In a corner of Reykjavík’s Living Art Museum, a small stone tied in a net hangs precariously from the ceiling. The piece, likely dated from the 1970s, comes from the museum’s collection, although no one seems to know what it is, or who made it. “Maybe someone will recognise it tonight,” speculates the hopeful museum director and artist Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir, as an eccentric flock of locals starts to arrive. They are here for Pressure of the Deep, the non-profit’s 40th anniversary exhibition, which gathers works by 30 artists from the 1960s to the present day.

The Living Art Museum, locally known as Nýló (short for new art in Icelandic), was born in 1978 under the impulse of a group of radical artists who had grown frustrated with the National Gallery of Iceland’s lack of interest in their work. Their initial intention was rather pragmatic: to collect and preserve the works of their peers, particularly in the fields of performance and art publishing, so that they wouldn’t get lost or destroyed.

“If nothing had been done, it would have created an enormous gap in Icelandic art history,” affirms the artist Rúrí, one of 27 founding members. Today, Nýló – which is nestled on the first floor of an old herring factory bordering Reykjavík’s Grandi harbour – is one of the oldest artist-run organisations in Europe, with 340 members, an ever-expanding collection and a dynamic programme of up to six exhibitions per year, among other projects.

Herring do ... Reykjavík’s Living Art Museum. Photograph: Nýló, the Living Art Museum

The Nordic island, which today has a population of 350,000 (roughly the same as the London borough of Newham), has not always been the culturally sophisticated, nature-loving tourist destination we know today. Up until the 1960s, with no formal art education system, the scene was dominated by the state-run National Gallery, which focused its efforts on documenting the country’s recent history and international trends in abstract expressionism, particularly with European ties.



But in the mid-60s, a disjointed group of internationally educated Icelandic artists started to bring the ideas of avant garde movements such as Fluxus back from their sojourns abroad. Soon, they started to operate collectively under the name SÚM. The conceptual swiss artist Dieter Roth, who had relocated to Iceland with his wife, designed the catalogue for their first exhibition in 1965 and mailed it to his artist friends around the world, suddenly bringing the isolated group into a broader context. After SÚM was dissolved in the late 70s, a lot of the works were donated to the then-forming Living Art Museum, which took it upon itself to preserve and build upon the legacy.

“There was always this longing to nurture the local art scene and introduce interesting ideas from abroad,” says Ingólfur Arnarsson, another founding member of Nýló, who will receive a solo exhibition at the Reykjavík Art Museum in November. Indeed, since its creation, the Living Art Museum has been instrumental in bringing some of the art world’s biggest names, from Robert Filliou and Gabriel Orozco to the Guerrilla Girls, to Iceland – thanks to the kind of grassroots networks that the national museums too often lacked.

Pieces by the likes of Matthew Barney, Joseph Beuys and Richard Hamilton have accumulated over the years

“It was so important,” says Brooklyn-based artist and long-time Björk collaborator Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, aka Shoplifter, who has been enlisted to represent Iceland at the next Venice Biennale. “It helped us land in the present.”

Yet it’s probably not this international extravaganza that kept the members-based association alive for so long, but more likely its esteemed collection. Today, its 2,200 pieces are stored in a former bakery in the south-eastern district of Breiðholt, a 15-minute drive from the main exhibition space. “It’s a bit messy, because of the exhibition,” warns Ólafsdóttir, the current museum director, as she opens the door of the 350 sq m cabinet of curiosities.

Inside, a jumble of bubble-wrapped sculptures, oversized crates turned sliding doors, catalogues and other unlikely artefacts are piled up in an oddly ordered fashion, vaguely resembling an art installation itself. In a corner, hanging in a wooden case, Rúrí’s much-talked-about appropriation of the Icelandic national costume – made in 1974 with an American flag as a commentary on US military presence – strangely overlooks the room.

Ásta Ólafsdóttir, Untitled, 1978. Photograph: Ásta Ólafsdóttir

Other pieces by the likes of Matthew Barney, Joseph Beuys and Richard Hamilton have accumulated over the years, all as donations: either directly from the artists or through their friends, making it a somewhat intimate and accidental selection.

“It tells the story of an art scene, not the story of collecting,” points out the acclaimed Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, a long-time friend of the museum, who enjoyed a solo exhibition at the Barbican in 2016.

In the back room, which Ólafsdóttir assures me is temperature-controlled – perhaps thinking I need convincing – sits the museum’s treasure: meticulously labelled cardboard shelving units, containing 320 works by Dieter Roth, partly donated by the artist himself, as well as by his close friend, another Ragnar Kjartansson. The late painter and ceramicist was the grandfather of the like-named contemporary artist.

“By bringing what was happening in contemporary art internationally, Dieter Roth influenced the Icelandic art scene immensely,” affirms Ólafsdóttir, as she carefully handles doodled magazines and other prints with white cotton gloves. “It wouldn’t have been the same without him.”



Rúrí’s A Proposition How to Change the Icelandic National Costume to Meet with Modern Icelandic Society, 1974. Photograph: Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson

As the years went by, the work of artists like Roth and SÚM received increased attention, and the national museums quickly realised that the quirky, artist-made collection was worth pondering upon. In a somewhat ironic U-turn, the establishment started rubbing shoulders with the enfants terribles, and borrowing artworks off them.

In 1988, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Nýló, the National Gallery mounted a major exhibition incorporating the SÚM artists, with the majority of works coming from the once-disregarded collection. This was the first of many collaborations, fostering a far more harmonious dialogue between the sides.

“I think there is space for all of us,” says Harpa Þórsdóttir, the recently appointed director of the National Gallery, who admits that the state-run museum would happily take up the responsibility of looking after Nýló’s collection, if there were ever a need for it.



Behind its successes, the Living Art Museum has a long history of resilience. Predominantly run by volunteers for the first two of its four decades, it has been forced out of half a dozen locations, struggled with financial uncertainties, and nearly been driven to bankruptcy on various occasions.



The museum in its original location at Vatnsstígur. Photograph: The Living Art Museum

But today, while most artist-run initiatives around the world are at risk of disappearing – think Transmission Gallery in Glasgow – Iceland’s Nýló seems in rather good shape, with some even criticising it for becoming institutionalised. Last year, after losing its downtown location to rampant Airbnb-led gentrification, the non-profit relocated to the Marshall House, a stylishly refurbished fishing warehouse which, as the name suggests, was built courtesy of postwar US Marshall aid.

In addition to Nýló, it has become home to Ólafur Eliasson’s studio, a gourmet restaurant and a younger artist-run space, Kling & Bang, making the complex a new art destination for Reykjavík. What’s more, the Living Art Museum is getting a new director: the German-born artist turned curator Dorothée Kirch. “Alternative narratives,” she tells me with conviction, “that’s completely what Nýló should be about.”

As the cheerful exhibition opening comes to an end, participating artists and founding members reconvene in a corner of the gallery to share a bowl of lentil soup, sour bread and three generations worth of memories. The identity of the hanging stone sculpture, however, remains a mystery.