The Danish designer Margrethe Odgaard (b. 1978) is 2016 year’s recipient of the Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize. In connection to the award ceremony, Margrethe Odgaard is presented in a solo exhibition at Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, displaying examples of her innovative work in textiles and other materials.
The award committee has described her work as having “an approach that is both artisanal, tactile and thorough – she thinks with her hands.”
In addition to running her own studio, Margrethe is part of the Included Middle design duo with furniture designer Chris L. Halstrøm. Together they design furniture on the basis of two simple questions ”What if color or pattern is seen as something suggesting form?”, and ”what if form is seen as something suggesting a pattern?”.
The exhibition opened 5 November, with Margrethe Odgaard and Anne-Louise Sommer, Director of the Design Museum Denmark present.
Margrethe Odgaard
Margrethe Odgaard was born in 1978 and works in Copenhagen. She has collaborated with a number of design producers, including Georg Jensen Damask, Muuto, Ikea, Hay and Skagerrak.
The jury wrote in this year’s citation: “Using both poetic and consistent color and pattern studies, Odgaard creates coherence in a breath-taking process that is imbued with musicality. Her artistic vision is propelled by her desire for creation and enrichment in which knowledge, ideas, and skills are shared generously and with perseverance.
The Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize
The Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize was inaugurated by the Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg Foundations, to be awarded for the first time in 1994 on the centenary of Torsten Söderberg’s birth. The foundations are among Sweden’s most important donors to research and development and were founded in 1960. Over the past five years the Torsten Söderberg Foundation, which from 2014 is the sole financial donor behind the prize, has awarded an average of SEK 120 million a year to scientific and corresponding causes.
The exhibition is on display 5 to 19 February 2017, and is produced with the generous support of the Torsten Söderberg Foundation.
Danish Designer Receives Swedish Award, written by Admin