Galerie S:t Petri – Archive of Experimental and Marginal Art (Lund, 1971-1982): Laboratory for Living Art, Circulations and Archives

By Emmanuelle Rapin, May 2026.

Preliminary note

This article is an initial synthesis resulting from the cataloguing, digitisation, chronological reconstruction and contextualisation of the Jean Sellem / Galerie S:t Petri archive, carried out since 2023 by Emmanuelle Rapin and Raphaël Lévy. It will be supplemented and updated as the archives gradually become accessible.

Introduction

In 1971, the French artist Jean Sellem, born in Paris in 1941, founded the Galerie S:t Petri – Archive of Experimental and Marginal Art in Lund, Sweden. He co-directed it with Marie Sjöberg, a native of Lund born in 1949, who was then a psychology student at Lund University. Until 1982, this non-commercial space became a laboratory for the most current artistic practices, against the backdrop of the Cold War, at the crossroads of local cultural life and the transnational networks then developing at the time, notably through postal exchanges and what art historiography refers to as Mail Art1. The gallery presents itself as a space devoted to the immediacy of forms2, ideas and positions, in the broadest sense: experimental arts, marginal practices, publications, discussions, events and civic engagement.

Despite the intensity of its activities and its place within the artistic networks of the 1970s, Galerie S:t Petri remains absent from art-historical narratives. It usually appears only sporadically, as a point of passage in artists’ trajectories, in mappings of networks or in connection with events linked to Lund, without being the subject of a comprehensive study3. This relative invisibility is partly due to the late accessibility of its archives, which for a long time were not identified as archival holdings open to consultation.4 The gradual opening of the Jean Sellem / Galerie S:t Petri archive is now changing this situation. After the closure of the gallery, Jean Sellem preserved the archives but was unable, for material reasons, to process them or make them accessible. As Sellem himself has explained, he was concerned that, if placed within an institutional framework, the archives might remain invisible for many years before being studied.5 Currently divided between Zurich and Berlin and entrusted outside an institutional framework, the archive is now being digitised and gradually made available online. The research is taking shape as the documents are brought to light, in a constant interplay between archival processing, chronological reconstruction, historical contextualisation and interpretative analysis. This article is thus part of an ongoing project to structure and analyse the archive,carried out in parallel with its online publication. It draws on direct and sustained familiarity with the documents, acquired through their arrangement and cross-referencing. This research also draws on a series of telephone interviews and meetings held regularly with Jean Sellem in Lund since 2023. Even before the archive is fully accessible, it is important to make its structure, the circumstances of its formation, and its initial lines of interpretation legible. This text thus accompanies the gradual opening of the archives, while documenting the research work that is making them accessible today.

Of the approximately 400 files, the main corpus currently consists of 245 exhibition files held in the S:t Petri archive. These files contain correspondence with artists, press releases, statements, photographs, reproductions, sketches, promotional material, lists of works, press articles and administrative documents. In addition, there are files relating to lectures, workshops, discussions and hybrid events, as well as unclassified items. The archive is multilingual, comprising material in Swedish, French, English, German, Polish and Danish, as well as occasional material in other languages.6 This body of material first makes it possible to document the functioning of a venue that has remained largely overlooked in art-historical accounts, and then to understand how a gallery originally conceived as a local, non-commercial space for cultural exchange was able to function simultaneously as a transdisciplinary laboratory and as an active node within transnational artistic networks in the 1970s.

Bringing the archive to light thus makes it possible to begin situating Galerie S:t Petri within the history of artistic circulations during the Cold War, but also within a genealogy of practices and questions raised by artists: ecological concerns, critiques of rearmament, nuclear weapons and nuclear power, the relationship between art and social order, the rejection of the commodification of art, and the questioning of artistic and institutional hegemonies.

1. A periphery that became a site of circulation

Located in southern Sweden, Lund occupied a peripheral position7 in relation to the major European art centres during the 1970s. Far from signifying isolation, this position proved to be a productive condition. The city was characterised by its university, an active cultural life and the influence of Lunds Konsthall8, a municipal art centre opened in 1957, which had hosted international avant-garde events since the 1960s. Among these, Poesi Action / Fluxus / La Cédille qui sourit / Art Total9, organised in 1967 by Paul-Armand Gette with Robert Filliou and George Brecht, and Superlund, testify to an openness towards international art scenes. Recent research10 has, moreover, shown how this periphery could become a strategic site of visibility, precisely because it was situated at a distance from the dominant centres. At a local level, this situation was reinforced by the existence of an alternative ecosystem: the Drakabygget artistic community11, founded by Jørgen Nash in Skåne; Ubbeboda12, an arts centre associated in particular with the Japanese artist Yoshio Nakajima, which, from 1973 onwards, hosted seminars, actions and international gatherings; and a political climate marked by the protest movements of 1968, anti-nuclear activism and the early emergence of environmental concerns13 in Sweden. Lund thus offered a conducive intellectual environment, while its distance from the dominant centres allowed for freer experimentation, less subject to the pressures of the art market.

