The Grave Project (Skeiv Norge)

For the previous five years, Jess Miley (Berlin-based) and Derek Sargent (Bergen- based) and have been collaborating on their artistic performative research project ‘The Grave Project’, which researches historic individuals who have had an impact on queer and non-normative culture. This research culminates in a pilgrimage to these individuals’ burial sites which is documented in photography and film to create an alternative historical archive. The project examines the way the queerness of these figures is used in the construction of their historical biographies. 

This new chapter (Skeiv Norge) involves making a pilgrimage to the following individuals gravesites: Ambrosia Tønnesen, Wenche Lowzow, Borghild Krane, Lorentz Severin Skougaard, Bolette Berg, Gunvor Hofmo, Pauline Hall, Leif & Paal Roschberg, Per Aabel and Alfhild Hovdan.

Jess Miley is an Australian artist and performer currently based in Berlin, she is a former director of FELTspace gallery in Adelaide. In 2019 she won the SALA festival Contemporary art award along with Derek Sargent for their work The Grave Project. She is the founding director of LoveFest an annual experimental arts festival that explores notions of love and being together. In 2018 she founded ways.house a queer feminist art residency in Eastern Hungary.

Derek Sargent is an Australian artist currently based in Bergen, Norway. His multi- media practice includes moving image, performance, sculpture forms, installation and photography. His work investigates themes of sexual identity and popular cultural production. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the University of South Australia 2013. In 2015 Sargent was awarded the Anne & Gordon Samstag international visual arts scholarship and travelled to London to complete a Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at Chelsea College of the Arts. In 2021 he obtained a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Bergen.