Dear

 

It was the Danish artist Jens Galschiot who got the contract to create a large monument showing the manual labor for the Harbor of Aarhus with the working title “the Coffee Board”. The sculpture group is to be finished by the summer 2017, the year that Aarhus receives the title as “European City of Culture”. Aarhus is the second largest city in Denmark.

 

The story leading up to signing the contract is a rather good one. It begins with a group of dockworkers who got the idea to make a sculpture, that could mark and bring remembrance to how the Harbor of Aarhus, in centuries, were influenced by the dockworker’s hard work loading the many ships.

 

Both the active and retired dockworkers meet regularly in worker’s Welfare House, which has existed since 1936, placed in the Inner Harbor. In this place stories are exchanged and old friendships are maintained. From the Welfare House the workers could follow the transformation of “their” old Harbor and workplace to new uses, where tourism, residences, educational institutions, pass time activities and café latte Cafés is taking over the harbor with growing speed. A development happening all over Europe.

 

In this Welfare House the idea to make a memorial, showing the workers of the Harbor, first occurred. A former dockworker, Palle Joergensen, took the initiative and formed the idea to put “Historical Traces”, in the form of a sculpture group, into motion. The idea was further developed by the Worker’s Union “LO Aarhus”, who formed the “Culture Group 2017” to realize the project. They contacted a number of artists and chose Galschiot’s idea “the Coffee Board” due to the following reason.

The big problem is always the money. However the dockworkers surprised everybody  with their enormous amounts of ideas, resources and energy, which culminated with one of Denmark’s biggest Culture- and Art Foundations “the Salling Foundation” donating the 405.000 Euros needed to pay for the monument costs. The Foundation became the sole donator of the entire project, and owner of the Foundation, Karin Salling, explains their decision with the following statement: “The sculpture is a celebration and a reminder of the hard work, which, through centuries, has taken place on the harbor, and I am convinced that the sculpture will be the subject of admiration and joy for the people in the area.”

Galschiot and his workers are already well under way with the preparations. The engineer Lars Bredahl is doing calculations on the difficult structures, and experiments with Coffee Sacks and ropes are being conducted. During the next few months the sculpture will be taking form. It takes a huge amount of work to make a monument of this size, and even though August 2017 is a long time away, much of the hard work must begin already.

“This is an exciting task, and I am looking forward to start up the work on the sculpture. It takes a huge effort every time we venture into a project of this size, and we are preparing the workshop to embrace this challenge.  The workshop is already filled up with old photos of Coffee Sacks, loading and offloading of ships, and dockworkers, which are to inspire the actual creation of the sculpture group.”  - Jens Galschiot. See more on the project below.

 

But we are also occupied with a lot of other projects. We are making preparations for the 25 tons heavy Fundamentalism sculpture, which is to be the sculptural center in a dialogue- and art project concerning the monotheism’s dogma. The giant sculpture is to be exhibited at City Hall in Copenhagen for the event “Heavenly Days” from 5^th – 8^th May, which is a support event made to set focus on religiousness. In this regard groups of Galschiot’s copper refugees are already being exhibited in 35 churches in and around Copenhagen to highlight “Heavenly Days”, and begin the process of dialogue by showing quotations from the three monotheistic books, the Torah, The Bible, and the Koran.

 

In addition to these 45 exhibitions, we are preparing the work for 30 other art exhibitions, which we are currently involved in during 2016. This consists of, amongst other matters, not having two different claims on the same sculpture. :-)

 

We are having a small exhibition at Gallery Galschiot with some works of Gerda and Ejnar Wegener from Galschiot’s private collection to mark the movie “the Danish Girl” about Gerda and Ejnar (Lili Elbe), a movie which focuses on both art and the identity of the sexes. As always it is free to visit the Gallery, so you are welcome to come by if you are in the country, -  we’ll even provide a cup of coffee.

 

As you can see we are not bored, but we still have the time to enjoy the beginning of springtime.

Kindest Regards

 

Henriette Højmark Hansen