Nordic Art, from Folk Tradition to Now

Nordic art has always run on two currents at once: the folk tradition of pattern and ornament, and a newer instinct to pare everything back until shape does the work. Both are alive in this gallery. Ingunn Dybendal draws folk flowers and a patterned lakeland petal by petal in coloured pencil. Helene Brox cuts figures and birds down to flat, confident silhouette. Sia Siamos paints the Nordic table mid-meal, and Simen Wahlqvist tells whole jokes in a handful of lines. Four artists, all living and working in Norway.

What makes artwork Nordic isn't the subject; there's no rule that says lakes and birches. It's a habit the region's artists share: take something ordinary, a mug of flowers, a breakfast table, a morning stretch, and give it real weight. The sixteen pieces here sit on a line between the two ends of that tradition. Some lean towards folk pattern, every bloom a separate invention worked in coloured pencil; others are as contemporary as a confession painted across a cobalt head. One honest note: Nordic covers five countries, and ours is currently a Norwegian catalogue. We'd rather be a small gallery that knows its sixteen pieces than a big one that's merely browsed them.