» Issue 02/2010: Craft and economy
Johannes Vemren Rygh: Tapte Minner (Lost Memories).
Transforming everyday objects
Text: Mercedes Rapela
Published: 15 Jul 2010
Johannes Vemren Rygh has a habit of using everyday objects as starting points for craft-based work. He also likes to address the viewer and the context where the work is presented.
‘The whole discussion about what arts and crafts are and what is fine art is doesn’t matter to me.’
Johannes Vemren Rygh graduated from Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2005, with a Master’s degree from the department for visual arts. His Batchelor’s degree was however in metal work. In 2007 he received the prestigious Scheibler’s grant for craft artists.
Since graduation he has sought to break boundaries between crafts and fine arts, and explains that he finds the whole discussion of where his works belong uninteresting. 
‘There are a lot of things within fine art and crafts that I could associate my works with. I see myself as situated in-between.’
‘Craftsmanship is really important to me; I love the tools, I love working with my hands and doing the processes myself. But I also love working with the conceptual part of my projects.’
Reinterpretations
In addition to working in-between crafts and other art forms, Vemren Rygh claims also to work ‘in-between the crafts.’ Tapte minner (Lost Memories), a piece about lacking backup, is an ingenuous work demonstrating just this.
The work includes a computer hard disc that has been opened – something that results in erasing the files. The way the hard disc is presented also resembles a record player, and can be interpreted as a nostalgic comment on the older recording media. The box the hard disc is placed in is made of aluminium and contains electronics and a motor that spins the disc around as the viewer approaches. The work is a combination of a found object and the artist’s own doings.
Vemren Rygh explains that his work process usually begins with an everyday object that catches his eye; his mind then starts working around that object.
‘The everyday objects I chose as artistic material often have an aesthetic quality giving me associations to other objects, like when a pineapple was the starting point for making a hand grenade’, he says, referring to a work he created as a student. How much food can one get for the price of a grenade? (2003) consists of a bronze cast of a pineapple with a safety pin taken from an old war grenade.
Reinterpretations of objects are also common in Vemren Rygh’s oeuvre. This we can see in Bell-Skålen (2005), from his graduation show, and in Driftwood Fisherman, currently in the travelling exhibition I Vesterveg.
Driftwood
I Vesterveg was the title of a workshop initiated by the Icelandic artist Malfridur Adalsteinsdottir. Vemren Rygh was invited to participate in the project, which brought together eight artists from Shetland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Norway. These artists explored the qualities of the different cultures.
The project lasted for two years and resulted in an exhibition that opened in February 2010 at Permanenten – West Norway Museum of Decorative Art (Bergen). The exhibition has since travelled to the Faroe Islands and Denmark, and will travel on to Iceland in October.
In the places the artists visited, Vemren Rygh collected souvenirs from the local culture and made new objects from them.
‘The souvenirs I used were made from animal horns. Raising cattle is still an important primary industry in Shetland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Norway’, he remarks, before explaining the background for his work in the exhibition: 
‘_Driftwood Fisherman_ began in a second hand store in the Faroe Islands. An African candlestick caught my attention – it was so exotic, and even more so if you think about how it ended up so far north. It reminded me of driftwood because that is quite central to Faroese culture and life. There are no trees on these islands. So driftwood is used for building houses. I decided to reinterpret the candlestick, to treat it as something more ‘northern’ and came up with the image of the Atlantic fisherman.’
From grants to collections
Even though he reflects on local culture in his work in I Vesterveg, Vemren Rygh hopes he is not considered as a representative of Scandinavian art.
‘I see myself more as a kind of international individual’, he explains.
‘And that I am free to comment on the things I find interesting wherever they come from. But of course, people outside Norway will always see me as coming from this specific culture. I think all artists have to deal with this.’
Even so, this artist thinks art in Norway is different from that created elsewhere in Europe due to the well-developed system of government grants. 
‘In a way everybody gets a chance. The big shots don’t get to be that big in Norway because we are really a social democracy.’
‘But as an artist you can’t rely on grants forever’, he explains.
