Lars Laumann

The exhibition, which runs for the duration of the Festival in Galway Arts Centre, will feature four works from the Norweigian artist. Laumann is represented by Maureen Paley, London and has exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. His most well known piece, ’Berlinmuren’ was exhibited in the 2008 Berlin Biennial. The piece, which will be shown in Galway Arts Centre, tells the story of a highly unusual relationship: the love affair between the Swedish woman Eija-Riita Berliner-Mauer and the Berlin Wall. She considers November 9, 1989, the day the Wall “fell,” the saddest day of her life. Berliner-Mauer now lives in Liden in northern Sweden where, besides running a museum that displays models of guillotines and the Berlin Wall, she moderates a number of websites about the Wall and the phenomenon of human love for objects.

The exhibition will also premiere ‘Shut up Child, This Ain’t Bingo’ which is a two channel video installation that tells the true story of the relationship between Norwegian artist Kjersti Andvig and her collaborative partner Carlton Turner over an 18-month period before Turner is killed. Turner was a Texan Death Row inmate who in 2006 was contacted by Anvig with the request of participating in her knitting project. Using original photo and video documentation mixed with found material the work focuses on the period after their work is complete until Turner’s death when their relationship shifted from a professional to a romantic one.

Galway Arts Centre will also exhibit the video piece ‘Morrissey Foretelling The Death of Diana’ (2006), which suggests – through montage of found film and video footage, appropriated song fragments, and a voice-over narrative – that Morrissey, the former lead singer of The Smiths, somehow anticipated the 1997 death of Princess Diana via cryptic clues in his lyrics or embedded in images on Smiths’ record sleeves or in their pop videos. Focusing on a track-by-track analysis of The Smiths’ Album “The Queen Is Dead” the video adopts the form of a conspiracy-theory-cum-urban-myth, and despite its labyrinthine twists-and turns, seems to make absolute sense: somehow proving its case, suggesting that perhaps Morrissey – albeit aided and abetted by extraterrestrial forces – did indeed possess clairvoyant powers.

Laumann will also exhibit ‘The Swedish Bookstore’, a monitor piece that examines hidden meanings in popular imagery, in this case the Zucker brother’s 1984 comedy Top Secret!, where the original footage is recorded backwards in one of the scenes, as the filmmakers thought that English language played backwards sounds like Scandinavian.