Louise Johansson Waite

(11 480 slices of untoasted toast, 40 cans of expanding foam)

“The Folly is, in the true sense of the word, a foolish project. In the project a realistic ornamental buildings created in the shape of a sculpture made out of white bread. The purpose is to shed light on the social and political significance of the building and the bread.

In English, the word folly has two meanings. It refers partly to a lack of common sense and foolishness, partly to costly ornamental buildings without practical purpose, often towered or imitations of Gothic ruins in a large garden or park. In the exhibition in Wanås Konsthall the project examines how the two English meanings can meet visually and conceptually in a work of art where bread is used as the main building material.

At Wanås Konst, Waite's project gets in touch with the landscape and cultivation. It is in Wanås Sculpture Park that the sculpture park expands and slightly to the south, the large-scale Scanian cultivation of grain takes over. In ancient Rome, access to grain was to feed its people of paramount importance, the one who had power over the route from Egypt's granary ruled and the people got their bread and spectacle. The earliest find of bread was made in Jordan and is 14,000 years old. It consisted of breadcrumbs that were found during an excavation and when the researchers tried to reconstruct the recipe, they thought that the bread had a nutty taste. The cultivation of grain created settled communities where ever larger groups lived together but also new hierarchical social structures.

Bread has since acted as food, economy and metaphor in many parts of the world, but especially in the West. During the 18th century, white bread was exclusive and highly regarded in society, while the coarser, darker alternative was eaten by the broad masses. With industrialization and the development of technology, white bread became cheaper and available to everyone. Today, the opposite is true. At the same time as white bread has fallen in price, it has also fallen in status and instead sourdough, wholemeal and home-baked goods have sailed up and become status markers in the health-conscious society we live in today. What and how we eat still reflects economy and class.

Waite has chosen to use the bread as a building material to reinforce the folly of the project and the building’s historical lack of function. White bread developed and gained great popularity at the same time as follies became more common in the English landscape. Both still exist today, although the aesthetic as well as nutritional need for them is disappearing more and more.”

Exhibited at Wanås Konst (Knislinge, Sweden) for two weeks (17.10.2020-01.11.2020)

Photos: Mattias Givell / Louise Waite

Made with support from Konstnärsnämnden / The Swedish Arts Grants Committee.

A participatory picnic made for the exhibition Monumental Flock at Malmö Konstmuseum. It was performed three times with three participants during each sitting.

Malmö Konstmueum
5th of August, 2022

“Picknicken är ett återkommande motiv i konsthistorien och när frågan ställs om vem som målade den ”där tavlan med picknicken på” finns många svar att få. I verket bjuder konstnären Louise Johansson Waite in till en intim picknick med tre deltagare per gång. Under picknicken bjuds det på picknick-mat och dryck. I verket undersöker och diskuterar konstnären hur vi har använt och kan använda vårt offentliga rum, hur en stad kan smaka och picknicken som ett temporärt monument.”

www.flockprojects.se

WHOSE MUSEUM x KRETS 2019 – CHAPTER 4: iEKE TRINKS & LOUISE WAITE

7.9 - 6.10 2019

Curatorial statement:

One of the benefits of running an artists’ museum is that we can challenge museological conventions and try out new ideas for what museums can be. Our focus has been on proposing new methods of collecting, conserving and exhibiting, but after more than a decade we have even become curious about museum shops and cafés. How would artists transform these common parts of the museum? In Chapter 4 of Whose Museum x KRETS, we have invited artists ieke Trinks and Louise Waite to present alternatives from their individual practices. They will perform the sharing of goods within the exhibition setting, emphasizing the social experience of exchange rather than the commercial. The artists contribute new additions to the year-long exhibition, which features traces from previous chapters by Max Ockborn (Chapter 1), Alanna Lynch and Maria Wæhrens (Chapter 2), Transnational Queer Underground and Tom or Judy Moore (Chapter 3), alongside a new display of works on paper from the Whose Museum collection.

Come feel, taste, and digest the Whose Museum collection as Chapter 4 opens with the work of Louise Waite who extols the format of the museum café. Since 2016, the artist has worked with installations that involve tactile and edible materials, aiming to bake a museum from bread. She will now continue this work in the shape of small-scale bread sculptures cast from Whose Museum objects. Alongside the serving of charcoal buns that draw shadows of the collection, the casts and molds used to make the baked goods are shown as well. Visitors can read about the history of the objects while they select replicas to chew on.

