In conversation with Ragnar Kjartansson

Opening at Goodwood Art Foundation on 26 November, Ragnar Kjartansson: Weekdays in Arcadia brings together recent and newly commissioned works by the Icelandic artist, spanning video, painting, sculpture and porcelain. Across the galleries and woodland, visitors will encounter a hypnotic six-channel video installation, monumental outdoor works created in response to the West Sussex landscape, and more. 

Ahead of the exhibition, we spoke to Ragnar about the ideas behind his work, his fascination with repetition and the stories behind some of the artworks visitors will discover.

How would you describe yourself to someone who’s never encountered your work? 

I usually just say ‘Ah, don’t worry about this - just some arty stuff’

Your work spans an extraordinary range of media. How would you describe your work to someone who hasn’t seen it before? 

My work is a lot of performances and videos, everything is performance be it drawing, painting - it’s all related to performance art. The idea of doing something in time. 

Repetition is a recurring theme throughout your practice. At Goodwood Art Foundation, this takes musical form in Say I’m Weary, Say I’m Sad, a new six-hour performance in the Pigott Gallery, created in collaboration with Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National, the live performance takes place on 26 November with musician Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir.

What draws you to repetition?

It’s a way to give things form, you can just repeat something and it becomes sculptural or painterly, it just takes form. And repetition it also has this spiritual aspect, as I learned when I was an altar boy in church, we repeat things and they become spiritual. But I think I’m mostly drawn to it because it makes things sculptural, it takes a song and turns it into sculpture. Like, you know what I’m going to do with Jenny Kiss’d Me in the Pigott Gallery.  

One of the outdoor works visitors will encounter at Goodwood Art Foundation is Epic Waste of Love and Understanding (2023), a large-scale sculptural installation that takes its inspiration from the language of nineteenth-century public monuments and memorials. Set within a wooded glade overlooking the West Sussex landscape, the work transforms a deeply personal sentiment into something monumental. Can you tell us about its origins?

Me and my wife were having a hard conversation regarding - you know - tough stuff. And then suddenly Ingibjörg said ‘I just hope this is not some epic waste of love and understanding’ and I just remember hearing this sentence and being like ‘woah’. 

Immediately imagining a huge memorial with this sentence ‘Epic Waste of Love and Understanding’. So that is the origin, I even remember in the conversation we right away started laughing and talking about the fact that this should be a monument.  

What is it about monuments that captures your imagination?

There is something so pompous yet melancholic about memorials and monuments. They are always a bit outrageous, and I love that about them. And they are always full of melancholia and memento mori. 

Nightmare (2026) is a major new outdoor commission created especially for Goodwood Art Foundation’s woodland. Drawing on the atmosphere of horror stories and fairy tales, the work explores themes of fear and internal turmoil, bringing an unexpected presence into the natural landscape. The idea for Nightmare came to you in a dream, tell us more about that.  

I had a dream where I just saw this sign ‘Nightmare’ - and it was really interesting, because it was a regular dream, but I saw a sign that said ‘Nightmare’.   

The dream stayed with me for years, and then when walking through the woods at Goodwood Art Foundation I just remembered this Nightmare sign from my dream. It’s designed in exactly the same way as how it appeared in my dream. 

You have described your interest in the “almost fictional or Poussin like elements” of the landscape here, and the idea of encountering “monuments to sorrow and shakiness in the woodlands”. What excites you about making art in a landscape?  

What excites me about making art in the landscape is the beauty of it. You’re out in the beauty of the landscape and the forest - for me as an Icelander the forest is something very exotic. There are hardly any forests in Iceland. The old joke is that if you get lost in an Icelandic forest you just stand up - so, for me, having my works in these surroundings is very exciting. 

In the Pigott Gallery, visitors will encounter Weekdays in Arcadia (2025), a series of large-scale paintings inspired by your experiences shepherding in southern Iceland. The works depict your friends and fellow shepherds in the Icelandic Highlands, drawing on the tradition of pastoral painting. What is it about the experience of shepherding that you find so compelling? 

Being a shepherd in Southern Iceland is kind of my hobby and one of my favourite things to do. I’ve done it now for 8 years. It’s in one week in the Autumn, up there in the Highlands getting the sheeps down with the farmers in the countryside and other helpers. And it’s just so much fun, so much action and also you’re kind of doing a choreography that has been done for 1,000 years, since Iceland was settled - bringing sheeps down from the Highlands. And there is something deeply beautiful about it, and I always felt like it was over the top romantic when you’re in the situation. 

What made you want to turn the experience into a body of work? 

One day I felt like, I want to make big romantic shepherd’s paintings and I kinda just found the notion so funny, that you know that I was going to make big oil paintings of shepherds - but as it often goes, things start with a joke, and then you carve the joke away - and after it’s done, these paintings which are paintings of my friends in the area, in these other-worldly arcadian situations, but you know, in the every day...

Guilt and Fear (2022) is a large-scale  installation comprising 1,000 porcelain salt and pepper shakers, each decorated in traditional Delft blue and bearing the words ‘Guilt’ or ‘Fear’. 

The idea for it came from a conversation with my friend. We were just discussing the mood in the world and, you know it was one of those days in the world where everything felt kind of bad. And she said, ‘everything is soaked in guilt and fear'. 

A passing observation about the state of the world into an installation that is both playful and unsettling is a fitting example of Ragnar’s ability to find inspiration in the everyday.

Come and encounter the works for yourself in Ragnar Kjartansson: Weekdays in Arcadia, running from 26 November 2026 to 12 April 2027 at Goodwood Art Foundation.