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In her atelier in the attic of a block of flats on Kungsholmen, Meta Isæus-Berlin is busy putting the finishing touches to her coming exhibition. Leaning against the walls are gigantic canvases filled with her very distinctive painting, with its sensually organic forms. However, it wasn’t her painting but her installation art that made Meta Isæus-Berlin one of Sweden’s hottest names in the art world of the 90s.

During her twenty-odd-year career, Anneè Olofsson has created imagery drawing upon our worst fears. In order to stage-manage thoughts on ageing, mortality, and molestation – thoughts that interest her – she has cast herself, as well as her parents, in all this. But what happens when life catches up on art? One year ago Olofsson’s father passed away and death experienced only through role-play suddenly became very real.

Greying and mealy lavender flowers, bone dry, stuffed into a little muslin sack. You may have encountered such an oddment, tucked away in the cupboards of a summerhouse, sitting on top of linen folded long ago. All the essential oils have dried up; the flowers emit only the faintest odour, hardly noticeable. It is now merely a decorative feature – a still life of sorts.