Against this backdrop, Galerie S:t Petri developed a rich and cross-disciplinary programme. Some exhibitions lasted justa single day; others were accompanied by discussions, concerts, lectures, readings or actions. The gallery organised discussion evenings and afternoons at least once a week. It hosted conventional formats, such as solo and group exhibitions, but also hybrid formats in which the event and participation took precedence over the artwork. This density of activity helped make the gallery a space where proposals from a wide variety of scenes and disciplines intersected.

This local rootedness can also be seen in the ways in which the gallery addressed the people of Lund, through events in which it directly invited residents to take part. Thus, in May 1974, following the last-minute cancellation of an exhibition by Boris Bućan, Marie Sjöberg and Jean Sellem invited the residents of Lund to bring to the gallery objects found on their way there: these objects formed the basis of the exhibition Objet Trouvé14. In 1981, in Les Machines en Panne15, organised following the withdrawal of another artist16, residents were invited to bring in their broken machines; the exhibition even extended beyond the gallery walls, incorporating disused machines located within a 35-kilometre radius of the gallery.17 This type of initiative highlights S:t Petri’s mode of operation: a welcoming approach, responsiveness, the ability to turn a constraint into a situation, and attention to what was happening here and now. This local rootedness also took shape through collaborations with the Institute of Art History at Lund University. Examples include the 1976 exhibition Contextual Art18 and the 1979 exhibition Perspective Japonaise, Impossible Figures19 by Oscar Reutersvärd, professor of art history and art theory at Lund University.

2. A living archive and a laboratory for living art20

Galerie S:t Petri is distinguished by a threefold function. It is at once a venue for exhibitions and exchanges, a publishing platform producing non-commercial publications, and a ‘living archive’, understood as an active infrastructure for circulation and work, in which traces, correspondence, printed matter, images and recordings form part of the exhibition, the creation of connections and the documentation process. This archival dimension was present from the gallery’s inception. Jean Sellem and Marie Sjöberg kept all the materials received. These documents were grouped together in a summary manner, with the aim of creating an archive open to consultation. This accessibility, however, remained partly theoretical: according to Jean Sellem, a lack of financial resources prevented the regular and systematic processing of the archive, which would have required a full-time staff member as well as a dedicated space.

The gallery thus served as a laboratory for ‘living art’, encompassing experimental practices centred on events, exchange, performance, participation and public speech. It hosted and initiated discussions, actions, readings, concerts, improvisations and theoretical sessions. Examples preserved in the archive include the series of discussions Philosophical Workshop (1980), the culinary action Art and Cous-Cousism21 (1979), Volterra 1974-75 (1976), which features recordings and materials related to the improvisations of the Italian group Volterra with patients in a psychiatric hospital, the poetry evening Christmas Eve with Poetry (1974), and the one-evening action Multi-Media Aktionsteater22 by the Hanover-based group Grüne Hirschkater in 1975. The gallery was therefore a space in which works and events were caught up in chains of circulation, where proposals took shape, were exchanged, commented upon and then extended. This was the case, for example, in the exhibition Non-Classified Post23, where the submissions received by the gallery were presented without any apparent hierarchy. Here, the logic of the network became the very substance of the exhibition. The circulating documents were exhibited as such, in all their heterogeneity and horizontality.

Added to this range of activities was the work of Edition Sellem. To date, twenty publications have been identified, together with one publication in microfilm form24. The formats varied: artists’ books, poetry collections, manifestos, catalogues and exhibition-related printed matter. One of the first publications was Poesi25 by Arne Zaring, published in 1972; the press noted at the time that the ‘idealists of the Galerie S:t Petri had become publishers and were distributing the volume free of charge to anyone who expressed an interest’26. Here we see the non-commercial ethos that underpinned the gallery’s operations. Another important publication was Dikt För Dig (‘Poem for You’), produced between autumn 1973 and spring 1974, a project combining a call for contributions, an exhibition and a publication. A major milestone in this publishing activity was the publication, in 1976, of the first English version of Jan Świdziński’s manifesto27 Art as a Contextual Art. Through this publication, the gallery acted as a theoretical relay between art scenes, translating and disseminating ideas from one context to another.

Thus, the gradual expansion of the gallery’s role does not appear to have resulted from a planned strategy. Rather, it stemmed from the combination of a non-commercial framework, considerable organisational flexibility, and an ethos of openness embodied by Marie Sjöberg and Jean Sellem. The expression used by Thomas Millroth in 2014, ‘gammal radikal humanistisk Lunda-anda’28, an ‘old radical humanist spirit of Lund’, may serve here as a key to interpretation. This radical humanism manifested itself in an unconditional openness to hybrid, marginal proposals, sometimes difficult to classify as exhibitions, within a framework of sharing and social engagement. The example of Linda, havande kvinna. Myndigheterna vägrar hjälpa. 5 öre, 2 ägg29 (22 May 1975) is particularly revealing. The gallery hosted a ‘living sculpture’ under the title: ‘Linda, pregnant; the authorities refuse to help; 5 öre, 2 eggs.’ Here, the gallery became a site of public address. The initial idea was to draw the authorities’ attention to Linda’s situation so that she might receive assistance. This initiative did indeed have a positive outcome.

