"Beetles" Ru Runeberg 2014
Photo Anders Bøggild
“Beettles”
2014
Soloexhibition
by
Ru Runeberg
Ru’s ideas often spring from everyday life:
a word or a happening, something his children have said or done, or something that has caught his eye in Nature - are all sources of inspiration... including a passion and fascination for insects.
Ru’s relationship with insect dates back to early childhood…It all began one day, in the early 1970’s, at his grandparents’ summer-house when his cousin was baby-sitting him…
Why and how is a mystery but he decided to collect insects the whole day and then placed each insect under the blanket of his cousin’s bed… Predictably, she got the surprise of her life when she pulled back the bed-cover to go to sleep and found ants, worms, and beetles etc crawling in her bed… He believes his motive had probably been ”so she wouldn’t have to sleep alone”… ,Ru was then two years old…
Over the years, his unique pieces of silver-work have changed from typical silversmithing objects, with a clear and understandable function - to domestic utensils where the function is hidden in the object. For example, an enlarged silver-mosquito, serving as a pitcher, has a hollow body for containing liquid, a blood-red back for a handle, while the straw functions as a spout for pouring.