Scrap Poems

Studio17 is pleased to invite you to the very first exhibition in our new premises at Øvre Strandgate 66! The exhibition “Scrap Poems” by Miriam Del Seppia & Helle Lindskog is the result of their three-week residency with us. Welcome!

“Scrap Poems” is a duo show by Helle Lindskog and Miriam Del Seppia that contains an assembly of woven interventions that have been made during a residency at Studio 17. Throughout their stay in Stavanger, they engaged with weaving as a way to create a tactile record of the everyday, by taking inspiration from how the diary format allows smaller and unfinished thoughts to be framed by the continuation of the writing routine. Could weaving be dealt with similarly?

There is a saying “that you pick up a loose thread”. Maybe you run with it, spin it. The loose thread has a bad reputation when speaking in terms of literature. It is often seen as something that brings the reader off track and does not necessarily bring progress to the story, at least within the structure of classical, western dramaturgy. Weaving, on the other hand, is a structure that keeps loose parts together. It is a way to create a fabric by interlacing pieces of fibers.

Helle Lindskog and Miriam Del Seppia used to be studio mates when they both lived in Rotterdam and studied together at the Piet Zwart Institute. During that time, ideas around techniques, materials, and the politics around them were shared like an organic knowledge that happened on a daily basis. Now, when they are located in different cities (Rotterdam and Oslo), they have a desire to keep this conversation ongoing by initiating a common ground for experimentation as well as a dialogue between their practices.

Helle Lindskog wishes to put emphasis on experiences of the everyday in relation to the dream about the good life. Craft, labor, and tacit knowledge are subjects that stay close to her practice, where material explorations are guided by a strong interest in the margin for manoeuvre. She mixes mediums as sculpture, installation and performance with written elements in order to find a position where things are within reach and where the action is close to something constantly ongoing.

Miriam Del Seppia is a visual and textile artist working across botanical dyeing, textiles, painting, drawing, ceramics and gardening. Her process-driven practice focuses on plants, fibers and colors as a way of exploring connections with specific living worlds and their embedded knowledge. Colors and textiles are not only carrying fundamental expressive qualities, but are also a medium of relation, rooted in the surrounding ecosystem. Through slow processes of self-teaching, learning from intimacy, affection and from other-than-humans, she circles around matters of care, ecology, and de-growth.