However, this approach regularly brought the gallery into tension with the local authorities. Despite its influence on cultural life in Lund, and even though the local press30 reported on almost all its events, Galerie S:t Petri encountered recurrent misunderstandings on the part of the municipality. At various times, it secured grants to cover the rent or part of its running costs, but these remained insufficient to guarantee the venue’s stability, provide remuneration for the work carried out, or ensure the regular processing of the archives. The gallery’s material situation thus remained precarious, at odds with the intensity of its activity and the recognition it enjoyed within artistic circles. These tensions became particularly visible in 1977 with the suspension of grants. Jean Sellem and Marie Sjöberg responded with a satirical form that directly linked local politics and artistic invention: the action and exhibition Lundius Commedia dell’arte and the opening of the Lundada Bank in December 197731. On this occasion, the gallery issued its own currency, which was put into circulation in several local shops participating in the action. It thus turned the local authorities’ own forms – procedure, money and rhetoric – against them, in an exemplary artistic and political response.

For the gallery’s activities, Lund also served as a site of departure, transit and arrival for artistic proposals. The gallery gradually built a network of correspondence and collaborations linking Lund to art scenes in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in the Nordic countries. These exchanges extended from North America to Latin America and as far as Japan. The gallery’s activities were thus part of a transnational dynamic that made Lund, from its peripheral position, a node connecting art scenes otherwise compartmentalised by the Cold War.

3. Transnational Circulations

The history of Galerie S:t Petri forms part of the vast and complex history of transnational artistic networks which, from the late 1960s and especially at the turn of the 1970s, developed their own infrastructures of visibility: publications, editions, Mail Art, collaborations, and exhibition circuits situated outside the dominant Paris-New York axis.

From this perspective, the study of artistic networks connected to Central and Eastern Europe was initially structured around seminal publications that appeared around the turn of the 1970s. These helped to bring experimental practices outside the official circuits to the fore and to formalise channels of transnational exchange. Among these milestones were Klaus Groh’s Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa32, published in 1972, and Jean-Marc Poinsot’s Mail art, communication à distance, concept33, published in 1971, and the ‘Envois’ section conceived by Poinsot for the 7th Paris Biennale in November 1971. These reference points were later extended by documentation and mapping tools, often developed by the very actors in these networks: Géza Perneczky’s Network Atlas34, the Artpool archive, and the archives of Klaus Groh and Niels Lomholt, to name but a few. For Latin America, the CAYC35 (Centro de Arte y Comunicación, Buenos Aires) constitutes another major documentary hub.

Since the 2000s, the study of these networks has undergone a significant renewal. Attention has shifted from works themselves to the circuits, relationships, mediations and material infrastructures that made such exchanges possible. The work of Klara Kemp-Welch, in particular Networking the Bloc36, Zuzana Bilová’s research37 on networks between Czechoslovakia and West Germany, and the research carried out within the Resonances programme38 on ‘institutions of friendship’39, have refined our understanding of these scenes. In Sweden, university research programmes resulting in publications such as Exhibiting Art in a European Periphery? (2022) or Nordic-Baltic Cross-Border Connectivity40 (2022) have enabled a reconsideration of artistic circulations from the Nordic and Baltic regions. In France, programmes such as OwnReality (2010-2016) led by Mathilde Arnoux, and the research initiated by Elitza Dulguerova41 around the Paris Biennale have renewed the study of international artistic relations during the Cold War. In this context, initiatives such as the European Network on Latin American Art Studies42 (ENLAAS) have helped to broaden these perspectives by focusing on artistic exchanges between Europe and Latin America.

Within this context, Galerie S:t Petri, when mentioned at all, is primarily referred to as a point of passage within wider networks. Its name appears on posters, publications and circulation documents, but these scattered traces have rarely led to the gallery being treated as a subject of analysis in its own right. A particularly revealing indication appears in Diana Kaur Vonna-Michell’s doctoral thesis43, The Making of Ways of Being an Artist: The Ethopoetics of J. O. Mallander’s Conceptual Art, published in 2024: she mentions his exhibition Paper Sculptures, presented at Galerie S:t Petri in the spring of 1973, while noting that she is unable to analyse it further due to a lack of access to the archives of the institution in question.44 The documents preserved in the archive reveal the density of the gallery’s transnational circulations. A significant proportion of its exchanges involved Central and Eastern Europe. Jean Sellem maintained constant links with the Polish art scene, in particular with Akumulatory 2, founded in Poznań in 1972 by Jarosław Kozłowski. Galerie S:t Petri devoted two exhibitions to Kozłowski’s work: Modalities45 in 1977 and Wall Sculptures46 in 1979. The gallery also collaborated with the Remont Gallery in Warsaw, organising in 1976 the first exhibition in Western Europe devoted to Contextual Art,47 in partnership with the Institute of Art History at Lund University and the Malmö Konsthall, another major art centre in the region, where Jan Świdziński gave a lecture. At the same time, the gallery published the English version of Świdziński’s manifesto, Art as a Contextual Art48. Exchanges with Poland also took place through events such as the F-Art Festival in Gdańsk in 1975, in which Jean Sellem took part. It was in this context that he met, among others, the Hungarian artist Endre Tót, whom he invited to exhibit in 197549 and again in 197950.

