ArkDes Inaugurates ‘Infield’ by Linda Tegg, a Biodiverse Meadowland in Central Stockholm

Linda Tegg. Cred: Tjasa Kalkan, courtesy Assemble Papers.

Available to visit until September 27, 2020

Over the summer of 2020, artist Linda Tegg shifts the ground at the entrance to ArkDes from an asphalt car park to a biodiverse meadowland that will accumulate life over the season. Visitors are invited to join this assemblage and spend time among the plants and other forms of life, such as birds and insects.

Made up from sixty different plants species native to Sweden, Infield is an installation that explores the relationship between people and nature. The installation combines multiple perspectives: art, science, horticulture, and the plants themselves. Through its construction and the life it facilitates, Tegg hopes to open up a space for questioning how we relate to, and act within, our shared environment. The installation helps us to imagine how we might promote more space for more life at a moment in which we are rediscovering the importance of green space in our collective living environments.

The project represents the first work in Sweden by the internationally renowned artist Linda Tegg who, among other acclaimed projects, has represented Australia at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

From now and throughout the Swedish summer, visitors can experience the installation at Exercisplan, a large outdoor space located at the entrance of ArkDes on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm. The project offers visitors the chance to experience a natural meadow, comprising plants selected in collaboration with Stockholm University (SU).

Infield is a living meadow, a place of diverse animal and plant life, and works, even with social distancing, as a public place of repose and reflection. It is also a work that asks profound questions about the future of public space in Sweden at a time when these questions could not be more relevant.

Kieran Long (Director, ArkDes)

The installation, accessible even when the museum is closed, forms a part of the museum’s ongoing work with the Swedish Government’s Policy for Designed Living Environments and the strategy for liveable cities, in which ecosystem services is a focus area.

The installation provides an opportunity to discuss ecosystem services – a term that describes the services nature provides in the form of such things as weather protection, air purification, pollination as well as the mental well-being and the benefits that nature and green spaces contribute to the urban environment and all of those who living within it.

About Linda Tegg

Linda Tegg is an Australian artist who creates immersive installations made up of plants, animals, images and the built environment, all brought into unlikely proximities to generate new points of orientation and relation. Tegg’s speculative work questions the impulses and methods we use to frame the world as resource, and seeks new forms of coexistence.

Tegg’s work engages with cultural institutions as well as public space and has been widely exhibited in Australia, the United States, and across Europe. In 2018, alongside Baracco+Wright Architects, Tegg was the co-creative director of Repair, the exhibition of the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Tegg holds degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The University of Melbourne, and RMIT University.

Learn more about Tegg's work here.

Interviews

To enquire about an interview with Linda Tegg please contact Maria Östman (Communications Strategist, ArkDes) at: maria.ostman@arkdes.se