Annika Ström
Bench for the bored in Whitstable

Seafront, Old Neptune Pub

10:00-18:00 Saturday and Sunday each weekend

Working across music, text and performance, Swedish artist Annika Ström presents a work within the open spaces of Whitstable. Her jocular or even boisterous streak is playfully drawn out in this new work conceived especially for the Biennale. Taking the ubiquitous park bench as a performance site, Ström offers a space for reclusive, intimate or even collective activity. The work is part offering, part deception. Presenting an alternative way to look at Whitstable, Ström asks whether one can be bored in a place like this, and whether boredom can be put to creative use. The work is ironically positioned as an ‘event’, and thus an arrangement in which those who participate become the willing (or even unwilling) actors of the piece.

Swedish born and UK based, Annika Ström is an artist working across media. Her work includes performance, music, film and publishing. She has been exhibited internationally and recent solo shows include Copies at Lautom Contemporary (Oslo), The fifth show, ‘c/o’ Atle Gerhardsen (Berlin), Made in France by Annika Ström, at Onestar Press (Paris) and Copies at Lautom Contemporary (Oslo). In addition to the Whitstable Biennale, this year Ström will participate in the first Nordic Art Triennial.