Later in the month, ieke Trinks joins us to open and activate her Value Products Shop, performing as salesperson for discarded and repurposed found objects. This business entails collecting small pieces of litter from the street – naming, valuing, and labeling them together with people she encounters during her performance. Interacting with the artist as salesperson leads to conversations about the objects’ origins, the raw materials of which they are made, and the labor that goes into these various processes. Are these Value Products because they are displayed in a nice package and assigned an awkward name? Will Trinks’ sales pitch itself become your museum souvenir? You may find her shop set up throughout the city and at Whose Museum, with products for sale and to label.

Please note the following special opening times:
Saturday, September 28, 6 PM–12 AM (closed during the day): Malmö Gallery Night 2019, featuring ieke Trinks performing the Value Products Shop, bread servings by Louise Waite, and a multi-sensory taste experience with food cultural historian Sasha Gora.

All activities are free and open to the public. More information will be announced on our website and social media.

ABOUT WHOSE MUSEUM:

The window sign at Whose Museum was made by a 71-year-old artist named Brian Porter who lives in rural Nova Scotia, Canada. Porter studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in the 1960s and began as a surrealist painter, garnering attention in documentaries made by the National Film Board of Canada and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation before moving to his tiny home in the woods, where he later made a living off hand painting signs for local shops in the region. The original sketch was made in watercolour and ink on paper to resemble a diner sign. It can be seen on our postcards and posters. Whose Museum first encountered Porter in 2018, at one of our still life drawing sessions at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Still life drawing sessions with the Whose Museum collection have been taking place since 2009 and at Whose Museum x KRETS, visitors are welcome to set up a still life with the collection and draw any time.

Photos: Lena Bergendahl

Take a bite of the Vista studio floor!

Mouthfeel: dusty, dry, crumbly, bits of paint and unknown.

Ingredients: butter, wheat, Grahams flour, baking powder, milk, salt, water, stuffy studio air, charcoal, edible paint.

May contain floor bacterias.

Do you want to find out what dust produced by artistic freedom tastes like? Put the artefacts on a pedestal or in a mouth by swishing a suitable sum of money to to +46 768244912

Made for the group exhibition Song for Sigge at Celsius Projects (Malmö, Sweden) showing the works by artists connected to the Alta & Vista studio collectives in Malmö (07.08.2020-14.08.2020)

Photos: Jonas Malmberg

During the first month of my stay at HIAP - Helsinki International Artist Programme I was asked to participate in an event named SABBAT:00, conspired by the curator Adwait Singh, hosted at the HIAP Gallery Augusta on June 29, 2018. 

The churning of the butter, the kneading of the dough…

As I was exploring the processes of edible materials and their symbolic value during my stay at HIAP I decided to participate with a savoury work in progress to be ingested by the visitors. We watched the melting fires and touched the soft insides of rocks. Materials used followed a tradition of manual labour and following different stages to reach the height of its form to slowly melt away, harden and decay.

Material: wheat flour, fresh yeast, rapeseed oil, table salt, activated charcoal, butter. 

About the event:

SABBAT : 00

conspired by: Adwait Singh

participating artists: Anni Puolakka, Louise Waite, Maarit Suomi-Väänänen, Matt Shilcock, Nestori Syrjälä, Petri Saarikko & Sasha Huber

*Dress Code : 'Back to Black' (basically anything black)

