Annika von Hausswolff

Interview by Jean Wainwright

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 18 Numbers 3 & 4, 1999

Transcript

Jean Wainwright: I’m here with Annika von Hausswolff outside the Nordic Pavilion. Annika just tell me a little bit about the series of works that you’ve done for this exhibition?

Annika von Hausswolff: The series is a new body of work, all interiors; some rooms are empty and some rooms have people. Sometimes lonely people and sometimes there are two people, it’s a relationship kind of drama actually. Before I used to stage my photographs mainly outdoors but this time I decided to go inside rooms to depict various mental states.

JW: One piece I was very drawn to was the stockings in the sink, very simple, very evocative. Would you talk a little bit about they way that you present your work?

AvH: Well I’m using colour negative film; I use the (Mamia?), Japanese 6 x 7 cms. negative format. I use the colour negative because it is softer than the super chromes. I’m thinking actually of doing a black and white project because I started out as a documentary photographer and that’s what I wanted to become, but gradually I started to do staged photography instead. I mount these colour negative prints on Plexiglass.

JW: You attach the Plexiglass with silicone to the image. It’s very sculptural.

AvH: Yes it is actually. It’s very interesting that you mention it because I’ve been thinking a lot about sculpture.

JW: I think it’s very beautiful.

AvH: Although it’s super flat I’ve been really thinking about the sculptural elements more this time than any other time. It started out with the bubbles, but it had a notion of sculptural. I like the images to be very present in the room and that’s why I make them quite large and I don’t use a frame.

JW: They’re floating. I felt they related extremely well to the architectural space of the Pavilion.

AvH: This architectural house that is so difficult to display art in. But I think we solved it in a very nice way by building these two boxes. It works extremely well but it’s tight, it’s a tight exhibition I’d say.

JW: Is there anything else you’d like to say about your work or your working practice?

AvH: I work in a traditional way with pictures. I often use paintings as inspirations.

JW: You use art historical backgrounds for these works, I think in your earliest series of works, the art historical inspiration was more evident. With these ones, did you have an art historical starting point?

AvH: Not really. Composition-wise I do look at Vermeer, for instance, and I use Edward Hopper a lot as an inspiration. I think I use that way of composing images and I mix it with this documentary language.

JW: You’re using your own language of composition now.