Iceland is the antipodes of Australia. A very long journey by plane takes one to a volcanic island with a population the size of Newcastle. It’s dark for 24 hours a day in the middle of winter and sunny all day in mid-summer. The only time I’ve been there, night-time lasted for no more than an hour. Some believe that climate is destiny – that Scandinavians are rendered melancholy by those cold, gloomy winters, while Mediterraneans, basking in the sun, are hedonistic and pleasure-seeking.
If I hesitate to endorse this theory, this is partly because it was an article of faith for the Nazis, who saw the Germans as upright and industrious and southerners as lazy and shiftless. Nevertheless, there’s something about being confined indoors for long periods that stimulates creative and intellectual inclinations. Although their language is spoken by less than 400,000 people, the Icelanders are – per capita – the greatest readers, publishers and book-buyers in the world.
The capital, Reykjavik, is a hive of creativity, turning out a stream of artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers, many of them alternating between mediums. There’s a great deal of collaboration, as everybody knows everybody else, and may even be related. Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976), currently showing at the National Gallery of Victoria, is Björk’s second cousin.
Kjartansson’s Mercy is the first solo show by an Icelandic artist to be held in an Australian art museum, and it’s only to be expected that the NGV would be the host. Ever adventurous, the Melbourne gallery has taken a punt on viewers being won over by an unfamiliar figure whose work speaks directly to that mysterious phenomenon we call ‘the human condition’.