At the same time, the gallery maintained constant links with France, notably with Paul-Armand Gette and Ben Vautier, but also through group exhibitions such as SEKVENS51 in 1973, which brought together key figures from the French art scene including Christian Boltanski, Paul-Armand Gette, Annette Messager, Sarkis Zabunyan, as well as West German artists such as Hans-Werner Kalkmann, and Czechoslovak artists such as Petr Štembera. The gallery also collaborated with artists and art scenes in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, West and East Germany, for example by hosting the artist Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt52, whose typewritings are fully in keeping with the aesthetic and material conditions of the Eastern European Mail Art network.

Regional connections within Scandinavia were also significant. Denmark served as a key cross-border link, particularly via Copenhagen, where the gallery maintained ties with Daner Galleriet, a gallery active between 1972 and 1977 and associated with the collector John Hunov and the artist Tom Krøjer. The event International Communication Event. Peace Please.53, organised from 27 January to 10 February 1977 at HUSET in Copenhagen on Krøjer’s initiative, is one of the most striking examples of this. During the exhibition, international participants transmitted their ideas, information and works by telex; the machine installed in the hall made the communication infrastructure itself a component of the exhibition. The event was explicitly situated within the political landscape opened up by the Helsinki Accords (signed on 1 August 1975) regarding the free exchange of ideas and cultural and artistic expression. In his press release, Tom Krøjer presented Peace Please as a ‘living manifestation of communication between human beings across absurd national borders’54 and stated that this experiment aims to put into practice the principles of the Helsinki Accords. Through its format – the continuous reception of contributions from numerous countries, transmission via telex, the circulation of images and texts, film screenings, lectures, happenings and concerts – Peace Please transformed a diplomatic framework into an aesthetic and communicative infrastructure. In this context, Galerie S:t Petri acted as a mediator, coordinator, and technical and relational intermediary55.

Beyond Europe, cultural exchanges are more uneven but nonetheless very real. They took the form of European tours by artists based in North America, including figures such as Françoise Sullivan56, Anthony McCall57 and Douglas Huebler58, as well as efforts to foster exchanges with Latin America, notably through the CAYC59 in Buenos Aires. Japanese artists working in Europe, such as Yoshio Nakajima60, who was very active in southern Sweden through Ubbeboda, and Keiji Uematsu61 in Düsseldorf, opened up channels to Japan. The exhibition Catastrophe Art From The East62 thus brought together eleven Japanese artists in 1975. These events traced further lines on the map of S:t Petri. These movements were not homogeneous; they were characterised by varying intensities, material constraints, passages and, at times, impossibilities. Yet they did indeed form a transnational geography of the gallery.

While these connections demonstrate the gallery’s place within a dense international network, they did not guarantee its financial stability. A decisive turning point came in January 1980, when Marie Sjöberg launched a petition in support of Jean Sellem’s work, calling for a minimum income to be granted to him. Although Galerie S:t Petri had already received, following the 1977 Lundius Commedia dell’arte initiative, a grant covering the rent and part of its running costs, this did not guarantee the livelihood of its founder, who found himself in a very precarious situation. Circulated internationally, the petition was widely shared within artistic and intellectual circles. Among the signatories were leading cultural figures, artists and theorists, such as Pierre Restany, Lucy Lippard and Oscar Reutersvärd, to name but a few. This mobilisation attests to the international recognition the gallery had achieved. However, it was not enough to ensure its long-term survival. In a letter addressed63 to Niels Lomholt dated 5 May 1980, Marie Sjöberg outlined the gallery’s financial situation and a rent increase scheduled for 1981. Galerie S:t Petri closed permanently at the end of March 1982, following its final exhibition, Substance in Transformation, presented from 3 to 18 March 1982 by Annette Lehmann and Ingela Bergehall.

Conclusion

Through its archives, Galerie S:t Petri emerges as a singular case within the landscape of experimental artistic practices of the 1970s. Although situated on the periphery, it nevertheless functioned as an active node of transnational exchange, connecting art scenes fragmented by the geopolitical context, by distance, and by unequal access to institutions and means of dissemination.

