Building my newest piece <<<<<>>>>> in Mänttä.
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sunnuntai 25. toukokuuta 2014
keskiviikko 23. huhtikuuta 2014
Weekend Residency in Gothenburg
I spent a weekend in March in Johanna Adelbäck's and Pontus Johansson's brilliant Weekend Residency in Gothenburg. The visit was accompanied by many strange coincidences regarding the uneasy relationship between Finnish and Swedish people.
There is a public sculpture in my home town Turku I have walked past many times during the years spent in the city. I had not payed too much attention to it, but had still kind of liked it. My routes do not usually cross that part of the city, but I had recently started a new hobby, which caused me to walk past the sculpture a few times during the last month. I knew it's name had something to do with friendship and it was made in the fifties by the Turku-based sculptor Wäinö Aaltonen, who was at that time very popular monument-maker nationwide - working to enhance the self-esteem of the young nation after war and during the first decades of independence.
Two days before my trip to Gothenburg a journalist from the local newspaper called me and asked if I would like to select one of the public pieces of Aaltonen and comment it for an article she was writing about the 120th anniversary of the sculptor on Saturday 8.3.2014. I promised to participate, but did not have any idea straight away, so I had to check out the images of his pieces on the net. When I saw the image of this sculpture, I was certain that I want to select only it and no other piece. I found also some background information about the work, and at that point I learned that it was made as a gift to thank the city of Gothenburg of the help it gave to Turku during the war. So, the sculpture was originally made for Gothenburg although we had a copy (which I had all these years believed to be the only one) in Turku as well.
I had no plans for the piece I would want to work with during the Weekend Residency. This sudden connection with the sculpture was totally in line with my working methods, relying on the coincidence and open relationship with the environment. The sculpture issue, although focusing on these two cities, is all about the uneasy history of the states of Sweden and Finland.
Everything is interconnected. One of the most impressive things I met in Gothenburg was a stuffed whale previously used i.e. as a cafe. Later on I found out they had used it as well for collecting money for the Finns during the war. Third piece in the puzzle telling about the complicated relationship Finnish people have towards the Swedish, who seem to always be better than us, is the baby pelargonia plants I brought home from Johanna and Pontus. This plant represents coziness, happiness and safety – all typical for the caricature of a Swedish society. These particular sprouts will be used in a piece I had some months earlier planned to make of pelargonias. I was about to ask the sprouts from some friends, but at the end got them without any searching – from Gothenburg, Sweden.
There is a public sculpture in my home town Turku I have walked past many times during the years spent in the city. I had not payed too much attention to it, but had still kind of liked it. My routes do not usually cross that part of the city, but I had recently started a new hobby, which caused me to walk past the sculpture a few times during the last month. I knew it's name had something to do with friendship and it was made in the fifties by the Turku-based sculptor Wäinö Aaltonen, who was at that time very popular monument-maker nationwide - working to enhance the self-esteem of the young nation after war and during the first decades of independence.
Two days before my trip to Gothenburg a journalist from the local newspaper called me and asked if I would like to select one of the public pieces of Aaltonen and comment it for an article she was writing about the 120th anniversary of the sculptor on Saturday 8.3.2014. I promised to participate, but did not have any idea straight away, so I had to check out the images of his pieces on the net. When I saw the image of this sculpture, I was certain that I want to select only it and no other piece. I found also some background information about the work, and at that point I learned that it was made as a gift to thank the city of Gothenburg of the help it gave to Turku during the war. So, the sculpture was originally made for Gothenburg although we had a copy (which I had all these years believed to be the only one) in Turku as well.
I had no plans for the piece I would want to work with during the Weekend Residency. This sudden connection with the sculpture was totally in line with my working methods, relying on the coincidence and open relationship with the environment. The sculpture issue, although focusing on these two cities, is all about the uneasy history of the states of Sweden and Finland.
Everything is interconnected. One of the most impressive things I met in Gothenburg was a stuffed whale previously used i.e. as a cafe. Later on I found out they had used it as well for collecting money for the Finns during the war. Third piece in the puzzle telling about the complicated relationship Finnish people have towards the Swedish, who seem to always be better than us, is the baby pelargonia plants I brought home from Johanna and Pontus. This plant represents coziness, happiness and safety – all typical for the caricature of a Swedish society. These particular sprouts will be used in a piece I had some months earlier planned to make of pelargonias. I was about to ask the sprouts from some friends, but at the end got them without any searching – from Gothenburg, Sweden.
sunnuntai 13. huhtikuuta 2014
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