**[You could bring: apricots / peaches / plums / strawberries / cherries, raspberries / blueberries to munch]

--

'BLITZIBITION' NOTE

In her book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, Silvia Federici views the transition to capitalism as an apocalyptic counterrevolution that “required the transformation of the body into a work-machine, and the subjugation of women to the reproduction of the work-force. Most of all, it required the destruction of the power of women which, in Europe as in America, was achieved through the extermination of the ‘witches.’ [1] Similarly, works such as Arthur Evans’ Witchcraft and Gay Counterculture examine the ongoing ‘ecocides’ in the light of their precedents in institutionalized trials and witch hunts regimenting the ban on queer sensualities and alternate medical practices. Evans’ book presents a remarkable classed narrative of the systematic culling of paganism and its associative traits — ritual transvestism, open expression of sexuality, fertility rites etc., — with the organisational changes in society that became increasingly patriarchal and militaristic calling for progressively ascetic and repressive faiths. In the same breath it also recounts the survival of residual traces of these cultures and festivities underground well into the present times in the form of celebrations such as the Midsummer, the Night of All Souls (Halloween), and All Fools’ Day (April Fool’s Day). But perhaps most significantly, Evans highlights the thickening synonymity between religious heresy and sexual dissidence indicating that most witches that were persecuted during the Middle Ages were in fact queer men and women exhibiting signs of the old religion and ancient healing practices. Whilst these scholarships and ecofeminism at large have acquired their own critique primarily touching upon the problematic appropriation of ecological discourses by gynocratic paradigms, nevertheless, a parallel can be drawn between the systematic destruction of the power of women and queers through their construction as ‘witches’ that could be subsequently hunted and subjugated, and the gradual disenchantment and de-mystification of the landscape. Peter Gray of Scarlet Imprint summarizes this slow domestication neatly in his essay ‘Rewilding Witchcraft’:

Marching in lock-step with what used to be called mainstream, but is now mono- culture, we have disenchanted ourselves, handed over our teeth and claws and bristling luxuriant furs. [2]

Identifying witchcraft as a ‘quintessentially wild, ambivalent, ambiguous, queer’ force, often localised at the liminal zones such as ‘the hedge, the crossroads’, Gray champions it as a primordial force, historically allied to alterity, and one that can therefore act as a counterforce to neo-liberal schema. Subsequently, this 'blitzibition' explores the notion of the witch as a guardian summoned by the land; positioning them at the forefront of the war for the Great Mother, Gaiä. Conceived as a midsummer gathering of allies and conspirators ‘Sabbat: 00’ will mime the ancient song passed down to us along witchy lines of inheritance in a quest for forgotten wisdoms, remedies and manna with which to re-enchant ourselves, arm our politics, decolonize our praxis, sacralise the land, and reactivate the bond with the lost mother.

****

1 Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2004), pp. 63.

2 See Peter Gray, ‘Rewilding Witchcraft’ in Scalet Imprint (June 13, 2014) http://scarletimprint.com/2014/06/rewilding-witchcraft/

A semi-digital workshop on how to make edible soil.

Made specifically for Konstdygnet Sörmland and for their conference “Värld i träda” 01.10.2020

Collaboration between Louise Waite, Vilma Luostarinen (curator/initiator) and Mathilda Frykberg (artist).

Metamorphoses Supper Club was part of a series of poetic and material explorations where the boundaries of what is human and innate becomes blurred.

The performative dinner party was presented for eight guests at the House of Words at Gothenburg International Art Biennal (SWE) in 2015.

The title derives from a quote by Sylvia Alexander-Vine who initiated and participated in the West Hill Community Association, a non-profit association in Brighton, active since the 1970s. It’s in response to the question on what she thinks the future of the organisation looks like, asked during an interview in november 2015.

The work shown in the windows are part of a project by Louise Waite, exploring unseen, unproductive labour done by individual forces to help make a functioning community and organisation. The posters consist of 30 stills from a 15 min long performance video piece performed at the West Hill Hall in Brighton, in connection to the interview made with Sylvia Alexander-Vine. In the video performance the artist reenacts the work done by people when a gathering takes place at the hall, the preparations as well as the work afterwards. Central for the work is a list of rules used at West Hill Hall to be followed by everyone who uses the space. Number four concerns the way in which the furniture should be placed after being used.

The project has been shown three times to the public in various ways. The intention is to exhibit it in spaces that has a connection to self-organisation and non-profit involvement, letting the work resonate with the site itself. It was shown at Brighton University Gallery (uk) in 2016, at Röstånga Konsthall (swe) and Lansdown Sweet Shop (uk) in 2018.

All images are from Röstånga Konsthall and Lansdown Sweet Shop.

bread dough, kinetic sand, salt crystals, magnetic putty, ceramic bowl, archive, headphones, mp3 player, 4 minute sound loop

Collaboration between Louise Waite, Vilma Luostarinen (curator/initiator) with Alison Taylor (material designer). 

Metamorphosis I: Primordial Paste was part of a series of poetic and material explorations where the boundaries of what is human and innate becomes blurred. In this first experiment, an unknown black substance was explored through the act of kneading.

The interactive installation was part of the one day event What is Potential? at Wellcome Collection (UK) in 2016. 

