The golden plower plays a role in Steingrímur Eyfjörð's plans when he represents Iceland in the Venice Biennale of Art this summer. In Iceland it is the habringer of spring, usually the first migratory species to revisit the island every year. The spotting of the first one is always reported in the newpapers and Steingrímur has collected decades' worth of clippings and cast a statue in bronze to recall this annual blessing by a small but hardy plump-breasted wading bird.

Memory and the husbanding of our history and culture are a central theme in Steingrímur's work but also represent a critical view of our global culture and the workings of the art world. Steingrímur is critical of what he sees as an American tendency which has come to dominate to a large extent.

Steingrímur Eyfjörð: The American art scene is mostly about popularising art, in a way it’s all pop art. There is a big effort to sell art and make it entertaining. The 2006 December issue of Vanity Fair magazine is a case in point with the feature on the art world. It’s a very self-centred attitude to art which sees American art as somehow more important but adopts influences from elsewhere. There is more emphasis on the stylistic execution of the work but the preconditions of the work are not revealed, the presumptions it rests on, for which there is a stronger demand in Europe.
    The so-called art scene, the internationalised art of the big cities, feeds on input form the more peripheral areas. It’s like genetics, they need the larger gene pool. This input can be channelled into fashion, art, music, wherever it is needed. The culture would die without this input. When I come out and say ‘Don’t forget Benedikt Gröndal’ I’m not really voicing opposition to this, I’m just trying to point out the importance of memories. The danger is that everything will be cast in the same mould and we will lose the continuity of memories.

Steingrímur's exhibition will include several interconnected pieces, installations and texts that also reflect various continuing concerns in his work. Born in 1954, Steingrímur has been exhibiting since the mid-1970s. He studied in Reykjavik, at the the Atheneum in Helsinki and in the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, Holland.

Steingrímur Eyfjörð: When I started out, I wished to make sure that the background of work was revealed which means that the work itself is more of hypothesis, not necessarily a finished, finite thought. This always leaves other options open, there is always another way into the work, but it also makes it more difficult to classify my work. Overall, I think the connections between my works are not linear. I keep going back to them and I really see it all as one whole, not a progression of works that can be connected to specific dates or periods. So when I was given the opportunity to go to the Biennale, which is a great honour, I can draw on all this material. It’s a process like memory, recall, which is itself an important theme in what I do. Sometimes my methods are quite formal, a sort of methodology that I apply to a range of ideas or subjects. This exhibition is more varied, though. Perhaps I’m just using more methodologies at once and in fact I feel that every piece here could be expanded into a whole series.
    There is a kind of censorship in our society which says that things must be kept simple. People always wonder if something can be understood, even art. What is that about? Wouldn’t you rather have a work of art that you don’t understand? This censorship also means that a lot of things get left behind and this is what I want to counteract with the series of works under the title ‘Don’t Forget’. I’m having plaques made to remind us not to forget people and ideas that have contributed to our culture even though we don’t necessarily understand exactly what.

Such ideas are at work in folktales such as those of the elves whose existence is still widely confirmed in Iceland, surprising and confusing many tourists and visiting journalists. The elves will be there in some of the works Steingrímur is bringing to Venice. He sees them as an essential aspect of the Icelanders' culture, both socially and as regards intense personal experiences.

Steingrímur Eyfjörð: The experience of elves is often very personal but the stories are still remarkably consistent. I tell the story of two young boys who met an elf, they described the encounter and the shoes he was wearing – I’ve made a reconstruction of the shoes. I see that elves as having something to do with the self-image of the Icelanders. They are a kind of alter to our ego. The elves live the way we Icelanders did in the old days. When we were poor and backward, they seemed very grand and exotic. Now the tables have turned; we are rich and modern but they are poor and old-fashioned.

Steingrímur has attempted to involve the elves directly in one of the works which records his moves to buy a sheep from the elves in exchange for a whetting stone, a common enough form of payment according to folktales. The installation includes the full-size pen built for the sheep according to the elves' specifications.

Steingrímur Eyfjörð: I made the acquaintance of a woman who communicates with the elves to help me. At first I had intended to take a whole family of elves with me to Venice, to bring some some rocks in which they could live, but on closer consideration that didn't seem feasible and hardly humane, really, so I decided to buy a sheep from them instead. The pen for the elf-sheep is built according to the elves’ directions and everything concerning the keeping of the sheep is in line with their wishes. They even specified the type of salt I should provide for them.

Steingrímur's explorations have taken many forms and he was only last year the subject of a retrospective show at the National Gallery of Iceland. Whatever his particular approach, his works are always aesthetically open and betray a deep curiosity about all aspects of human understanding and its symbols, but also not without a certain element of humour: "Art is a field where you are allowed to misunderstand. If you are doing academic research you are bound by a certain rule or code that limits your creativity. The artists can pick and choose and pull whatever sparks his imagination. In the arts, you have a kind of freedom that perhaps server as a kind of steam valve for society."