Hondartza Fraga

Although I haven’t made many entries in the last couple of days I haven’t been short on taking photos, I just have been a bit busy for the internet. But here I go again, on sunday I was in a revolving restaurant on top of the TV tower, just outside the city centre. The views all over the whole city and the fjord, the mountains… Absolutely amazing. The restaurant completes a turn in an hour, and of course I made a video of that, but something that I find also very interesting are all the chimneys with their white smoke splattered across the landscape. They are everywhere, and I like the smoke against the misty mountains surface, all flattened by the long zoom of my camera…

Here are some random pics of the last couple of days, upon request from my friends at home to see some pictures with me in them… Simon is visiting me this week and that is very nice too, so we went up to Lian again and so far just managed a little more, as it has been -10ºC today!

Last night was the opening of my solo show at Babel. People spent time with each work and gave good feedback. There were another 3 openings that night, this city has a very vibrant art life, with several opening practically every friday… so the competition was high but I was happy with the turn out. I met some very nice and interesting people. After my opening there was another opening at LKV studios, for an exhibition of the other guest artist at LKV, Joost Stokhof (The Things We Are) in collaboration with Ina Marie Winther Åshaug. It was a good evening! Here some photos although I am afraid they are all a little blurred…

My first solo exhibition at Babel, opening Friday 19th Feb 2010 at 7pm.
More info on the gallery Babel here.

During Feb and Mar I am a guest artist at LKV studios in Trondheim (Norway),
click here to see my journal.

I started the installation of the exhibition at Babel today. The opening will be on friday from 7pm. It is all going to plan and I am pleased with how the works sit in the space. It is mainly existing work but I wanted to exhibit something made here, so I have made a video-collage mixing video and stills. Combining my own images and found images mainly of Trondheim, but also of blank maps and the polar exploration journeys. It is not a finished piece of work but I think it reflects my last two weeks so far, a mixture of expectations, facing the blankness of a new studio, looking and waiting for the new place to sink in into my way of working.

Here are some stills from the video which I have titled ‘Elephants, doilies and polar coordinates’.

Tonight I have been to see a band of swedish folk music and world music, each member is from different parts of the world and they fuse it all together. I specially enjoy the songs with the violin and the double bass. Here is an example, although I couldn’t find the ones I enjoyed the most. They had a great energy and it was a great evening out!

Today Margrethe took me in the tram to Lian (‘Li means ‘hill’ and Lian means something like ‘many hills’), nearly 9 km from Trondheim city centre, approximately 230 meters over sea level. The views from the tram are stunning as it makes its way up and at the end of the line there is a beautiful forest and a frozen lake. On top of the hill there is a grand looking restaurant. A lot of people was going here to ski. It was raining so I had to be careful with my camera, but I will go back again on a clearer day. There was much more snow there than in the city and there is a very special silence up there, only broken by the chunks of snow falling from the trees and the occasional walkers.

This is the frozen lake. The little trees in the foreground are on a tiny island in the middle of the lake.


Margrethe told me the driver of this tram bears the typical local mustache. It is not very appreciable in the image but it is quite an impressive mustache indeed. A person from Trøndelag (this county) is called a Trønder. I have found a lot of images of these Trønderbart (Trønder mustache).

I have finally started to draw. A bit clumsily and slowly, small drawings of pedestrians from my photographs, they are all about 5 x 4 cms. I spent the morning in the Kafé Den Hvite Elefant (the white elephant cafe) at the studios, chatting away and taking some more pictures of the very special collection of elephant-souvenirs they keep over the piano. It is a lovely room. Apparently because the name of the room people started to bring elephant souvenirs whenever they found any. I like it a lot. I think the works for the exhibition at Babel are ready and I think it is time to start doodling and sketching away. I am also going to start working on some video ‘on-progress’ for the exhibition from all my recent footage.

some of my today’s drawings…

It has been snowing all day. Outside and inside in my studio everything is on a palette of off-whites. I feel a bit more optimistic about the works I did yesterday. I really like the light in here. The windows are amazing. There is a very thick and dense blankness. It is not emptiness but an obscuring layer of whiteness. I have found a few webcams in Trondheim. Most of them point to the docks. I walked around one of them a couple of days ago and got a glimpse of the fjord between the cranes and working ships. I must walk around the cost soon.

I had a bit of a disastrous day at the studio today. Basically I ruined two works and I had to start from scratch and not feeling very confident about them anyway. The day was so clear and crispy outside that I should have stopped there and then and go for a walk to clear my head, but no, being as impatient as I am I wanted to finish today… And I did in the end, but not with what I wanted. So I headed home early to work on some video footage instead and I had a bit of lucky with some findings on the internet that will be very helpful for the exhibition. I have too many vague ideas and not enough specific ones, some of my works result from lucky accidents, so I guess that in a way I am collecting data that I find interesting, waiting for the accident, waiting for something to click.

I am still hoping to see some polar lights while I am here, so I keep checking the space weather forecast. It looks like tonight it could be some aurora boreal visible from here, so I will be looking up from time to time. The SpaceWeather website is great. It has a little graphic showing the aurora boreal activity and lots of interesting data about space weather.