The earthquakes plaguing the province of Groningen in recent decades can hardly have escaped your notice. Less well known, perhaps, is that the gas drilling, earthquakes, and all the emotional and financial consequences of that have also left their mark in art. Art society Pictura therefore called on artists to submit existing or new work about the situation for the Bevings (Quake) exhibition, and is now showing as many as 120 works by 80 artists.
From installations and collages to drawings, sculptures and poetry, it's all there in Pictura's stately building on the Martinikerkhof. One motif stands out: cracks and fissures play a leading role in many of the works, often as a symbol of the material and mental damage caused by the quakes, sometimes also as a method in itself. Kunstspot spoke with four artists who incorporate the crack in their work in a variety of ways. How and why do they relate to earthquake issues?
JOHN DILLING
John Dilling is not only showing two works at Pictura, but also one on Pictura: anyone standing in the courtyard garden or walking around the building from outside will see the cracks and props he has put there. The building therefore becomes part of the theme it exhibits, although there is something ironic in the fact that the cracks here had to be artificial. Dilling is aware of that. For him, that is precisely the benefit of Bevings: art offers opportunities for perspectives other than those of the dominant media images. Dilling: ‘Art can make other connections - I myself make a connection with a kind of irony, just no drama, to keep it more light-hearted.’ At the same time, of course, media coverage of this other perspective is nicely done: ‘I think it is very nice to participate with such a large group of artists (80). It is on a very large scale, but that makes it a good way to draw extra attention to the earthquake problem.’
DICK WIND, PETER O. GERRITS, AND BEA G. SPORTEL BOLT
The activist angle is also central to the collaboration between Dick Wind, Peter Gerrits, and Bea Sportel Bolt. Sportel Bolt wrote the poem ‘Ons Groninger cultuurgoed bloedt’ (Our Groningen Culture Bleeds) to accompany a screenprint by Gerrits and Wind of the same title, originally created for the Grafisch Centrum Groningen (Groningen Graphic Centre) in 2017. Gerrits points to his print: ‘You see Ezinge here, with a blood streak running through the work. With this we want to convey how big the problem is there: there is not only a crack; the crack is bleeding.’ Next to the print is a memorial box, with Sportel Bolt's poem inside. During the opening at Pictura, she stands next to the work, holding a stack of cards. Van der Dong explains: ‘Every visitor who is interested can be given a card with a poem to take home to think about what we are actually doing here in Groningen.’ So for all three, the print and poem are not just art objects, but a very concrete part of their struggle against gas drilling. For example, they have twice carried the print with them during protest marches.
PETRA DRAGSTRA
Leading up to Bevings preparations, Petra Dragstra was in Portugal, but her work, an installation entitled ‘Gescheurd, geschonden, (geheeld?)’ [Cracked, Violated, (Healed?)] still found its way to Groningen thanks to her daughter, who installed the work in one of the smaller rooms in the building. Here all the little houses dangle in thin mesh from a wooden structure on the ceiling. Dragstra explains over the phone: ‘In this work, I used red silk to stitch cracks into the little houses I had made. Those houses were then hung in context — the "healing" I refer to, with a question mark, in the title of the work. That healing takes a long time in Groningen. You can prop up or brace your house again, but that doesn't immediately bring back confidence.’ Through Dragstra's choice of white, fabric materials in her installation, the fragility of the house as a building as well as a home comes into focus. She originally created the work as a response to the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, but had been toying with the idea of displaying it in Groningen, where she herself has lived. She said: ‘A house should be safe, but that is not the case in all countries - whether it is in Nepal or Groningen.’ In turn, Dragstra has suddenly placed Groningen's local earthquake problems in an international context.
HANS VAN DER MARK
Where the aforementioned artists depict the crack in their work, Hans van der Mark himself actually got cracking. We look together at his two works Brokstuk (Piece in Pieces) and Hovaardig (Haughty). ‘I made this work especially for Bevings,’ he says. ‘In the background I used a kitchen hood filter and the cardboard for the figures came from boxes from the Albert Heijn supermarket that I tore to pieces. The two works are part of a series of four. Here at Pictura, you see the brick on the left and the person on the right who determines whether there is damage — the court.’ He has been visiting Pictura for 40 years, but that is not the only reason Van der Mark is happy to contribute to the exhibition. ‘Everyone conveniently ignores the suffering that comes with earthquakes,’ he says. Van der Mark's own works are particularly striking for their strict simplicity, something he has carried through to his choice of framing. ‘No exorbitantly expensive frame is allowed here. Everything is as it is, only cracked.’
Bevings will be on display at the Groninger Museum until 10 March 2019.