Creative Technologies and Practices

Nina Torp's exhibition at Tenderpixel is a multi-media installation that investigates Iceland's history as a destination for sublime experiences by early travellers and expeditions.

Tenderpixel occupies the space of a disused shop in Cecil Court in central London, a victorian road well known for its specialist shops in rare and antique books, maps and prints.

Torp's installation is composed by the following elements:

A video projected on the “shopfront's” window showing a few human figures walking through the Icelandic landscape.

1. A still image of a woman taking a picture of the landscape on the opposite wall.
2. A black stone or mineral placed in between both projections.
3. A framed page of an old book showing pictures of different types of minerals.
4. And a transparent box containing a different type of rock.

The concept behind this installation was conceived by Torp between her initial meeting with Tenderpixel at Cecil Court, where she bought an antique book narrating the experiences of early Icelandic expeditions, and her residency at SIM, Iceland, in May 2010.

Torp followed the routes described in the book by these early travellers and tried to stablish a relationship between these historical experiences and her own as a tourist. The piece aims to build a bridge between past and present, personal experience and historically charged landscapes.

Tourists travelling to sublime destinations as this one would act as spectators. This scenographic or theatrical idea of the landscape is reinforced by Torp by projecting the video on the window, which acts as the imaginary fourth wall in theatre.

The themes of the journey and the sublime have been extensively treated in the history of art. The sublime as an aesthetic quality of landscape was explored by many Romantic painters as the impressionist predecessor William Turner or Germany's most important exponent of the Romanticism Caspar David Friedrich.

“A Line in the Himalayas”
Richard Long, 1975

Nature was also an essential element in Richard Long's sculptures made by walking during the 70's. John Baldessari also explored the experience of walking as a conceptual device in his playful “California Map Project” from 1969. And in 2007, the overwhelming and magical beauty of Iceland's landscape was unveiled in Sigur Ros' HD film “Heima”.

Meanwhile nature, landscape or the act of travelling can be a powerful object of art, Torp's piece at Tenderpixel has failed to make an impression in me.

Trying to establish a relation between the experiences of early expeditioners and contemporary tourists as a result of buying a book after a meeting feels like a weak concept. In addition, the way in which the artist's travelling experience from London to and across Iceland has been documented does not transmit a sense of journey to the gallery visitor. The fact that we can see some people walking along the landscape in the video projection, and that the artist has brought some found-stones back to the gallery, don't seem to be remarkable enough to put across an already loose concept or touch the visitor in an emotional way.

I also feel that Torp has used technology in a very traditional manner, limiting herself to the use of a couple of projectors. This strategy would've been valid if it managed to express the concept with efficiency. On the contrary, the visitor is confronted with a collection of images that lack of the conceptual depth that Torp's is pretending to achieve or the emotional charge of some holiday snaps. In brief, the work feels detached and obscure.