About

ANNIKA SVENSSON

Ceramic Artist MFA

Annika Svensson (b. 1970) is a Swedish ceramist/tiled stove maker/artist, who lives and works in Sweden.

My ceramic studio is based in Göteborg since I graduated in 1997 at HDK – Academy of Design and Craft, and my company Annika Svensson Keramik & Kakelugnar (Ceramics & Swedish Tiled Stoves) was founded in 1998.

I am engaged in a diversity of artistic projects which range from functional wares to sculptures. My work can be found in public places and in private homes. I have participated in national and international juried exhibitions, had several solo exhibitions, and been collected by museums and municipalities.

In 2019, I became a member of the IAC – the International Academy of Ceramics is the leading organisation representing the interests of professionals in the field of ceramics worldwide.

”The practice in clay is often intuitive and at the same time well-planned. My artworks encapsulate experiences, emotions and memories.”

I am inspired by nature and experiment with imprints and castings, creating reliefs. In the process, I distort, refine and join the clay. I work with ceramics making both large, and small scale pieces.

ANNIKA SVENSSON

It is unusual, what the ceramist Annika Svensson is doing — she is a maker of tiled stoves. She is among the very few ceramists today that make objects of art out of the warmth and hospitality that the tiled stove represents.

For twenty-five years now she has been making her unique stoves, utilizing time honored and traditional tiled stove making methods. Her stoves are personalities and poetic hybrids of arts & crafts, art nouveau, rustic handicraft and contemporary mass culture.

The creations by Annika Svensson carry the history of the tiled stoves with them. But she pushes her expression one step further: from pure function and into the whirlwind of styles of the 21st century.

”A tiled stove made by Annika Svensson delivers even and pleasant warmth, along with a bit of madness and lust for life.”

Annika’s first creation in 1997 had the form of a jukebox or fantasy beetle of art deco vintage, 2.65 metres high in shiny sunny-yellow tiling. The Swedish media loved it and it also won first prize ’Embryo of the Year’97′ for the best work by a student from the seven Swedish schools of design.

PETTER EKLUND

In recent years, I have also undertaken commissions to create art in public spaces such as hospitals and schools. For me it is important to make unique works of art with strong intrinsic values, integrated into buildings and their surroundings, and also that the art harmonizes with the architecture and interacts with its physical and social environment.

”One was for the Public Art Agency Sweden and took on the form of a mainly abstract, site specific installation at the Swedish Tax Agency in Solna, outside Stockholm. Adversely, the work was given a descriptive title, Liquid, Flowing, Dripping … Dropping, Dripping, with clear references to the soft undulations created by melting candle wax (although the artist herself confesses to being primarily inspired by children’s play with slime).

The scale is almost hyperreal, and the glacial hues of turquoise and blue equally remind me of wintery ice sculptures. Light and bulky, they run down the façade in a way that involves the building’s entire floor plan. Also lying on the edge of the bars on the stairs to the building’s inner court yard, they mark their inescapable presence, without being controversial — just unexpected and somewhat surreal, given the overall context.”

Excerpt from the book:
ANNIKA SVENSSON – Contemporary Sensitivities
by Design critic BOEL ULFSDOTTER

About

ANNIKA SVENSSON

Contact

annika@keramik-kakelugnar.com

+46 70 885 05 44