Goliat, Draugen & Maria

Liv Bugge’s latest work Goliat, Draugen & Maria comprises three sculptures and a film. Cast in moulds made from 3D-printed models of marine landscapes, the sculptures show the topography of the seabed (bathymetry) in three of the few oilfields on the Norwegian Continental Shelf with publicly available geodata: Draugen and Maria on Haltenbanken in the Norwegian Sea and Goliat in the Barents Sea. The sculptures are on display at the Natural History Collection and the Strandkaiterminal Waiting Room in Bergen throughout December and January, and at Mon Plaisir in Sandviken in March.

Goliat, Draugen & Maria is concurrently being shown as part of the exhibition Experiences of Oil at Stavanger Art Museum, with the sculptures on display at Fiskepirterminalen, Sølvberget Library and Culture House and Stavanger Art Museum.

The work’s accompanying film can be accessed via smartphone or tablet by downloading the free Goliat, Draugen & Maria app and scanning one of the sculptures. Using augmented-reality technology, the app enables virtual elements to be hosted within real-world settings.

In Goliat, Draugen & Maria, Bugge looks to explore our relationship with oil by posing the question: “What points of contact do we have with crude oil other than as refined end-products?” In Norway, as in other oil-producing nations, oil affects the national narrative, language, politics and economy. Bugge’s film documents the reactions of a group of people as they encounter crude oil from the Vigdis field for the first time.

Liv Bugge lives and works in Oslo. She studied at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Belgium. She completed her PhD, The Other Wild: Touching Art as Confrontation, at Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2019. Bugge’s research explores how control mechanisms in society are internalized and contribute to the maintaining of normative notions and ethics around, for example, such dichotomies as life and non-life or humanity and nature. The artist is also known for her extensive work with inmates at Ullersmo and Eidsberg prisons.

Bugge has had solo presentations at, among other places: Marabouparken Konsthal in Stockholm, the Artists’ House and Intercultural Museum in Oslo, and Sørlandets Kunstmuseum in Kristiansand. Her work has been shown in several group exhibitions, including Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, as well as at Kunsthall Trondheim, Melahuset in Oslo and Malmö Konsthall. Bugge is also an associate professor at Oslo National Academy of the Arts.