Monday 2 October 2023

ARoS - subversive art

 



ARoS is a world-leading art gallery right in the heart of Aarhus. You can see its stunning panoramic rainbow walkway peeping over the rooftops of the city.

Our exploration begins on the lower floors...






We enter by the most bizarre of gift-shops. It's well-stocked with an array of horrific sounding drugs, all brightly labelled, tinned and stacked ready for consumption.

"White Girl Skag' anyone?

It says so much about modern society and the way in which values are distorted, cheapened and commoditised.







Just opposite the shop is a small, curtained bed-space packed to the gunnels with the flotsam and jetsam of modern life.

It's reminiscent of the notorious 'coffin apartments' of Hong Kong photographed by Benny Lam.






A little further along the corridor we pass by a smoke-blackened DJ booth. It's criss-crossed by multi-coloured wiring and decorated with African fetishistic art.

We can almost smell the sweat and hear the bass-drenched echos of a long-dead mix session.







The next room contains a reconstruction of a long abandoned Japanese dental surgery. A young couple sit in the corner on the floor, lost in the immersive experience of a storm breaking overhead.

The continuous patter of rain sprayed against the windows brings a quiet Zen calm amidst bright flashes of lightening and booming claps of thunder outside.






And onwards to the room of mirrors, in which we find ourselves endlessly repeated in an infinite pattern of reflection.

It evokes strange feelings of entrapment as if there is no way out of this confused maze of constant repetition. A paradigm for life.








We emerge totally disorientated and cross the corridor to a room which contains a four-screened construct on which plays a loop of a huge hand poised over a keyboard.

At first it plays the keys, then magically the keys take on a life of their own and play without the hand's assistance.

You can get a sense of scale of this installation by looking at the right-hand side of the photo. Joyce stands mesmerised.





After pausing to admire the curved interior of this most beautiful of buildings we leave for the next floor.





Wednesday 27 September 2023

aarhus - first night

 



Our first night back in beautiful Denmark, this time in their second city, Aarhus.

We walked from our hotel over the rail bridge to the student area and came across the marvellous KAZO Izakaya, a gastropub serving amazing Japanese inspired food.

One of the best meals we've enjoyed for a very long time!