"Untitled" (2005)

I mentioned in an earlier blog that the Mayor of Flesberg Municipality visited me at my dad's studio in Lyngdal. He came back a few days ago as he wanted to purchase the 2nd year (from my time at ECA) painting Untitled (2005) 100x125 cm, acrylic on board for the council's art collection.



It is also worth mentioning that my father, Tor Einar Evju has currently opened his studio for visitors. He is showing an impressive collection of 58 paintings from the last couple of years. The exhibition opened on Sunday, and will be shown for a week. The open studio exhibition has become something of an annual event where private collectors get a fantastic opportunity to see and purchase work where it was originaly made.

Membership

As most Norwegian artists are aware of, September and October are months where a lot of applications have to be handed in. I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog how winning Juvenarte 2007 granted me a membership of UKS (young artist's society), which I wanted to apply for anyway. This membership will also automatically grant me membership of NBK (Norwegian Visual Artists). In addition to this I applied for membership in the Norwegian drawing society Tegnerforbundet, and it was granted a few weeks back.

Prince's Drawing School Offer

As I have been mentioning on several occasions, I am considering applying for an MA at one of the London art colleges next year. I was, however offered another valid offer in an email from the ECA College Secretary Michael Wood last month. As far as I understood it he had been contacted by one of the Prince's Drawing School sponsors who was impressed with my draftsmanship and generously wanted to pay for a postgraduate diploma and give me a bursary on top. I still have to apply for a place, but it is certainly an attractive offer. So there is a possibility that I will apply for a place in April 2008. The Prince's Drawing School was founded by HRH the Prince of Wales in 2000 as a place where draftsmanship and drawings as a works (as opposed to mere sketches) of art were to be appreciated. I left a portfolio at the school a few weeks back, as they felt it might be a slight possibility for me to join the course this year.

FRESH 2007

Just as the Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow, The White Gallery in Dundee is showing the best of Scotland's graduates 2007. I was invited to show my work in their FRESH 2007 show 2nd - 27th of November. I have proposed to exhibit the Series 3 paintings and the Series 1 drawings from my fourth year at ECA. This will be the first time after the degree show that two full series' are exhibited in the same exhibition. I have actually never been to Dundee, and I must admit I do not know an awful lot about the place. The White Gallery itself was founded in 2005, so it is a fairly new establishment. I will try to make time for a trip up there some time in November. I doubt that I will make it to the opening unfortunately.

The Next Step - Bilcliffe Gallery, Glasgow

I got a request via email from Scotland's biggest private gallery - the Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow during my holidays in July. Thay were planning to do a graduate show with the best graduates from the Scottish art colleges 2007. I had already been contacted by the Art Exposure Gallery in glasgow from before, so I thought to myself - maybe Glasgow is the city to be for me right now - not London. But by then I had already driven all my stuff down to England anyway, so I felt there was no way back. Not yet anyway.



I said yes to the show at Billclifee obviously, and exhibited KiNY4d, MGDaG10d, MiP5d, MFHaD11d, OlFw8d and FMiLs6p - all work shown at my degree show in July. The little pencil-drawing KiNY4d got some good press. The Exhibition lasted from the 31st of August to the 25th of September, and when I talked with Roger Billcliffe at the end of the show, he said they'd had lots of visitors.

Flesberg Municipality Award

As a token of appreciation for my recent success with regards to art, the Mayor of Flesberg Municipality (where I grew up), Egil Langgaard and a representative of the council and the local painting club, Gudveig Førlie decided to visit me in my dad’s studio in Lyngdal and give me an award and some flowers on behalf of the municipality council. Langgaard expressed interest in acquiring one of my paintings for the council collection, and they made me promise to get in touch for a lecture on the topic of my dissertation - creativity and individual filtering. I will try my very best to keep my promise some time next spring if possible.
I did not in fact know that Langgaard has been Mayor for a 4 year period now, as I have been away for over 10 years. So when we spoke on the phone before the meeting, I told him that the last time I saw him was in 9th grade at secondary school. He used to be a teacher back then, and he taught me how to drive a motorcycle. He told me that he still sometimes teach.

Winner of Juvenarte 2007

As winner of NorskArt 2007 with Belisarius at La Viande in May, I was granted direct entry into ANSA's (Association of Norwegian Students Abroad) annual exhibition where they celebrate the best of Norwegian talent ‘coming home’. This year marked the 10th year anniversary for Juvenarte, and the show was therefore given extra media attention. 4 of my smaller drawings were chosen to participate by ANSA’s jury. The show was hosted by DogA (the Design and Architecture centre) in Oslo, 13th - 16th of September.
As I was a participant and prize-winner at the Norwegian Autumn Exhibition (Høstutstillingen) at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo at the same time, ANSA chose me as one of the high profiles in Norwegian media.
On the opening night I was awarded UKS’ (Young Artists Society) and ANSA’s Award for best works in show and Winner of Juvenarte 2007. I had no forewarning, so it was a pleasant surprise. The award consisted of a sum of money and membership in UKS free of charge for a year.

