The dates for the next Reykjavik Arts Festival are out in the air. Next year, we will kick off on May 12 and close with style on June 5. The programme is in full preparation but will not be made official until  the new year.

The final event of the Reykjavik Arts Festival 2009 was a recital by soprano Deborah Voigt. The festival was highly successful and the majority of the 70 events, hosted by over 500 Icelandic and international artists, on the Festival were sold out.

In addition, audiences and critics alike praised the artists.

The Reykjavik Arts Festival hosted STRAY BEACONS, an unconventional art exhibition in four lighthouses around Iceland during spring and summer 2009. The exhibitions are the focus of the article LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS, written by Markus T. Andresson, in the August/September issue of DAMN°, an international review on contemporary culture.

Click here to download the article (455 KB).

Reykjavík Arts Festival's office is closed from July 1 until August 4. For urgent matters please contact Jóhanna Vigdís Guðmundsdóttir executive director at johanna@artfest.is and / or Hrefna Haraldsdóttir artistic director at hrefna@artfest.is.

The final event of the Reykjavik Arts Festival 2009 was a recital by soprano Deborah Voigt. The festival was highly successful this year and remarkably well received by audience and critics alike. Almost all events were sold out.

Reykjavík Arts Festival 2009 hosts an unconventional art exhibition in four lighthouses around Iceland, one in each quarter of the island. Artists have been invited to install their work in the lighthouses that will be open to the public during the summer. Each of the participating artists is quite different from the others, even if they belong to the same generation. A mutual element in their work, however, is a coherent search for innovative ways to relate to their immediate surroundings, society and the audience.   

Deborah Voigt, arguably the leading dramatic soprano singing today, has a gleaming voice that easily soars over the largest Wagnerian orchestra,” states the New York Times. She has sung leading roles in Wagner’;s Tristan und Isolde,Walküre, Fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin and in Strauss’;s Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Aegyptische Helena,Elektra, Rosenkavalier, and Salome.

Experience Reykjavík during the preparations for the upcoming Reykjavík Arts Festival by viewing The Guardian's brand new Reykjavík Video Break.  The Festival opend May 15 and will be ongoing until May 31.

Click here to view the video.

Campingwomen, a five large rolling sculptures, by Marit Benthe Norheim, are functional caravans from the 60s and 70s. The torsos of the female figures grow out of the roof so that the caravans function as the women's skirts.  

The travel of the Campingwomen at Reykjavík Arts Festival:

Fri 22.5 - Sólfarið - a sculpture by Sæbraut street

Sat 23.5 - Old Washing Springs in Laugardalur from 1pm

Sun 24.5 - Old Washing Springs in Laugardalur

Mon 25.5 - Old Washing Springs in Laugardalur

Australian street artists, Strange Fruit, and Norwegian Campingwomen will stake their claim to Austurvöllur Square in Reykjavík City Centre this Saturday at 2 and 4 pm, but there will be a number of other events to delight Festival guests in downtown area and elsewhere in the city on Opening Day. By the Reykjavík Pond and in the Gallery 100° the Environmental Health Clinic will emerge and at Gallery i8 Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir opens an exhibition named Vanity Disorder; objects designed from photographs are on display in an exciting exhibition at the Reykjavík Museum of Photography and visual artist Hulda Hákon opens her show at the Akureyri Art Museum. At the Reykjanesbaer Art Museum, Olga Bergmann brings us The House of Pain and the neighbouring gallery Suðsuðvestur hosts an exhibitions by Dutch artist Klaas Kloosterboer.

Next Friday, on 15 May the Reykjavík Arts Festival will begin: a two-week programme of exciting events will take place on the city's streets, in theatres, concert halls, opera houses, art museums and galleries, lighthouses, private homes and selected places in the countryside. The Opening Ceremony will be on 15 May at Kjarvalsstaðir museum, when the exhibition Unuhús and West 8th Street, featuring the art of painters Nína Tryggvadóttir and Louisa Matthíasdóttir, will also be opened. The Reykjavík Arts Festival 2009, which continues until 31 May, will cover art in a wide range of genres. More than 70 events will feature the work of around 500 local and international artists.

The middle of May marks the onset of two weeks of the Reykjavík Arts Festival´s dense and varied program of events which take place on the city´s streets, in theatres, concert halls, art museums and galleries, lighthouses, private homes and selected spots in the countryside.

The forefathers of Brechtian Punk Cabaret, the Tiger Lillies, will have concert on May 29 at the Icelandic opera. They were founded in 1989 and 20 years later, their sound remains one of the most unique and original things you could come across. The Tiger Lillies stood out immediately for their distinct sound and style and worked their way up from  London pubs to the Piccadilly Theatre, from buskers’ benches to the Sidney Opera House. Soon the Tiger Lillies were touring the world giving concerts and participating in various art and theatre projects.