Its hybrid and flexible structure enabled the development of forms of exchange, mediation and collaboration outside dominant institutional frameworks. It was at once a venue, a relay point, a platform and a tool for circulation. Its ‘radical humanism’, sustained by the constant commitment of Marie Sjöberg and Jean Sellem, its organisational flexibility, its rejection of a strictly commercial model, and its attention to the immediacy of ideas and forms all contributed to making this venue in Lund a transnational platform for experimentation.

The relative absence of Galerie S:t Petri from art-historical accounts thus invites us to examine more closely the role of alternative and peripheral spaces in the construction of art histories and artistic networks. The recent accessibility of the archive opens up new perspectives: it makes it possible to document the history of the gallery itself, while also opening up other avenues of research including multilingualism, communication strategies, the place and visibility of women artists within these networks, links to environmental activism, and non-commercial forms of publication. This article constitutes a first step in this direction: an attempt to reposition Galerie S:t Petri within the transnational art history of the 1970s, on the basis of its traces, its circulations, its files, and what they now allow us to reconstruct.

Translation note

This English version was translated from the original French text with the assistance of DeepL. It was subsequently reviewed and edited by the author. The author takes full responsibility for the final content of this publication.

Selected Bibliography

Bilová, Zuzana, Brücken für künstlerische Formen. Kunstnetzwerke zwischen Westdeutschland und der Tschechoslowakei im Kalten Krieg (1968-1989), PhD thesis, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 2017.

Dulguerova, Elitza, ed., La Biennale internationale des jeunes artistes, Paris (1959-1985), Paris / Dijon, INHA / Les Presses du réel, 2023.

Edling, Marta, and Annika Öhrner, eds., ‘Nordic-Baltic Cross-Border Connectivity’, Artl@s Bulletin, vol. 11, no. 2, 2022, available online: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas/vol11/iss2/.

Groh, Klaus, ed., Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa: ČSSR, Jugoslawien, Polen, Rumänien, UDSSR, Ungarn, Cologne, DuMont Schauberg, 1972.

Kemp-Welch, Klara, Networking the Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe 1965-1981, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2019, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11362.001.0001.

MacLeod, Katarina Wadstein, From Flux to Festivity: International Art in Lunds konsthall 1965-1967, Lund, Lunds konsthall / Södertörn University, 2022.

MacLeod, Katarina Wadstein, ‘Superlund: Lunds konsthall och det centrala i det perifera’, Periskop, no. 20, 2018.

MacLeod, Katarina Wadstein, ‘Troubling Peripheries: Pierre Restany and Superlund’, Konsthistorisk tidskrift / Journal of Art History, vol. 90, no. 1, 2021, pp. 13-24, https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00233609.2021.1884597.

MacLeod, Katarina Wadstein, Marta Edling and Pella Myrstener, ‘Exhibiting Art in a European Periphery? International Art in Sweden during the Cold War’, Artl@s Bulletin, vol. 11, no. 2, 2022, Article 10.

Marotti, William A., ed., Art and Street Politics in the Global 1960s: Yoshio Nakajima and the Global Avant-Garde, Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Japan, London, Routledge, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003149149.

McEvilley, Thomas, ‘Mail Art Then and Now’, Artforum, vol. 23, no. 1, September 1984.

Miśniakiewicz, Małgorzata, ‘“Being Together”: The Meeting of Mail-Artists at the F-Art Festival in Gdańsk, 1975’, ARTMargins Online, 18 June 2024.

Perneczky, Géza, Network Atlas: Works and Publications by the People of the First Network, Volume 1: A–N, unedited manuscript for letter size, updated April 2003, Cologne, Soft Geometry, available online: https://www.c3.hu/~perneczky/mail.art/Atlas/Letter_S/LAtlas_1.pdf.

Poinsot, Jean-Marc, Mail art, communication à distance, concept, Paris, CEDIC, 1971.

Rasmussen, Mikkel Bolt, and Jakob Jakobsen, eds., Expect Anything, Fear Nothing: The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere, Copenhagen / New York, Nebula / Autonomedia, 2011.

Sandström, Frida, ‘Striden om Lunds konsthall’, Kunstkritikk, 26 June 2014, available online: https://kunstkritikk.se/striden-om-lunds-konsthall/.

Vonna-Michell, Diana Kaur, The Making of Ways of Being an Artist: The Ethopoetics of J. O. Mallander’s Conceptual Art, Uppsala, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2024.

Welch, Chuck, Eternal Network: A Mail Art Anthology, vol. 1, Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 1995.

