Ane Hjort Guttu is born 1971 in Oslo. She graduated from the National Art Academy in Oslo 1998 and has attended several solo and groupe shows. The photographs here are taken from the
series Living In A Satellite Town , which was shown at the UKS Biennial, Oslo 2004.
My work focuses on neglected, downgraded or ridiculed places, often demonstrations of unsuccessful Utopian ideas. Examples of such areas are satellite towns and so called “sloaps” spaces left over after planning. Another issue of interest are different types of public art, whether public sculptures, monuments or the graphic prints in Scandinavian elementary schools.
These cultural expressions have lost their former matter of course in a prevailing art or architecture discourse, without having so far conquered a new romantic or historical status. They are situated in a kind of vacuum with a total lack of pretention, and therefore seem to be more accessible for other kinds of meaning. What do they mediate when they no longer possess hegemonic authority, when their original context is left a long time ago?
The main interesting feature of these phenomenas are their inherent ideology, which becomes clearer the further they get from former power positions. The historical and aesthetical function of such areas is important and underestimated, and I find them very useful as platforms for investigations of rhetorics, power and representation.