Gängtappen
In the summer of 2024, I was asked if I could interpret "Gängtappen". The shipyard Kockum's old headquarters. The curved house in the harbor that was once one of Sweden's first skyscrapers (by the standards of the time). For all of us who grew up in Malmö, the building is iconic but also in another, closed world. Inside Kockum's gates.
The same gates that let in and out all the workers who rode their bikes through town to and from the hard work at the shipyard. That image is also iconic. When I was growing up though, Kockum's was well past its prime. There were no cycling workers in the morning.
I spent a lot of time at the Jazz Institute as a teenager in the late 80s. It was also in the harbor. On the late bus journeys home to Triangeln, you passed the defunct Kockum area with the Gängtappen as the crowning glory.
It was a very fun assignment but also demanding. How much of my own relationship to Gängtappen, Kockums and Malmö would I include in the picture. All my pictures have a story. But mine is not the same as yours.
The picture was shown at an exhibition in October in Gängtappen. There were also sketches and drafts, which you can also see here.
Cars
Cars
Cars
It's August and I have not
Read a book in six months
except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt
Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen.
Raymond Carver
From St. Lars
I feel very connected to the mental hospital St Lars. My grandmother worked there. Her brother and his wife worked there. My mother worked there when she was young. I still have a bedstand in my house from St Lars. Or the Asylum (Asylen in Swedish). There is a creek just outside the hospital area. I remember my mom’s uncle once telling me that many poor souls tried to drown themselves in that shallow creek.
My grand uncle and his wife were both gymnasts. That is how they met. She was from Dalarna in the north and he from Skåne down south. They were not tall but strong as hell. You had to be, working in a mental hospital back then.
He loved flowers. When not working at St Lars he spent his time tending the garden. Just by the railroad and a five minute walk from the asylum.
I remember, in that same garden, their disappointment when I couldn’t do a simple handstand. ”Don’t you have gymnastics in school anymore?”
Later in life I learned that my uncle (from another side of the family) recieved electroshock therapy at St Lars in the early 60’s due to depression.
They are all gone and the mental hospital area has been turned in to an office park.
The creek is still there.
“From St. Lars” is a project of 5 individual artworks.
