NEWS
As Iceland "celebrates" its first anniversary of THE BIG CRASH, HH opens an art exhibition titled "The Icelandic Expansion 2009" - a sarcastic title, since "The Icelandic Expansion" (Icelandic business-viking-raids on foreign shores) came to a shrieking halt one year ago. The show features a series of photographs shot last January in an unnamed country in southern Africa, showing a once invincible, now desperate Icelandic "business-viking" wandering around the poor third world suburbs, sleeping on the beach and begging in the street. Show is at The Contemporary Art Gallery, Skólavörðustígur 3, 101 Reykjavik, 7-20 October 2009.
HH was invited to be among the speakers at the opening ceremony of the art festival in Bergen Norway last May, a black tie event held at the big and festive Grieghallen, with the king and queen of Norway up front. HH's speech focused on the current crisis in Iceland and the relations between the two countries. It was recorded by Norwegian Televison, NRK, and is now available on youtube.com.
ART
Hallgrimur spent the winter of 1985-86 in Boston, Massachusetts, painting and reading the local newspapers. He soon came up with the idea of combining the two and started using The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald for his canvas, painting with oils on the daily news. The result was a series of 96 works titled “The Boston Papers”. The series have never been exhibited.