"The alignment of works on museum walls gives the impression of a cemetery: whatever they say, wherever they come from, whatever their meanings may be, this is where they all end up in the end, where they are lost" Daniel Buren
Graveyards as we know them in Europe have existed since the 7th century , while tombs and burial of the dead have existed for as long as we know. The grave is something
universal that connects human beings through culture, place and time. The grave is a resting place, a visiting place as well as being a place for potential transition to the unknown. The idea of Galleri Gravsted was conceived while we as a bunch of artists; painters, musicians, filmmakers and writers, worked together in graveyards. Working there together made us wonder whether our presence there was just an economically motivated coincidence or if there was something else that brought us there. Is art related to the grave place? In our search for the answer to these questions we came upon the french conceptual artist Daniel Buren. According to him, the museum/gallery preserves the artwork in order to create an illusion about eternity and the timelessness of the works displayed there. In this way the works are kept artificially alive. In addition to this, the museum/gallery acts as an asylum for the work. Reading Buren one can start to think of the gallery as a burial place for the artwork. It is where the finished work come to rest, be visited, reflected upon and preserved. In the gallery the work is weighed and judged. It is now dead in the sense that the process has ended. Our goal with Galleri Gravsted is to show the artists of the graveyard over a season. The season will correspond to the seasonal graveyard work, from May until November. Galleri Gravsted will be run by graveyard-artists and will during the first season focus mainly on exhibiting graveyard-artists. The artists are encouraged to create grave related works, either inspired by the seasonal work in the graveyard, or more generally to the burial theme. In addition to the exhibitions we will have concerts, workshops and poetry readings.
