BOOM! Set out on its journey in 2015, and with a mixture of enthusiasm, curiosity and inventiveness they continue to combine their knowledge of mechanics and electronics with their expertise in making glass, breaking new ground and developing the group’s artistic response as well as their own individual art. Kvinnomaskinen is one of the results of this continuing journey that Gustavsbergs Konsthall is proud to be able to present. In both the exhibition’s central work – Kvinnomaskinen – as well as in other moving works like Synarna and Speldosan, mechanics and electronics take their place alongside a delight in experimentation and humour – as well, of course, as glass art.
When the members of BOOM!, using a variety of strategies, had joined the glass-art profession they became increasingly aware of a need for a separatist-feminist space. This was both in order to succeed on their own terms in a male-dominated world and with a view to sustaining a delight in their own creative activities. They formed BOOM! in order to develop through collaboration and to develop their own strengths, but also to be able to share their expertise and to give encouragement to others, in particular to young girls. In the group’s operations, which include educational as well as artistic aspects, their self-built mobile glass workshop plays an important role. The workshop is the result of having empowered themselves by means of an understanding of electronics, automation and of how one actually constructs a glass furnace. In this way they have created a tool enabling them to reach out to a younger generation. In their outreach activities, not least those aimed at socio-economically challenged localities, they have been able to meet youngsters with a concrete, democratic narrative about doing things as a methodology and communicate the view that there is a creative person in each of us.
Next date for the performance Start-Push-Play of the piece Kvinnomaskinen is 21 March.
Later in the year the mobile glass workshop will visit Gustavsberg.
A film about BOOM! is also being shown at the exhibition, made by Louise Eriksson and Klara Kristoffersson.
