Laura Gaiger:
Tragedies and Triumphs of the Commons

The exhibition features monumental works painted on sailcloth, canvas, ceramic, and MDF, along with floor-based pieces that invite viewers to walk directly on the artworks. The paintings swell through the space—rising like sails, unfolding across walls, and pooling across the floor—offering a physical experience of the fluid and contested nature of our connection to the natural world.

Thematically, the exhibition focuses on the sea as a political landscape and a shared resource, with particular emphasis on resistance to Norwegian industrial extraction in international coastal regions. Gaiger has collaborated with environmental activists from Svalbard, Shetland, the Philippines, Argentina, Canada, Uganda, and Gabon. Their personal accounts of place and their struggles against companies such as Equinor have informed many of the works, bringing a polyphonic and global perspective into the exhibition.

The title references economic theories of the commons—the idea that shared resources either inevitably lead to overuse and collapse (Garrett Hardin), or that they can be successfully managed through collective stewardship (Elinor Ostrom). Gaiger engages with both perspectives, allowing the works to reflect the tension between nature as belonging to all, and nature as something controlled and exploited. By combining painterly techniques with spatial installations, she challenges the traditions of landscape painting and the role of the viewer—who must literally step into the landscapes, and thus into the ethical and political questions they raise.

At the heart of the exhibition is a large-scale, sculptural work that rises to the full height of the gallery. Combining sailcloth, CNC-cut wood panels, and protest imagery, the piece includes references to Equinor’s oil survey maps from the North Sea and ancient continental formations. Other works incorporate insights from the artist’s residency in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, examining how Norwegian state influence extends beyond the mainland and affects local communities.

“Triumphs and Tragedies of the Commons” is a sensory and politically charged exhibition that reflects on what it means to share, control, and defend nature in a time of ecological crisis and geopolitical extraction.