Beneath the Salt, group show & publication

Curated by Marianne Bjørnmyr and Dan Mariner

The Culture House, Bodo, Norway

Avril - June 2017

Featuring Lidia Bianchi, Marianne Bjornmy, Dani Waagen Braatveit, Rachelle Bussières, Melanie King, Dan Mariner, Mats Salberg, Iain Sarjeant

The exhibition is a culmination of work from wight Norwegian and international artists as well as archive imagery. 'Beneath the Salt' is also published as a book.

The artists Marianne Bjørnmyr and Dan Mariner published the book Beneath the Salt in 2017, including work by 25 international artists and public archives which in each way is working with photography and salt. The book is result of a collaboration between the artists Marianne and Dan initiated through an artist residency on the North Norwegian island Træna in the summer of 2016. Træna, being an island 30 miles of the North Norwegian coast, has a strong identity and history of fishing and long traditions connected to the surrounded sea. The artists got their inspiration from what they saw as the core of Træna’s identity: the mineral salt. With salt as a starting point they chose to return to the root of their own medium: photography. Salt played a vital part in the development of the very first photographic prints ever made in the 1840s, and is still one of the core materials used in photographic development solutions. They have brought back these origins by producing a photobook focusing on the salt itself. “Beyond the fascinating resonance of the material of salt in the arts and in the history of photography in particular, which Marianne Bjørnmyr and Dan Mariner skilfully brought to life, it must be emphasised that the social dimension of this project is of paramount importance. Yet the finished work steers clear of mere conceptualism, by putting such conscious weight on the final object, a precious limited edition book that forms an ode to ancestral analogue practices.” 

- Excerpt from introductory essay by Erica Payet.

Open Studios / Artist-in-Residence

Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada

March 2017

Iceberg series, 2017, 8 x 10 inches, two gelatin silver prints