SPARK is a collaborative platform located in Malmö, Sweden with the purpose of strengthening the interface between architecture, art, research, and societal advancement through exhibitions and lectures. The aim is to promote artistic processes in architecture and urban development by activating intersections between art, architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture.
SPARK aims at exhibiting works that provokes critical discourse in current city building through explorative, experimental, trans- and interdisciplinary practices. SPARK collaborates with Lund University Department of Architectrue and the Built Environment, Architects Sweden Skåne, and Molekyl Gallery.
Upcoming exhibition
JA import
Castaway
23.05 - 15.06.2025
Opening Friday May 22, 17-20
Båstadsgatan 4
Welcome to SPARK for the final exhibition of the season opening on Friday May 23rd. JA Import is a duo consisting of Arngrímur Borgþórsson and Jóna Berglind Stefánsdóttir. They are both Icelanders living in Malmö. Jóna is a textile designer/artist and Arngrímur is a visual artist. Their collaboration began in 2023, when Arngrímur came to Jóna to ask for help with building a textile sculpture. This soon resulted in further collaboration. The exhibition at Spark is their third collaborative exhibition.
During the second world war a British or American warship in the Atlantic Ocean lost control of an unmanned anti-aircraft balloon. These balloons were large cigar-shaped objects. They were covered with dangling cables and tethered to ships in order to make it impossible for German airplanes to dive-bomb the ships without running into cables dangling from the balloons. The lost balloon drifted across the ocean, met land in south-eastern Iceland where it crashed.
The people in the volcano-ravaged, isolated and sparsely populated region, named “the wasteland” (öræfi), had for centuries become accustomed to using materials which drifted in from the ocean from shipwrecks. Many of the farmhouses there are built with driftwood and shipwrecks hauled from the jet black beaches at the edge of the volcanic desert.
The crashed balloon was no exception. The locals cut the giant balloon up and used the silver-coloured, rubberised canvas material it was made of to sew rain gear; Waterproof raincoats and rain pants. For decades after the war it was said that the people of the wastelands were recognisable from a distance because when it rained they were silver-coloured from head to toe. The sculpture is a rainsuit-shaped balloon suspended from the ceiling.
