Uglycute: introduction

Today we got an introduction from of the guys from Uglycute. Uglycute is an art collective of four persons who mainly make spaces for exhibitions and furniture. They started somewhere in 1998/99, in those times the main focus of the media about art was: “what is beautiful”. They started then and chose the name Uglycute, actually a Swedish expression, that stands for something you like personally but it isn’t considered nice in public. They made an amusing note that it’s somewhat similar to politics.

They showed some stuff they made over the years. And I must say most things I liked, they were in the philosophy of uglycute: “it most work for that place, and have use for that place and not deliberately being nice/functional for another place.

A quick overview of some things they showed us:

Purple spaces for exhibiting purposes in Botkyrka Konsthall. They use the purple to draw the attention to what is important. This is because the rooms there have also an administrative an other uses at the same time.

The national museum in Oslo had a book reading area, the only problem was that it was to integrated in the museum, and it couldn’t move easily depending on what they were exposing in the museum. Uglycute made a new book reading section, the nice thing about it, is totally foldable and can be stacked in one piece. Again like already mentioned, it’s a nice piece of art and totally functionable like the way the want it in Oslo (moveable), but therefore it isn’t considered the best and nicest solution for somewhere else.

Interior for konst 2. That’s the title of the exhibition space the made. One thing I like very much they said about it: “It needed to be done with a very low budget and we still wanted to do something creative. (So no black box or white cubes,…)” So they invented the “grey sack”. The old building had lot’s of standing posts and just used these to separate some rooms with the simple use of gray carpets. Where needed they just cut out bits and pieces of the carpets.

Last thing that I liked very much were the almost Duplo like blocks (made in urethane). They use the blocks for everything: dividing exhibition spaces, tables, seats, banks,…

We also got an assignment, in theory as simple as: create a low tech product, with a purpose that nobody knows of, looks not like anything else and in a way must help you with your future career.