EXHIBITION
LISA STØRSETH PETTERSEN: EVERYONE LEANS TOWARDS SOMETHING

Opening: 3 May, 7–10pm (active happenings between 7–9pm)
Exhibition: 4 May – 16 June 2024

Janet.    But the past has gone.
Dr. Görtler.    Gone where? 1

In her practice, Trondheim-based visual artist Lisa Størseth Pettersen creates site-specific, performative happenings with a basis in rehearsal and repetition, often including constituents spanning a broad field of crafts and skills, from opera singing to sports fishing. By deliberately staging these with the joint effort of multifarious groups of collaborators, Størseth Pettersen proposes and negotiates a space for something to occur. This something drifts between fiction and reality, and is continuously being interrupted, disintegrated and re-formed.

At UKS, the artist’s new production takes its cue from J.B. Priestley’s play I Have Been Here Before, which was staged in the institution’s building in 1939, when it was home to Søilen Teater. While loosely connected with the piece, an ensemble of familiar strangers – neighbours, a stonemason, choirs, kindergarten teachers in cars – are set in motion in liaison with associated objects and shifting lighting.

In the exhibition, the same actions are scheduled to happen moment after moment, day after day, repetitively – as in its Latin origin repetere, meaning to ‘do or say again’, also applying to the small breaks between the acts, creating spaces of their own. For Størseth Pettersen, producing these events in this way is about evocation, rather than improvement; more specifically, the evocation of different times, bodies, professional, emotional and spiritual labour, objects, sound and image in space(s). In the spirit of Priestley’s odd inquiry into the psychological phenomena of déjà vu, what is being summoned at UKS is a particular moment in time.

[1] J.B. Priestley, I Have Been Here Before, 1937, 41.

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TAKE A RIDE

Expanding beyond the institutional walls, the exhibition offers visitors the chance to take a ride around part of Oslo’s city centre. The cars are conducted by kindergarten teachers, including a playlist of music gathered by themselves and others connected to their profession.

Visitors are picked up and dropped off at UKS. Seats for rides on Thursdays at 6 pm or 6:30pm and on Saturdays at 2pm or 2:30pm can be reserved by emailing booking@uks.no The ride is approximately 15 minutes long.

EXHIBITION OPENING TIMES

Active mode:

— Thursday, 5–7pm
— Saturday, 1–3pm
— Sunday, 1–3pm

Resting mode:

— Wednesday – Friday, 12–5pm

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Lisa Størseth Pettersen (b. 1984, NO) lives and works in Trondheim. She is a graduate of Trondheim Academy of Fine Art. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include Luftslott, en performativ hendelse og inskripsjon i fjell at Stoksund trygdepensjonat, Åfjord (2022), 04:43-22:59 at Heimdal kunstforening, Trondheim (2021), IS IT THE SEA? at Ila fiskemottak, Trondheim (2021) and Modern Loneliness at Risvollan Borettslag, Trondheim (2020).

* Image above: Lisa Størseth Pettersen, Everyone Leans Towards Something at UKS. Photo by Jan Khür / Studio Abrakadabra