A ROOM WITH A VIEW IN GELLERUP

Moving into one of those GIANT apartments that you may have seen out in Gelleruparken, a week back, I find myself spoiled for space. With my bedroom tucked away in one of the many wings of the apartment the living/dining room is evolving into something of a studio space, as the work begun on the window drawing above may reflect.

Working on my own projects as well as with Sigrids Stue (a project from Aarhus Kunstbygning) out here – on Tuesday’s 14.00-17.00, Wednesday’s 16.00-19.00, and Thursday’s 10.00-13.00 with Sigrids Stue, Foreningernes Hus, Sigridsvej 46 – I’ll be carrying out a number of workshops with anybody that wants to come along.

Regarding my work with Sigrids Stue I’d like to reach out to the city as well as with the local residents in Gellerup and create some kind of a bridge, or rather dialogue between the two areas. So, as well as working with local school kids and the like with projects such as ‘plasticine-dreams’ – and a ‘self-portrait’ workshop at City Vest this upcoming Saturday – I’m going to be reaching out to the city itself with a number of projects to aid in the changing of people’s perceptions of Gellerup.

One of the ideas that we came up with is called ”Blind’ Date’ which the first time round will be hosted in the city, and the second time round – following its booming success – right here in Gellerup. Although we’re still tweaking some of the details the idea amounts to this: participants will take a seat in a romantically -lit room filled with tables for two and red wine and paint a ‘blind’ drawing of their partner (a blind portrait being a drawing of a person where the painter focuses only on the subject, never on the paper itself thus resulting in entertaining Picasso-like results). Sit tight for further details on that one.

With Rikke Luna, Matias and Rasmus Gissel visiting last night for an improvised dish bought from Bazaar Vest, we moved on to talk about the whole project and some of the things that I’d like to do while I’m here. One idea that we tapped into was hosting a group exhibition – featuring hopefully some of the bloggers on idoart – in this actual apartment. The exhibition would be an ‘art for art’s sake’ event where the art-pieces would be FREE at the stroke of midnight. The idea – or at least one of the ideas – behind this whole concept (which is still in its preliminary stages, ideas are welcome!) is to generate an interest in this extension of Aarhus which I hear is all too often victim to bad press and get city-based artists to realise the potential with all the space out here. Plus, it also seems a shame to waiver this amount of space and keep it all to myself without hosting some kind of party.

For those interested in getting involved in this exhibition, have any ideas to add to the above or just want to pay a visit out here please mail me at info@danielvandernoon.co.uk or drop a comment below.

All photos by Rikke Luna & Matias © I DO ART Agency.

Daniel van der Noon (b. 1988) is an english artist, illustrator and writer. Daniel has contributed to idoart.dk since 2011.