HET NIEUW FRIES MUSEUM PRESENTEERT: MATA HARIS HOOFD

Timmy van Zoelen, Sybren Renema
23 June 2010 - 03 August 2010

Visual artists Sybren Renema and Timmy van Zoelen will establish the The New Frisian Museum in SYB during the summer weeks: a mark of honour to the solitary individual in the cultural inheritance. According to the artists, collections in small regional museums, such as the Ruurd Wiersma Hûs and the catacombs in Wieuwerd, often appeal more to one’s imagination than the standard collections in a national museum. Moreover, it seems as if there is no hierarchy between objects in these kind of collections. In the same way, in Ald Slot in Warga, part of the collection of treacle waffle tin boxes is equated with the rest of the collection.

The New Frisian Museum will be working on an archive, a publication and an exhibition of improbable facts from the Frisian cultural inheritance. This will be the ‘B-side of Frisian history’ in which there is room for detection of extraterrestrials / aliens in Gorredijk and for speculations about the love affair between Indiana Jones and Mata Hari.

This kind of information is perhaps based on fiction too much, according to the artists, which means that it traditionally does not fit in the museum. At the same time, the most traditional collection is a collection of stories. Renema and Van Zoelen provoke the Frisian canon with their project. Their project can diverge from loan of and conversations with the owners of small museums to doing research to the sword of Grutte Pier, which is owned by the Frisian Museum, but is known to be fake.

Sybren Renema (Dordrecht, 1988) graduated at the KABK in The Hague last year and now follows an MFA at the Glasgow School of Art. With his work he used to provoke local social appointments: for instance in the Landesmuseum in Muenster in 2007, when he dared the management to take part in a ‘keelzang’ sing-along. Or when he wrote “I AM AFRAID” with fresh grass in an old grass cover. At this moment, his work can be seen at the Shanghai Biënnale and on BBC Big Screens, in all British cities at the sea.

Timmy van Zoelen (IJsselstein, 1982) also graduated in 2009 at the KABK in The Hague and now studies at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. His work could be seen earlier during State-X: New Forms in Paard van Troje, in Blaak 10, Rotterdam and in 1646 in The Hague.

Work period: 23 June until 3 August

Opening hours: Saturday and Sunday from 13.00 until 17.00 and by appointment

Festive presentation: Sunday 25 July at 16.00

Exhibition: Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 JulyFriday 30 July, Saturday 31 July and Sunday 1 August13.00 – 17.00

By opening the doors for the audience during the working period, SYB makes the process public.

For more information, please contact: Sybren Renema at sybren@renema.nl, Timmy van Zoelen at timvanzoelen@hotmail.com or SYB at info@kunsthuissyb.nl.

BP Portrait Award 2010

Don't Be Too Serious

by Elizabeth McDonald

Oil on canvas 635 x 432 x 50 mm

The prize winners for the BP Portrait Award 2010 were announced at the Awards Ceremony on the 22 June 2010. The BP Young Artist Award 2010 was awarded to current MFA student Elizabeth McDonald for Don't Be Too Serious.

Elizabeth McDonald painted her portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Camillo Paravicini, in his studio in her home city of Glasgow. While they worked in the same building, in neighbouring studios, the two artists hardly knew each other. She says while the clothing Camillo wears in the portrait - a black jacket and tie and black rimmed glasses - is similar to that which he would normally wear, his posture was staged to accentuate the tension between youth and maturity. ‘Through the sittings, and getting to know Camillo,' she says, ‘I not only found myself examining his personal style but looking closer at other aspects of his personality. Perhaps most intriguingly, I began to see simultaneously the boy in the young man and the older professional gentleman the young man could become.'