A person in a hooded rain jacket sits on the roof rack of a white off-road vehicle tilted and sunk in moving brown water, with dark hills in the distance.

Cars in rivers series 2009

To create this work, Olafur Eliasson placed an advertisement in Icelandic media, inviting people to send in photographs of themselves stranded with their car when trying to cross a river. Beyond the capital, Reykjavík, and the more populated towns, there is a good chance of this happening in Iceland. Many roads are unpaved and it can be difficult to estimate a river’s depth, which can change swiftly, particularly in spring, as glacial meltwaters flow down from the mountains and plateaus. Fast-moving currents, concealed pits and unstable gravel banks all create challenges for drivers. More than 100 photographs were contributed, from which Eliasson selected the 35 that make up this series.

Sometimes the situations pictured are nerve-racking, sometimes more humorous. Together they convey the challenge of navigating the Icelandic landscape, suggesting stories of tragedy, adventure, problem‑solving, risk and rescue.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Curator’s Persective

A person in a hooded rain jacket stands on the roof of a white off-road vehicle, which is tilted and sunk in icy water, while another person in an orange jacket stands knee-deep in water to the side. Snowy mountains rise in the distance.

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Olafur's photographic artwork, the Cars in rivers series 2009, is one of the first pieces to greet us as we enter the Gallery of Modern Art before we've even come into the exhibition, ‘Olafur Eliasson: Presence’. It's a kind of bridge from the real world, introducing us to Olafur's care and attention for Iceland and, in the space of the foyer cabinet, other artworks and samples, tests and important materials to Olafur, such as a series of marine compasses, which are drawn from the many collections of the studio.

So here we see how Olafur assembles similar materials to study them and think about the story they might tell us. I thought Cars in rivers felt very relevant to us here in Queensland, where people are able to drive their cars along certain beaches, and where we deal with the challenge of sudden floods. All those messages — ‘If it's flooded, forget it’ — discouraging people from driving through floodwaters, where they might not be able to judge the depth or speed of movement of the water.

In Iceland — a country which, like Australia, is vast, but has a relatively small population concentrated in just a few areas — people at times do need to cross the river, perhaps to get to their summer house or somewhere that their family has visited over generations.

It's a skill that people have to judge the flow of the water and the depth, but it doesn't always go to plan. So here we see examples of situations where people have become bogged or their car has been swept down the river into deeper waters where they might be helping each other to pull the car out or just having a moment sitting on the roof, working out what to do next.

Olafur asked the people of Iceland via radio call-out to send him their images of these occasions where their car had become stuck in the river. It's something he'd experienced himself as well as worried about on occasion whilst needing to cross a river.

So it's a portrait of the landscape in Iceland, where the rivers are constantly moving and shifting — particularly in the spring as the glaciers and ice and snow melt and the rivers fill with a huge volume of water rushing down to the sea between the hard rock of the mountains, where these plains of gravel and sand carry the braided form of the rivers, which is constantly moving and shifting. The rock and sand finding new channels and passages as the water pushes through.

Later on in the exhibition, you'll see a vast artwork named Riverbed 2014, where we bring such a river and space into the gallery. It's stable here, whereas, in these photographs, it's constantly in motion — a challenge for people to navigate and live with. One of the key themes of the exhibition is a questioning of how we face our journey through the world, how we find our bearings or solid ground in a world that is constantly shifting and moving and presenting us with new challenges.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Low/no vision audio description

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This work consists of 35 colour photographs, each about 23 by 34 centimetres in size, displayed in identical black frames. The images were submitted by different people in Iceland after Eliasson invited the public to share their own photographs of cars stranded in rivers, resulting in subtle variations in composition and perspective across the series. They are arranged in a strict grid of five rows by seven columns, covering a wall area just over one metre high and more than two and a half metres wide. The regular spacing and dark borders emphasise the visual rhythm of the grid, giving the installation a strong sense of order across the viewer’s field of vision.

Each photograph shows a car stranded in an Icelandic river. Some vehicles rest at precarious angles, their wheels half-submerged in fast-moving streams. Other cars are almost entirely engulfed, with only their roofs visible above the water. A few scenes capture attempted rescues, where people stand in the current or towing equipment strains against the flow.

The overall tones of the photographs are muted and natural, dominated by greys, browns and shifting blues of water and stone. Against this subdued palette, small flashes of colour stand out: a red car body, the bright blue of clothing, the orange of rescue gear. Snow, ridges and distant mountains appear in the background, situating the scenes in the stark Icelandic landscape.

Viewed together, the 35 images form both a documentary record and repeating pattern, underscoring the ongoing challenge of crossing Iceland’s rivers and the persistence of human attempts to navigate them.

– QAGOMA

A person stands with their hands on their hips on the bonnet of a red and white off-road vehicle, which is partly submerged in flowing water, with moss-covered cliffs rising behind them.

A yellow minibus sits partially submerged in shallow water while a blue tractor stands on a dark gravel bank in the foreground, with low hills in the distance.

A four-wheel drive vehicle is partially submerged in a river below dark volcanic hills and green moss, with snow-covered peaks in the distance under a pale sky.

Two people stand near a white off-road vehicle in shallow icy water. One person stands on the vehicle’s roof and the other is wading near the wheel, with snow-covered mountains across the horizon behind them.

Two people stand beside a silver four-wheel drive vehicle whose front end is stuck in broken ice, using poles to probe the frozen surface in a flat, pale horizon.

A red utility truck sits partially sunk in broken, slushy ice while a person walks nearby on firmer snow, with another vehicle visible in the distance across the snow-covered expanse.

Room: ‘Sources and rivers’

Iceland is Olafur Eliasson’s ancestral home. It is a place he has returned to throughout his life, from Copenhagen where he was born, and from Berlin where he now lives. This isolated volcanic island, its dramatic landscapes and atmospheric extremes all offer inspiration and raw materials which fuel his artistic process. This cabinet presents a sample of such references, alongside artworks they inspired.

Each item carries the history of how it came into being, and passage through the world. Weathered marine compasses evoke journeys across vast stretches of ocean, while a battered marker buoy no longer signals a secure place to anchor, or the submerged presence of a fishing net. Grey-brown volcanic lava stone bears traces of its emergence as magma from beneath the surface of the Earth, and builders’ plumb-bobs, each suspended from a string, once used gravity to aid in the construction of straight walls.

Eliasson assembles many such collections – these items offer a small window into those at his studio in Berlin. Over time, some of these materials take on new forms and become artworks. Bleached driftwood and other marine debris are transformed into a suspended ‘compass’ or painted in a vivid rainbow-like spectrum of colour. Wool from grey Icelandic sheep is knitted into geometries that echo volcanic basalt columns. Experiences are also collected: Eliasson created the Cars in rivers series 2009 from photographs (sent in response to a public call-out) of people’s misadventures driving through Iceland’s fast-rushing rivers.

All of these objects and artworks travel through time, crossing rivers and oceans. In doing so, they remind us of our search for direction, our own journeys and the stories we carry with us.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow