Marianne Heier´s artistic projects relate directly, pointedly and objectively to social, political and economic structures in our own time. Through an art output typified by interventions and the artist’s own active participation, she challenges standard views of the role of art and how it is shown and communicated. The white gallery space is often abandoned in favour of public institutions, offices and communal spaces. The work is then manifested in contact with the arena that is investigated, and in relation to the codes and implications that surround the given site.
For the first time in the almost 60year history of the Festival Exhibition, the 2012 project was moved in its entirety out of the institution’s exhibition spaces. With the exhibition “Surplus” Marianne Heier showed that the Festival Exhibition is not just an exhibition rich in tradition in Norwegian art history, but also an active, experimental platform where artists are given space to comment on the context and social structures around the art in various ways. For the exhibition Heier produced two new works, the sculpture Vima, and the performance Diamond. This anthology was also an important part of the exhibition project in its own right. The book addresses and clarifies one of the central themes and discussions that are brought to the surface in Heier’s works.
The Swedish critic Kim West discusses Heier’s new project in the light of her oeuvre in general, with a special focus on the way she treats parallel value systems, and the value of art in this context. The journalist and writer Loretta Napoleoni contributes a new text on the structural implications of today’s global eco nomic systems, while the social anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen deals with global economic structures, with special reference to the (unique) economic wealth that has typified modern Norway. The cultural theorist, curator and poet Ranjit Hoskote looks at the concept of “artistic value” within the various value systems encompassed by Heier’s project.
Title: Surplus
Published by: Bergen Kunsthall, Sternberg Press
Editors: Marianne Heier, Steinar Sekkingstad, Solveig Øvstebø
Artist Marianne Heier
Text: Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Marianne Heier, Ranjit Hoskote, Loretta Napoleoni, Kim West, Solveig Øvstebø
Design: Blankblank
Pages: 211
Illustrations: 26
ISBN: 978-3-943365-09-2
Hardcover:130×190 mm
Language: Enlglish / Norwegian
Translations: Ika Kaminka, James Manley
Price: 32 EUR / 250 NOK