Magnhild Opdøl - Three Days Later

The Silence After, pencil on paper, 65 x 130cm, 2013

Three Days Later, an exhibition of new work by Norwegian artist, Magnhild Opdøl opens tonight at 7.00pm at West Cork Arts Centre. Featuring film, sculpture, drawing and photographic work, this dark, yet thought-provoking exhibition invites the viewer to contemplate our relationship with the natural world. 

Opdøl's beautifully made and understated pieces contain a common feeling of silence, of having missed the 'happening' and being caught in the moment after. Three Days Later picks up on themes explored in Opdøl’s previous exhibition, Point of No Return. Continuing with open-ended visual narratives, Opdøl allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions on what it is that has been interrupted, disturbed or altered. She explores our relationship with nature and the ongoing damage being done by human hand. She gently focuses our attention on the unnoticed passing of things we regard as unchanging, and so which are taken for granted.

Just before midnight, lambda print on dibond, 2013

Of this Opdøl remarks, ‘I am fascinated with things not being reversible, such as the depletion of our earth's natural resources, the extinction of species, and the strangeness of a human race that keeps on ravaging the planet, while knowing we are the authors of our own destruction.’

Her work is laden with stillness to the extent of creating unease. She is influenced in part by the work of filmmaker David Lynch, specifically Twin Peaks. Her work shares Lynch's dark yet beautiful sensibility, and suggests multiple interpretations of what may already have taken place.  

Her observation of wildlife and nature is not from a reverential or idyllic perspective, but instead succeeds in communicating the complexity of relationships and perception, and that things are not always as they seem. The Silence After, a drawing, depicts a snowscape. It replicates that feeling of snow blindness but begs the question - what is covered by the pure white blanket of snow?

Magnhild Opdøl was born in Sunndalsøra, Norway in 1980. She lives and works in Dublin and Ålvundeid, Norway. Opdøl received a B.A. in Fine Art in 2004 and an MA in Fine Art Painting in 2007 from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She has exhibited widely both in Ireland and internationally and has been the recipient of many awards and residencies, including being the first recipient of the Tony O'Malley Residency in Callan, Kilkenny in 2011. Solo exhibitions to follow at The Painting Society, Oslo, Buskerud Arts Centre and Agder Art Centre, Norway in 2014

Three Day Later continues until Saturday 11 January 2014.