1. 1 Jean-Marc Poinsot, Mail art, communication à distance, concept, Paris, CEDIC, 1971, p. 27. See also Thomas McEvilley, “Mail Art Then and Now”, ,Artforum,, vol. 23, no. 1, September 1984; Chuck Welch, Eternal Network: A Mail Art Anthology, vol. 1, Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 1995, p. 23.
2. 2 Copy of a letter from Jean Sellem to Klaus Groh, 10 February 1975, Galerie S:t Petri archives. In this letter, Jean Sellem explains that he cannot exhibit works dating from two years earlier, which he considers outdated.
3. 3 On the gallery’s fragmentary visibility in research, see in particular Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, “Superlund: Lunds konsthall och det centrala i det perifera”, Periskop, no. 20, 2018, p. 98; Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz, “Being Together: The Meeting of Mail-Artists at the F-Art Festival in Gdańsk, 1975”, ARTMargins online, 18 June 2024.
4. 4 Diana Kaur Vonna-Michell, The Making of Ways of Being an Artist: The Ethopoetics of J.O. Mallander’s Conceptual Art, Uppsala, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2024, p. 48. The author mentions the exhibition Paper Sculptures, presented at Galerie S:t Petri from 27 April to 9 May 1973, while noting that she is unable to analyse it due to a lack of access to the archives of the institution in question.
5. 5 Information provided by Jean Sellem in conversation with Emmanuelle Rapin and Raphaël Lévy, Lund, 21 June 2023, recording 1, at approximately 35:00, and confirmed in subsequent exchanges.
6. 6 This multilingualism provides concrete evidence of the gallery’s transnational character, while also raising questions regarding the translation and interpretation of archival sources, particularly those drawn from the local Swedish press and its specific political and cultural context.
7. 7 On the notion of Lund as a ‘periphery’, see Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, ‘Troubling Peripheries: Pierre Restany and Superlund’, Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History vol. 90, no. 1, 2021, pp. 13-24, https://doi.org/10.1080/00233609.2021.1884597; Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, Marta Edling and Pella Myrstener, ‘Exhibiting Art in a European Periphery? International Art in Sweden during the Cold War’, Artl@s Bulletin vol. 11, no. 2, 2022, Article 10, https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1713626/FULLTEXT02.pdf
8. 8 Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, From Flux to Festivity: International Art in Lunds konsthall 1965-1967, Lunds Konsthall / Södertörn University, 2022.
9. 9 Poesi Action / Fluxus /La Cédille qui sourit / Art Total (Robert Filliou and George Brecht), Lunds Konsthall, 10-12 March 1967; and the international exhibition Superlund (Pierre Restany), Lunds Konsthall, 14 September-29 October 1967.
10. 10 Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, ‘Troubling Peripheries: Pierre Restany and Superlund’, Konsthistorisk tidskrift / Journal of Art History, vol. 90, no. 1, 2021, pp. 13-24.
11. 11 Drakabygget was founded in 1960 by Jørgen Nash in Skåne. Initially an experimental artistic community based on a farm, it became, from 1962 onwards, an important Scandinavian centre of the dissident Situationist Bauhaus movement. See Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen and Jakob Jakobsen, eds., Expect Anything, Fear Nothing: The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere, Copenhagen / New York, Nebula / Autonomedia, 2011.
12. 12 On Ubbeboda and Yoshio Nakajima, see Marotti, William A., ed. Art and Street Politics in the Global 1960s: Yoshio Nakajima and the Global Avant-Garde, Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Japan, London, Routledge, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003149149. Galerie S:t Petri also participated in the 1974 Ubbeboda Symposium, as documented in the Galerie S:t Petri archives.
13. 13 Sweden played a leading role in the internationalisation of environmental issues from the late 1960s onward. In 1968, the Swedish government proposed that the United Nations organise a world conference on human environmental problems requiring international cooperation. This initiative led to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm from 5 to 16 June 1972, the first major global conference on environmental issues. It resulted in the Stockholm Declaration and Action Plan for the Human Environment and contributed to the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). See United Nations, ‘United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 1972’, available online: https://www.un.org/en/conferences/environment/stockholm1972
14. 14 The Yugoslav artist Boris Bućan, based in Zagreb, was due to exhibit at the gallery from 10 to 16 May 1974, but, for reasons that remain unclear, the exhibition was cancelled at the last minute. Marie Sjöberg and Jean Sellem then invited the residents of Lund to bring objects found on their way to the gallery; these objects formed the basis of the exhibition Objet Trouvé, held from 10 to 15 May 1974.
15. 15 Les Machines en Panne, 20 February-10 March 1981. View exhibition
