The Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, has awarded the Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize for 2016 to Danish textile designer, Margrethe Odgaard.
“Using both poetic and consistent colour and pattern studies, Odgaard creates coherence in a breath-taking process that is imbued with musicality,” wrote the award committee.
In her work as a textile designer, Odgaard is constantly reinterpreting and reimagining ways of working with colour, pattern and tactility, which she considers a great influence. She was formally trained at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation and the Rhode Island School of Design in the USA.
In a video interview with Design Indaba in 2015, Odgaard shared her design philosophy on staying innovative by engaging with society, “I consider myself a container where I fill it, in meeting with people, beautiful art, expressive music. I just adapt all that I can, and eventually that comes out in my projects.”
She has also worked on an Editions in Craft collaboration with the Siyazama Project, to rethink and promote possibilities for traditional crafts.
To celebrate her award, an exhibition of her work will be held from the 5 November 2016 at the Röhsska Museum. The Torsten Söderberg Foundation funds the award, which offers the winner a prize of one million Swedish Krona. The award is aimed at promoting Nordic art, craft and design.
