Auðn/The Barren Wasteland series 2019

Daughter and father Gudrun and Ólafur W. Nielsen open the photographic exhibition AUÐN/The Barren Wasteland in Gallery Grásteini. A few images from Gudrun's Barren Wasteland series were exhibited in September 2019 in LE MARAIS Paris.

In the summer of 2019 Gudrun went on a journey with her father Ólafur, to the old trails of the Tungnaá barren wasteland and Jökulheimar, Iceland. There Gudrun took photographs for her Barren wasteland series. In this exhibition she merge photographs taken up to 70 years apart.

As the art historian Aldís Arnardóttir describes: “The forces of nature are unpredictable and nowhere are the opposites as great as in this barren wasteland. Where the white glacier's edge has retreated and wide areas of black sand and wasteland appear.

Gudrun looks to the past, stories of the land and personal memories, which provides her with the basis for the work of collage where the present lies harshly over the land.

Gudrun Nielsen FRSS b.1951 is a Reykjavík and UK based sculptor. She has competed and exhibited at an international level since 1989 and been granted many different awards for her art.

Ólafur W. Nielsen b.1928 is a cabinet maker and one of the co-founders of the Icelandic Glaciological Society and the Air Ground Rescue Team of Reykjavík. He has taken photographs on Vatnajökull glacier since 1950.