‘It is really hard to survive in the long term. And the big collectors aren’t in Norway. The big collectors here are the museums, and I had my chance already. I don’t think my work is in Trondheim, though.’
Vemren Rygh’s works have already been acquired by museums in Oslo and Bergen, and can even be found in the Norwegian parliament in Oslo. The parliament bought a work entitled Memento Electra, which addresses government policies on electricity.
Addressing the viewer
‘ Memento Electra is a set of candle holders made of silver and shaped like high voltage masts. The work was meant as a political comment on the Norwegian government’s energy policies. For a long time we have been discussing whether or not to privatize the electricity market and open it up to competition. I addressed this work to the political parties.’
When the Norwegian Parliament buys crafts or artworks, they must have some function in the parliament building. So Memento Electra is now used to light the dinners of foreign ministers who come to Norway to talk about energy privatization.
Vemren Rygh says his works belong in the context he addresses them to, so Memento Electra is more successful than he could ever have hoped.
‘I specialize in addressing my work to the viewer. I feel this works for me. Bell-Skålen was a museum flirt. It almost didn’t work out, because it was the last graduation show that Oslo National Academy of the Arts held in the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design. It was really important to have the exhibition there, because I was commenting on a work in the museum’s collection. I addressed the museum intentionally, with the hope that they would buy it. And they did.’
The work references the renowned Norwegian goldsmith Gustav Gaudernack and his work Libelleskålen from the beginning of the twentieth century. In Vemren Ryghs’ referential work, there is a kind of nostalgia for a ‘golden age’ of Norwegian crafts.
‘I’ve always been fascinated with Gustav Gaudernack and Libelleskålen. I started to wonder how he created this piece. It was made in 1907, when Norwegian enamel was on the cutting edge. I’m sure we could still compete at the top level in the world market if we chose to focus on crafts instead of mass production. It’s not possible for Norway to compete with South East Asia in mass production. But I think we could have done it if we had stuck to craftsmanship. Now it’s too late, we will have to start all over again.’
Science and craft
In 2006 Johannes Vemren Rygh was commissioned to make a permanent decoration for St. Olav’s Hospital in Trondheim. It was a gift from the architects to the hospital’s staff and visitors. 
‘I asked myself: what was the essence of this laboratory? What do they work with? What would be fun for them to see?’
‘The budget for the project was fairly small, so I had to be cost-effective’ he recalls.
‘Early on I decided I would use the ‘world of microbes’ as the starting point, and that the material should be metal. I made casts from balloons because that was an effective way to work, but also because the shapes can give lots of different associations – they could be balloons or micro organisms. In some of the casts I even included the knot at the end of the balloon to divulge the work’s origin.’
Science-related areas provide Vemren Rygh with lots of inspiration. For instance, at EUNIQUE, an international fair for applied arts and design, he showed a work entitled The Holy Grail in the fair’s Top of Europe 2010 exhibition. The Holy Grail here refers to the world’s largest radio telescope, ‘Green Bank’. Vemren Rygh’s work is made from bronze and gold and can be used as a fruit bowl.
But his reason for sending the ‘grail’ to the fair was not because he wanted to sell it:
‘I wanted to show skill and originality so I sent The Holy Grail. It’s a really expensive piece so I sent it mostly to show off. The fair came up sooner than expected so I had to send something I already had on hand. I decided to send the Grail to give an idea about my work. I knew I couldn’t sell it in a fair like this.’
In August he will explore science in new ways with a solo show in Gallery Ram in Oslo. This time he uses a child’s dinosaur kit as the point of departure.
Johannes Vemren Rygh: a permanent decoration at St. Olav’s Hospital in Trondheim.
Johannes Vemren Rygh: Tapte Minner (Lost Memories).
Johannes Vemren Rygh: Driftwood Firsherman.
Johannes Vemren Rygh: Memento Electra, currently in use at the Norwegian Parliament.
Johannes Vemren Rygh: Driftwood Fisherman in progress.
Johannes Vemren Rygh: Bell-Skålen (the Bell Bowl).
Johannes Vemren Rygh: Lights Off.