KEM's Debutante Award 2007

The 8th of September marked the opening of the State of Norway's 120th Autumn Exhibition (Høstutstillingen 2007) As mentioned earlier, two of my paintings got accepted, so I went to Oslo for the private view on the 7th, and almost received a phone call almost on arrival from KEM (Kunstnernes Eget Materialutsalg). KEM is the largest art-material store in Norway. They asked me if I had planned on coming to the official opening on the 8th, because they wanted to give me the KEM's Debutante Award for my two paintings at Høstutstillingen.

The award is given to a debutante every year by a jury put together by KEM, and it consists of shares in the store, membership with discounts, and an account with money to use on art materials.

I received the award during the opening ceremony in front of HRH King Harald V of Norway, the National Advisor (Statsråd) Jonas Gahr Støre, the the French ambassador, and all the other artists. The jury's reasons were as follows:



"Kristian Evju, born 1980, is awarded KEM's Debutante Award for his works CWPS5p and FMiLs4p. The two paintings are carefully executed with a perfectionism that does not diminish or distracts from the subject matter. The portraits can be seen as references to the Victorian woman/girl portraits, but there is a complexity in the juxtaposition between rough painterly elements, photographic realism and the stencil-like shapes that creates an uncetainty in regards to interpretation."



The two paintings were purchased for the collection of the Bank of Norway (Den Norske Bank)

Høstutstillingen 2007

As mentioned in an earlier blog, I was hoping to get my work accepted into the annual Norwegian autumn exhibition “Hostutstillingen 2007”. The dream came through when I got a phone call from Norway on the 17th of August. Two of my three works are going to be shown at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo 8th of September - 7th of October in Oslo, and 21st of October - 25th of November in Trondheim Museum of Art in Trondheim.

The Autumn Exhibition is perhaps the most prestigous exhibition of contemporary art in Norway. It was shown for the first time in 1882 as a protest against the established upper class art society ‘Christiania Kunstforeing’. The 2007 exhibition will be the 120th since then.

Last year there was 113 artists, and among them 28 painters. Approximately 3901 works of art were submitted to the first round and 354 to the 2nd. 113 artworks by 113 artists were exhibited in the end. 117 artworks by 74 artists were accepted in 2005.

www.billedkunst.no/hostutstillingen/utstillingen.htm

HRH Prince Charles Studio Visit

HRH The Prince of Wales and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall Camilla visited my Degree Show studio the 29th of June, and I had the pleasure of presenting my work to them. They were both very friendly, and seemed like genuinely warm-hearted people with a real interest in art.
The visit and the exhibition were arranged in honour of the Edinburgh College of Art 100 centennial celebration.

The Joint exhibition of Drawing, as shown at the 1st floor balconies around the ECA Sculpture Court 28th-30th of May, is organised around 3 shows, where the ECA show was the first. The work was shown at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August before they were transported to London for a final display.

http://www.eca.ac.uk/
http://www.princesdrawingschool.org/

The ECA Centenary Degree Show 2007

I finished hanging my Degree Show Wednesday 30th of May at 4 PM. I had, like all the other graduating students, worked very hard towards getting my work as professionally hung as possible. The internal assessments finished at 1.30 PM on Monday 4th of June, whereupon we all gathered in one of the college’s studios for a short press briefing by the Head of Marketing Duncan Bremner and a last address by the Head of 4th Year Mike Docherty. The External Examination took place the next week, and the results were posted Thursday 14th of June. I was positively surprised at being awarded a 1st, as I thought my dissertation would not be as strong as I wished, but then again I guess that's every graduating student's fear. I was also later awarded the Andrew Grant Bequest.

The exhibition got fairly good reviews from the Scotsman and at the opening I was interviewed by Shaun Hadett from Culturewars. I sold a fair few of my works either at the degree show or after, and a couple of commissions and exhibitions came out of it s well.

http://www.eca.ac.uk/
http://www.kristianevju.com/

http://www.leith.co.uk/blog/2007/06/leith_at_the_eca_end_of_year_show_2007.html

Evju Art

As I am writing this very first post at Evju Art, I am sitting in the Harnett home in Hertfordshire a little north of London. I moved down from Edinburgh after graduating with a BA (Hons) Painting and Drawing from Edinburgh College of Art in July. I made the decision of moving to here based on the ideal closeness to London, which is one of the hot-spots of contemporary art. The idea is that this closeness will allow me to interact more closely with this buzzing artistic activity. At the moment, however, flat-hunting and exhibitions elswhere has kept me too busy.
The Evju Art blog is not meant to replace the blog on my webpage entirely, but at the moment it is a lot more convenient to update, so news will be shared here first. I will announce any changes to that as soon as they occur. The first posts here will consist of a lot of catching up from the website blog, and I do appologise for that to those who have read those things already. I intend, however, to keep this blog a lot less formal than the other one, as it is not tied directly to the website.