A Bronze Climate Refugee in every harbor

Refugee sculpture in every harbor, crowdfunding, 550+1, EU og Unbearable

1. A climate refugee at every harbor

2. Right winged demonstration against art refugee ship.

3. An Unbearable COP21 in Paris Crowdfunding

4. Help us with a Thunderclap.

5. 550 + 1: an art installation on prostitution and human trafficking

6 EU parliament and Fundamentalism-sculpturel

"The refugee who looks toward a brighter future, but the sea is in between!" A vision of a Refugee Sculpture in each port.

Dear

Gallery Galschiøt is up and running on full steem, with new art happenings and exhibitions which we look into in this late summer news-letter. Some of the volunteers have kept the workshop and gallery open throughout the summer. And in July we beat our own record, with 1,300 visitors to the gallery. If you go to Denmark, do visit us in the Gallery in Odense.

Having returned from sommer vacation we are working to complete Galschiots large sculpture Unbearable, to prepare exhibitions and to make a number of small polar bear models that will be sold exclusively to support the project through our crowdfunding campaign which launch on September 2nd. (If you want to help boost the campaign with a facebook thunderclap, click here.)

On top of it all we are waiting for the final go to exhibit the sculpture Fundamentalism by the EU Parliament in October.

Galschiot Refugee Ship, with its load of 70 copper refugees is more relevant than ever. The ship has gradually visited a great many ports in the Nordic countries, putting focus on the increasing number of desperate refugees moving towards Europe, in hope of a life without war and poverty. We plan to place a refugee sculpture for permanent installation in each of the ports the ship has visited, to remind people of the less fortunate and our responsibility as human beings.

Sunny greetings

Lasse Markus – Chief of Communications

and the rest of Gallery Galschiot

The first permanent climate refugee

Galschiot has launched a new art campaign to highlight the tense situation for the worlds refugees. He has made a special version of his refugee sculptures from the refugee ship. It is reinforced with stainless steel and concrete and can withstand both vandalism and the big waves of the sea.

The idea is to place a unique refugee sculpture in each harbor the refugee ship has docked to share the message about climate, unsustainable fishing and its consequences which is amongst other things an increasing number of refugees.

The first of these sculptures has just been fastened to the Danish port named Agger. There it will remain permanently and look out over the North Sea and remind beach guests about the refugee situation in the Mediterranean – and our responsibility to help them (see photo above).

Right winged Radicals demonstrate against Refugee Ship

The organization Living Sea has had the refugee ship on a small tour to Warnemunde / Rostock in Germany where they were generally well received and handed more than 5000 posters out. The refugee ships’ crew and the local church, which took the initiative, cooperated about the exhibition.

But for the first time they were met by a counter-demonstration. A group extreme right-wing demonstrated against refugee ship which was docked in the harbor to put focus on the worsening refugee situation in world. Protesters contorted however quite quickly as eager photographers kept filming them and when the police came to make a report they disappeared. It is quite a scary situation that the refugee debate is now so polarized in certain places in Germany that one must have police protection to show art, that relates to the refugees in the Mediterranean.

An Unbearable COP21 in Paris

Unbearable (the impaled polar bear). All through the summer, our two talented sculptor friends Avaan and Niaz have been modeling the real size climate-polar for the sculpture Unbearable. We hope that it will become a symbol of the COP21 climate summit in Paris in December. We begin to cast the sculpture in copper in late August.

We have made 4 different smaller versions of the sculpture Unbearable. Partly to finance the large sculpture though crowdfunding and partly to promote the project. We have just finished the largest of models a 60 cm large polar bear which will be exhibited at environmental conferences, climate organizations etc. We are already planning to exhibit them in Canada, USA, France and Denmark.

Our crowdfunding premiere on Sept. 2^nd is approaching. One will be able to buy the smaller Unbearable sculptures, thereby supporting the project. We are pretty excited to see how it goes as we hope this will be a mean to secure future art happenings economically.

The sculptures have been exhibited at our gallery, but even though people are eager to buy the limited edition impaled polar bears they must arm themselves with patience as the crowdfunding campaign is not to air until Wednesday September 2^nd. To make sure to get one of the polar bear sculptures one can get on a list, and get a special notice when we go live on kickstarter (moreover we offer some discount for the first bunch who purchase the different sculptures).

Get on the list.
Take a sneak peak on our campaign.

Thunderclap

In connection to our crowdfunding campaign we have found an interesting program by which everybody can "chip in" with a facebook (twitter etc.) update about our campaign at the same time. The thunderclap-program makes all messages appear at the exact time the campaign launches making it an instant success which we think could be super great

Help share the campaign on your facebook wall or mail, click here (and by the way, thanks!).

550 + 1: an art installation on prostitution and human trafficking

The sculpture 550+1 stage a year in a trafficked prostitute’s life. 550 male torsos in bronze waits in a 60 meter long row, one for each "customer" a trafficked Nigerian prostitute has in one year. This is the average number in Vesterbro in Copenhagen, some have more costumers, some have less. Later in the year the sculpture on display at the International Conference Women Deliver.

EU parliament and Fundamentalism-sculpture

Since the initial and very successful exhibition of the art installation The Children of Abraham/Fundamentalism we have been waiting for the final go to the take the exhibition to the EU Parliament. But apparently it is not so easy. Due to fear of terrorism the exhibition is discussed at highest level at the EU bureau. However they keep postponing the decision first to July 6 and now to September. The exhibition is scheduled for week 42 and 43 and it begins to be a bit frustrating to work with the EU bureaucracy. But we are in good spirits.

Meanwhile we are improving the art installation with new monitors which can take the outside climate and be seen in sun light. Even though we have them custom made in China they are very expensive, so we really count on the exhibition to be realized.

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About Jens Galschiøt:

General information about Galschiøt can be found at:

See Wikipedia:

Portrait of the sculptors CV (PDF)

To Gallery Galschiot

To Galschot webside

Galschiøt is a sculptor who works with international art installations. Amongst other things he is working on a gigantic project about the religious tensions in the world.

’The Children of Abraham’. The focal point of the project is the 3.5 meter tall and 70 square meter sculpture called F.U.N.D.A.M.E.N.T.A.L.I.S.M. It is made of these letters made in 8,000 copper books symbolizing the Torah, the Bible and the Quran. 24 big monitors constantly display the ’brightest’ and the ’darkest’ quotations form Judaism, Christianity and Islam. See concept click for the art project English - German - Danish