16. 16 Artist not yet identified at this stage of the research.
17. 17 This information is given in Marie Sjöberg and Jean Sellem’s introduction to the exhibition catalogue Les Machines en Panne, Munich, Omnibus Press, 1981.
18. 18 Contextual Art, 5 February-5 March 1976, Institute of Art History, Lund University. View exhibition
19. 19 Oscar Reutersvärd, Perspective Japonaise, Impossible Figures, 27 January-11 February 1979, in collaboration with the Institute of Art History at Lund University. View exhibition
20. 20 Here, ‘living art’ refers to art in the making, in a sense close to the vocabulary of the visual arts of the 1960s and 1970s: art rooted in the contemporary context of its time and associated with experimental, event-based and participatory practices.
21. 21 One-day culinary action held during the exhibition Non-Classified Post (30 August-15 September 1979).
22. 22 See the Jean Sellem / Galerie S:t Petri online archive, list of exhibitions and posters.
23. 23 Non-Classified Post, 30 August-15 September 1979. View exhibition
24. 24 The catalogue for the event International Communication Event. Peace Please, Copenhagen, 1977, was produced in microfilm form, as the initial plan for a printed publication could not be realised.
25. 25 Arne Zaring, Poesi, Malmö / Lund, Galerie S:t Petri, 1972, 21.5 × 21 cm, published in an edition of 500 copies, of which 200 were numbered and signed; six poems in Swedish, each illustrated on a single page.
26. 26 See the press article on the gallery’s first publication, Poesi by Arne Zaring, published in 1972. The opening of the article reads: ‘The idealists at Galerie S:t Petri in Lund have suddenly turned their hand to publishing and are presenting a small collection of poems by Arne Zaring. It costs nothing: it is given free of charge to anyone who expresses an interest’ (author’s translation).
27. 27 Jan Świdziński, Art as a Contextual Art, Lund, Edition Sellem, 1976.
28. 28 As reported by Frida Sandström, ‘Striden om Lunds konsthall’, Kunstkritikk, 26 June 2014, available online: https://kunstkritikk.se/striden-om-lunds-konsthall/, accessed 28 February 2026.
29. 29 Linda, havande kvinna. Myndigheterna vägrar hjälpa. 5 öre, 2 ägg [Linda, pregnant woman. The authorities refuse to help. 5 öre, 2 eggs], described as a ‘living sculpture’ in the related poster and press release, Galerie S:t Petri, 22 May 1975, Jean Sellem / Galerie S:t Petri online archive, accessed 28 February 2026. View exhibition
30. 30 Jean Sellem systematically preserved the press articles relating to the gallery’s activities.
31. 31 Lundius Commedia dell’arte and Lundada Bank, from 15 December 1977 at 3.00 p.m., with ‘no set end’, as stated on the exhibition poster: ‘The Comedy Begins On Thursday 15 December 1977 At 3.00 p.m. How Long The Comedy Will Play Is Not Determined.’ View exhibition
32. 32 Klaus Groh, ed., Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa: ČSSR, Jugoslawien, Polen, Rumänien, UDSSR, Ungarn, Cologne, DuMont Schauberg, 1972. The volume is available in full online: https://monoskop.org/ File:Groh_Klaus_Aktuelle_Kunst_in_Osteuropa.pdf. In 1969, Klaus Groh founded International Artists’ Cooperation (IAC), through which he distributed newsletters, mailing lists and, from 1972 onwards, small booklets that helped to intensify transnational exchanges.
33. 33 Jean-Marc Poinsot, Mail art, communication à distance, concept, Paris, CEDIC, 1971.
34. 34 Géza Perneczky, Network Atlas: Works and Publications by the People of the First Network, Volume 1: A–N, unedited manuscript for letter size, updated April 2003, Cologne, Soft Geometry, available online: https://www.c3.hu/~perneczky/mail.art/Atlas/Letter_S/LAtlas_1.pdf.
35. 35 The Centro de Arte y Comunicación(CAYC) was founded in Buenos Aires in 1968 by the art critic and entrepreneur Jorge Glusberg. An interdisciplinary centre and network, the CAYC promoted the production and circulation of Latin American experimental art through exhibitions, publications and international exchanges within the region and beyond. The CAYC archives are available online through the CAYC Files, a joint initiative of ISLAA and ICAA: https://islaa.org/updates/cayc-files/.
36. 36 Klara Kemp-Welch, Networking the Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe 1965-1981, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2019, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11362.001.0001.
37. 37 Zuzana Bilová, Brücken für künstlerische Formen: Netzwerke der Kunst zwischen Westdeutschland und der Tschechoslowakei in der Zeit des Kalten Krieges (1968-1989), PhD thesis, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 2017, available online: https://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20980/1/Bilova_Zuzana.pdf.
38. 38 Resonances: Regional and Transregional Cultural Transfer in the Art of the 1970s is a research project initiated by the Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI), Budapest. See Resonances, available online: https://kemki.hu/research-department/6-Resonances.