Images by Vilma Luostarinen & The Wellcome Trust.

Sevedstårtan was a project made for Skånes konstförenings participation in the activities area Barnlandet during Malmöfestival in August, 2019. The concept developed by Louise Waite and Nina Jensen and executed with Janneke Schene, Jari Malta, Mariam Altamimi and över 400 children. Together we made our own clay based on the traditional recipe of “trolldeg” which was coloured in and then made into sculptures to be placed on the enormous, golden cake which was three meters wide and four floors high.

Creature Comforts
3 - 25 September, 2022
Galleri Lars Palm, Sandviken

An exhibition of a dinner that will happen, that is happening and that has already happened.

”Alla skulle komma.

Hon hade både bävat och längtat efter det.

Hon fantiserade över hur det skulle gå till.

Kanske en fördrink. Kanske bara en öl. Kanske chips.

Popcorn var inte för såna här tillställningar.

Sen tjena tjena tjena och sätta sig till bords.

Och sen ”oj, men oj!” och ”så gott!” och ”så fint!”.

Hon brukade säga så till sig själv ibland ”oj så gott!”,

men hon längtade efter att höra andra säga det.”

I utställningen Creature Comforts undersöker konstnären Louise Johansson Waite middagen som format, idé och material. Vi får ta del av fragment från en middag som vi aldrig får se i sin helhet. Vad görs innan och vad lämnas för spår?

Titeln på utställningen hänvisar till den term som används i engelska språket för att referera till saker som vi behöver ha runtomkring oss för att må bra och uppnå en bekvämlighet så som god mat och bra boende. Utställningen visar en schematisk bild av en middag och knyter an till Louise intresse för vår relation till mat som material, socialt arv, ekonomi och symbolik och konsten som ett historieskrivande rum. I utställningen finns bland annat video, text, cyanotypi och tennskulpturer.

Fikabröd is pastries, especially sweet ones, that are eaten together with drinks. Fikabröd can be soft or hard and baked with yeast or baking powder. Examples of fikabröd in Sweden are pastry, cinnamon buns, wheat length, sponge cake, tiger cake and cookies (seven kinds of cakes). Fikabröd has been written about since the middle of the 19th century and was originally intended to be served with coffee. It can also be served with other drinks.*

These site-specific edible sculptures were made out of a wheat dough for one of the many unused canteens during the residency FIELD STATION SLAM at IFÖ CENTER in October 2019. The shapes and colours were inspired by the clay mountains at the island of Ivö which used to be used as a quarry.

As part of the art biennal Bästa Biennalen, Vilma Luostarinen and Louise Waite made a workshop called DoftDérive at Kristianstad Konsthall, exploring the ideas of Situationist International in a contemporary, sensory setting. This was then developed into the installation Skuggstaden/The Shadow City, in the exhibition Oenighet ger styrka, in 2017-2018. 

Photo: Evelyn Thomasson: Regionmuseet/Kristianstads konsthall

LET THE TALKING DO THE WORK contains four installations, three videos, two performances, one contract-as-artwork and one symposium. We have actively withheld the works in their material form, allowing them to exist in the richness of their potential. 

For artists today, it is seemingly vital to talk about one’s work. So, what might happen if the object is removed entirely, and all that is left is the talking?

By inverting the usual degree show experience we leave you to imagine what might have been. Using a fixed framework, each artist is given an opportunity to verbalise their ideas, creating a cacophony of conversations between the artists. The arrangement of individual head-spaces, however, also allows for the viewer to engage on a one to one level with each idea. 

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Rosie Brenton
Kristen Bullivant
Lorna Ough
Esme Charteris
Cloë Freeman
Josie McCann
Vienna Orme-Williams
Manon Parry
Kit Powell
Jessica Stock
Danielle Uden
Louise Waite
Jessica White

Part of The University of Brighton’s annual Graduate Show 2017.

I NEED SOME FEMALE CROONERS!

This is a project where I collect In need of some random female voices (all ages) for a sound piece! Anyone willing to record some humming just with their phone and send to me? I'll give you a loaf of bread as a thank you!

This is is sound piece consisting of the humming from women, both professional and amateur.

Shown as part of the exhibition STUDIO SPILLAGE (UK) in 2016. 

Listen to it’s most recent edition it by following this link: https://soundcloud.com/louisewaite/crooning-for-comfort