Margrethe Odgaard

Textile and colour designer Margrethe Odgaard approach colour as a rich sensory experience. By immersing herself in the intricate interplay of colour, material, and light, she seeks a deeper understanding of how we experience and emotionally connect with our physical surroundings.

Balancing her time between commercial collaborations with renowned companies like Kvadrat, Muuto, Montana, HAY, and IKEA, and an artistic practice rooted in self-initiated research and unique work, Odgaard has showcased her work in solo exhibitions at prominent museums such as Willumsen’s Museum (DK), Röhsska Museum (SE), Designmuseo Helsinki (FI), and Munkeruphus (DK). Since 2023, she has been associated with the Parisian gallery Maria Wettergreen, where her unique works are exhibited and made available for purchase

Her work has garnered numerous prizes and awards, including the Three-year work grant from The Danish Arts Foundation in 2015, the prestigious Torsten & Wanja Söderberg Prize in 2016 and most recent The Art, Design, and Architecture Prize from the Einar Hansen og Hustru fru Vera Hansens Fond in 2023.

Before setting up her design studio in 2013, Odgaard worked as a printing assistant at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, USA, followed by seven years as textile designer in the French fashion company EPICE. She graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design in 2005 with additional studies at Rhode Island School of Design in USA.

Margrethe Odgaard Studio
Strandgade 75 C
3000 Elsinore, Denmark

Studio enquiries
hello@margretheodgaard.com

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Shades of Light invites you inside the studio of colour designer Margrethe Odgaard. Based on a hands-on sensory approach to colour, this book of 276 colours is a carefully curated collection of colours that come into their own in the delicate intensity of Nordic light.

‘At a market in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco I was handed my vegetables and nuts in plastic bags with gorgeous stripes in turquoise and orange-brown. I persuaded the vendor to sell me a whole roll of bags, but when I unpacked them back home, they had lost their lustre. A colour only truly works when it is compatible with the local light conditions, and the combination of turquoise and orange-brown plastic suddenly seemed alien and over the top in my Copenhagen life.’

Over the course of two years, Louisiana Channel has followed the proces of making of ‘Shades of Light’, watch the interview with Margrethe Odgaard: