Barbro Åberg

When speaking about her own work, Åberg often privileges the role of imagination. Her pieces emerge from letting her mind and pen wander, and each body of work emerges in tandem, with each piece subtly influencing the next. Like many Scandinavians, Åberg is both obsessed with nature and well-versed in the scientific principles that underpin and guide it.
As in nature, entropy is constantly on display in her studio.
To start with, all artists who work in clay must deal with an uncooperative material that begins as miasmic and formless—often through the weathering of silicate-bearing rocks as water washes particles down from mountain ranges over the process of millions of years. Through one of the collaborative workshops she took part in, Åberg learned several techniques that allow her the upper hand in her ongoing dialogue with entropy.
First, the addition of paper fibers to her clay help strengthen and bind the particles in the clay, making it more resistant to cracking during the drying process, as well as allowing some of Åberg’s daring constructions of tangled clay coils. Perlite, a naturally occurring volcanic mineral is added to the clay to the clay for additional texture and to remove the tension from the clay, both enhancing its tactility and helping her objects to appear as if they emerged from nature—eroded, excavated, or grown from the earth rather than created by a pair of exceedingly skilled hands.
Garth Johnson
Curator of the Paul Phillips and Sharon Sullivan Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York.
Extract from Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue