New attractions await future visitors to RAGNAROCK – the museum for pop, rock and youth culture in the city of Roskilde west of Copenhagen. Iconic, brightly coloured guitar pedals and cable spaghetti adorn walls and friezes around the museum patio. Rose Eken has also created a series of bronze sculptures for the yard: a knocked-over bottle of Jack Daniels, a bag of beers that someone left behind, a sack truck with beer crates and flags and a portable amplifier. Above, rows of PAR lamps light up the space for the museum audience. The entire scene evokes the image of a dusty music festival site.
Large-scale work
‘It’s a huge privilege to be invited to work on such a big project – to be able to scale up and max out, literally, by painting an entire building on three sides and having the opportunity to cast objects in bronze. It is always a big challenge to work on a site-specific assignment. But that’s also what makes it so interesting, because you’re making something that’s permanent – something that interferes with the architecture and impacts the surroundings – something that makes a difference for the people who visit the place or work here every day,’ says Rose Eken.
Rock paraphernalia
The New Carlsberg Foundation chose Rose Eken for the commission and funded the project. ‘Like rock music, Rose Eken is refreshingly disarming and direct in her interpretations of contemporary culture. Both in her quirky, ceramic interpretations of everyday objects and in large-scale paintings, her works speak to us directly and without detours. At RAGNAROCK, of course, it is the paraphernalia of rock music she recreates with a poetic, tongue-in-cheek imagery that dismantles the typically very masculine expression associated with rock,’ says Karsten Ohrt, chairman of the New Carlsberg Foundation,
In addition to the site-specific works on the patio, Rose Eken’s biggest ceramic piece to date, Lemmy Kilmisters Marshall Stack and bass, is now included in the museum’s permanent exhibition.
About Rose Eken
Rose Eken (b. 1976) graduated from the Royal College of Art in London (Master of Arts, 2003) and has since lived and worked in London, Berlin, New York and Copenhagen. At the age of 16 years, Rose Eken began to work as a stage technician at CaféTeatret and as a lighting technician for live punk, rock and hard-core concerts in various music venues around Copenhagen. This period has had a major influence on the her later artistic work, which often revolves around music and fan culture.
