Odd weeks: Love and Devotion

For nearly half a century art space has been discussed both as a space liberated from commercial and political forces and/or as an arena for both social confirmation and hierarchical thinking. Through intervention in and illumination of and by the “cube”/exhibition space, new perspectives open up which can prompt notions of the museum as an aesthetic and ethical meeting place.

Love and devotion was started in the autumn of 1999 and since then the group has conducted a number of different projects. Just now they are in the last stages of a commission from Uppsala County Council and the psychiatric and rehabilitation departments of Ulleråker hospital. Instead of placing art into an environment – which is what is usually done – they have, together with the hospital staff, embarked upon making practical improvements in the environment for both patients and staff. Love and devotion have been involved in everything from choosing curtains to constructing steps leading down from a balcony to the ground as part of the process of making a patio.

At Uppsala Art Museum, love and devotion organised a workshop for school children where they sewed and embroidered t-shirts from second-hand shops. They then arranged with the pupils a fashion show featuring these t-shirts. The project was called For Real and aimed at showing the pupils how they themselves could initiate, create and carry out an art project from beginning to end.

FIRST EXHIBITION/PROJECT:
love and devotion at the Academy of Fine Arts, Umeå University, Sept.-Dec. 2000

THREE MOST RECENT EXHIBITIONS/PROJECTS:
love and devotion at the Welfare Office. Stockholm 1-4 Dec. 2001, love and devotion at BB (Galleri Lars Bohman’s project room), Easter 2002, love and devotion at the Akademiska Hospital, Uppsala, Psychosis and Rehabilitation Wards 109 and 110, Ulleråker Hospital, throughout 2002.

LITERATURE:
Förteckning över Swedish Department, Riksutställningar (Swedish Travelling Exhibitions) Vol. F 1:1 1997-2000