Commission for public art work at the new children school in Hølen in Østfold. Collaboration with Ellen Røed http://www.ellenrøed.no.
Hølen ( 59°32′26,603″N 10°44′18,222″Ø) is a special place that used to be the smallest town in Norway, with 199 inhabitants. In area it is also the smallest municipality that has ever existed in Norway – just 0.12 km². It was merged with the rural municipality Vestby on July 1, 1943 – and lost its status as a town to the grievance of its proud inhabitants.
Today 697 people live in Hølen. They fought a battle to have a school after the old school was closed in 2009 due to lack of maintenance of the building.
After 7 years of going to Vestby by bus, 196 local children could walk, most of them for the first time, a few hundrerd meters to their very own school from the 4th of january 2016.
The commissioned artproject by Ellen Røed and Patrik Entian in collaboration was based on research into the local mythologies and constitutes an attempt to revitalize and add to some of these stories in a visual and playful manner.
The artwork consists of a large mural painting in the entrance hall, several smaller paintings distributed in the corridors and meeting rooms, signs mounted on the facade of the building as well as a painting on the asphalt in the school yard; a sundial. (Will be more documentation from this when the ice has melted).
It takes as its point of departure a myth about a dutch ship that presumably once sailed up the 2 metre wide Hølen-river. Half the way the wind shifts and the sailors has to pull the ship the rest of the distance. Finally arrived in Hølen, the captain falls in love with a beautiful local girl. One year later the captain and his crew do the same sailing and pulling of the ship up the tiny Hølen river, to get married with the beautiful Hølen girl.
And some mobile pics from the installation of the analemic sundial in the school yard:
7 PM the 15th of May.
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