39. 39 Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz, ‘“Introduction”, “Being Together” and “a Presence to the Bare Bones”: The Meeting of Mail Artists at the F-Art Festival in 1975’”, paper presented in session 5 ‘Institutions of Friendship’, Resonances II (KEMKI / Artpool, Budapest, 11-12 May 2022), online video, YouTube, 15:51-16:29, https://youtu.be/c1eFGQX_yzg?si=uwSTsYdb_x4CO68T&t=944, accessed 15 February 2026.
40. 40 Marta Edling and Annika Öhrner, eds, ‘Nordic-Baltic Cross-Border Connectivity’, Artl@s Bulletin, vol. 11, no. 2, 2022, available online: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas/vol11/iss2/, accessed 10 February 2026.
41. 41 See also the collective volume edited by Elitza Dulguerova, La Biennale internationale des jeunes artistes, Paris (1959-1985), Paris / Dijon, INHA / Les Presses du réel, 2023. This book is the result of the research programme 1959-1985, au prisme de la Biennale de Paris, initiated and directed by Elitza Dulguerova at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) between 2017 and 2021.
42. 42 The European Network on Latin American Art Studies (ENLAAS) is a research network devoted to the study and dissemination of Latin American art in Europe. Its members include, among others, Margarida Brito Alves, Katarzyna Cytlak, Laura Karp Lugo, Giulia Lamoni, Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra and Katerina Valdivia Bruch. See ENLAAS, available online: https://enlaas.org/About, accessed 9 March 2026.
43. 43 Diana Kaur Vonna-Michell, The Making of Ways of Being an Artist: The Ethopoetics of J. O. Mallander’s Conceptual Art, Uppsala, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2024.
44. 44 Diana Kaur Vonna-Michell writes: ‘The only exhibition in Sweden that falls under this periodisation and which I do not analyse in detail is his solo exhibition Paper Sculptures at Galleri 1 in Stockholm, 26 January-6 February 1973, and Galerie St: Petri in Lund, 27 April-9 May 1973. The exhibition Paper Sculptures was also shown at the Kirjavintti gallery in Helsinki, 11-26 April 1973. The reason for this is that I do not have access to archival sources from these art institutions.’ Ibid., p. 48.
45. 45 Jarosław Kozłowski, Modalities, 14-26 January 1977. View exhibition
46. 46 Jarosław Kozłowski, Wall Sculptures, 17 December 1979-2 January 1980. View exhibition
47. 47 Contextual Art, 5 February-5 March 1976, Institute of Art History, Lund University. View exhibition
48. 48 Copy of a letter from Jean Sellem, dated 11 March 1976, addressed to the director of the Remont Gallery, Warsaw, in which Sellem reports on the course of the Contextual Art event and on the publication of Jan Świdziński’s text Art as a Contextual Art, Jean Sellem / Galerie S:t Petri online archive.
49. 49 Endre Tót, Stars From Poland, 17-29 October 1975. View exhibition
50. 50 Endre Tót, Drawings and Writings of Joy, 15-25 November 1979. View exhibition
51. 51 SEKVENS, 25 August-5 September 1973. View exhibition
52. 52 Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Typewritings, 10-20 June 1981. View exhibition
53. 53 Over eighty international artists contributed to the event; peace research institutes, economists and researchers were also invited, and the public was encouraged to participate. See International Communication Event. Peace Please, HUSET, Copenhagen, 27 January-10 February 1977, Jean Sellem / Galerie S:t Petri online archive, especially Emmanuelle Rapin, ‘Why Peace Please? The Helsinki Accords (1975) and Communication Beyond Borders’, May 2026, https://www.raphaelleonardlevy.com/jeansellem/peace-please.
54. 54 See Tom Krøjer, ‘Peace Please. Press Release on the First Five Days of the International Communication Event’, 1 February 1977, document no. 41, 1/2, section ‘Documents’, in International Communication Event. Peace Please, Jean Sellem / Galerie S:t Petri online archive, https://www.raphaelleonardlevy.com/jeansellem/peace-please.
55. 55 The event was supported by an international network coordinated by Galerie S:t Petri, which sent invitations to artists across the world. Participants transmitted their ideas through the telex system or, for those without access to telex, by more traditional means, including letters, parcels, telegrams and telephone calls. These communications were then incorporated into the exhibition in the order in which they arrived.
56. 56 Françoise Sullivan, Corridart on Rue Sherbrooke, Galerie S:t Petri, 28 September-6 October 1976. View exhibition
57. 57 Anthony McCall, Long Film For Ambient Light, Galerie S:t Petri, 4-15 October 1975. View exhibition
58. 58 Douglas Huebler, Galerie S:t Petri, 16-25 April 1976. View exhibition
59. 59 CAYC, Galerie S:t Petri / Institute of Art History, Lund University, 5 September-5 October 1975. View exhibition
60. 60 Yoshio Nakajima, Galerie S:t Petri, 14-25 April 1978. View exhibition
61. 61 Keiji Uematsu, Galerie S:t Petri, 11-13 August 1975. View exhibition
62. 62 Catastrophe Art From The East. The Final Institution (Fain) Nirvana Committee, Galerie S:t Petri, 8-13 February 1975. View exhibition
63. 63 Marie Sjöberg, letter to Niels Lomholt, 5 May 1980, available online on the Lomholt Mail Art Archive website: https://www.lomholtmailartarchive.dk/location/sweden/1980-05-05-st-petri.

Translation of the French text to follow.