgötaforum, group exhibition, Konstforum, Norrköping, SWE

2018 Jubileumsutställning (Jubilee exhibition), group exhibition, Passagen Konsthall, Linköping, SWE

2018 Inauguration of Skylten cultural centre, group exhibition with ALKA, Linköping, SWE

2017 Höstsalong, with Mats Tusenfot and Ermias Ekube, Vimmerbys Warmbadhus, Vimmerby, SWE

2017 RSA New Contemporaries 2017, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, UK

2016 Are You Talking to Me?, The Museum of Östergötland, Linköping, SWE

2016 Parallell Dimensions, The Lauristone Arches - AiA, Glasgow, UK

2016 Glasgow School of Art Degree Show (Fading Fleshy Forest with Morgan E. Russell), Tontine Building, Glasgow, UK
2016 It's all Downhill from Here, Barnes Building, Glasgow, UK

2016 Boot Cut, with SEA4, Barnes Building, Glasgow, UK

2015 Sculptyour Envrionment, with SEA4, Barnes Building, Glasgow, UK

2015 Konst Åt Alla (Art for Everyone), Boxholm Folkets Hus, Sweden, SWE
2015 FLYTT!, with/at ALKA, Linköping, SWE

2015 Yeah You Like That, with SEA3, Fleming House, Glasgow, UK

2013 Exodus, final exhibition, Öland's School of Art II, Kalmar Konstmuseum , SWE

2013 Men hur ser du ut egentligen?, Galleri Kronan, Norrköping, SWE

2012 Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was a Freak Like Me? Alba S. Enström + Öland's School of Art II, Kalmar Konstmuseum, SWE

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Commission work and Projects

2020 Window Dressing Portals, Konstavenyn — project initiated by Tranås Kultur and Kultivera, Tranås

2020 Dekadansbanan — En lek med oändlig optimism och storhetsvansinne, Residency Öna Kulturreservat — Link

2018 Nyfiket, yrvaket - Territorium, light installation/enlightened sculptures, commission work for the Municipality of Linköping during Vinterstad i Ljus, Skylten, Linköping, SWE

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Awards, Grants, Fellowships, Residencies

2020 Stiftelsen Bertha och Gösta Stenmans Minnesfond

2019 Residency Öna Culture Reserve (Pilot project), (The Museum of Östergötland, SWE)

2016 RSA New Contemporaries, Selected Artist
2015 Region Östergötlands Cultural Award

2015 Wivi, Marta and Åke Liljessons foundation

2009 Wivi, Marta and Åke Liljessons foundation

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Collections

Folkets Hus och Parker

The County Council of Kalmar

The Municipality of Oskarshamn

The Museum of Sundsvall

Private collections

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Other

Member of KRO (The Artists' National Organization), Sweden

Member of Bildupphovsrätt, Sweden
Member of the local artist association ALKA, Linköping, Sweden

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