Demonstration Island / Paint it Black (Save Engebøfjellet!)

Islands are imaginary places of the mind. They come to the surface and exist as a temporary ground where our travelling memory can rest. Islands remind us of the great forces in nature where there is a constant flux of creation and destruction. A mountain becomes an island when surrounded by water. A black spot in our memory when we think about what it used to be.

aiPotu is a collaboration between the artists Anders Kjellesvik and Andreas Siqueland. They met at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2004 and have since worked together on travel-related projects. Their collaboration began with the purchase of an old caravan. From 2004–2007 the vehicle served as the artists’ home, means of transport and exhibition space on a series of expeditions both in the urban space and rural spaces. The first journey was Tour of Europe in which a figure-of-eight drawn on the European map served as their itinerary. Underway aiPotu made interventions in public space, often in collaboration with local institutions. This was followed up by The Nordic Tour with involved works of a social and sculptural nature. One example of this is Hotel, in which the camper van was converted into a functioning hotel outside Bergen Kunsthall. In 2007 aiPotu decided to visit and connect various island communities by embarking on The Island Tour. The project began with a tour of Iceland and the Faroe Islands. The last island venue was the Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland.

Recent exhibitions and projects by aiPotu include Five Thousand Generations of Birds, Fitjar, Norway, Museo d’Arte Orientale, Torino, Italy; Boomerang Boat Museum, South Shields, England; Hordaland kunstsenter, Bergen, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Revolutions – Forms That Turn, 16th Biennale of Sydney; Tentshow, Kunsthallen Nikolaj in Copenhagen, Bergen Kunsthall and Volt, Bergen and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo.

http://www.aipotu.org