Gústav Geir Bollason is an artist and filmmaker based in the small coastal village of Hjalteyri in northern Iceland. He runs the local art space “Verksmiðjan á Hjalteyri”, which – despite its remote location – has gained attention and acclaim especially for its film programmes, video installations and experimental music workshops.

Bollason’s artistic practice is primarily a response to the landscape and the life it houses. Creating drawings, sculptures from found objects, animations, videos and films, he often combines these media in installations that create fictional extensions of reality. In his cinematic production of landscape narratives – situated somewhere between art films, documentary narratives and subjective fictions – Bolason works with other local residents on his in situ interventions and allows the sets to form an extension of his studio. Filming primarily on the north coast of Iceland, where he lives, he also films in the island’s arid highlands and at sea, often focusing on liminal areas, wastelands and ruins. These locations provide a rich exploration of themes such as environmental change, energy and material use, and entropy, as well as the stories and myths that the landscapes hold. In their disarray and decay, Bollason highlights the opportunities offered by change and the passage of time.

Bollason studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts (now the Icelandic University of the Arts) in Reykjavik and the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest. He graduated from L’École Nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy in 1995 and lived in Paris until 1999, before returning to northern Iceland.