LITTLE POT EXHIBITION
2016, Suvilahti, Helsinki. Unfired stoneware.
Photos by Tommi Teronen
LITTLE POT EXHIBITION consisted of 107 pots, and it took place in public stairs in Suvilahti. I wanted to study the character of the place. I manipulated the place for one week by using unfired, thrown clay pots. The evolving process was observed by photographing and diary.
The artwork was submitted to the place and its actors, and placed in the lively public spot it was inevitably in dialogue with the bypassers. Instead of answers, the LITTLE POT EXHIBITION opened new questions. What are the invisible limits of our society? What are the rules of living in a public space?
Photo by Tommi Teronen
Photo by Tommi Teronen
Twenty Brave Canaries
Twenty Brave Canaries, 2018. Athens, Greece. Unfired stoneware.
I made Twenty Brave Canaries in Athens in June 2018. The intervention was situated on the main building of the Athens Polytechnic. It was built from unfired clay elements. I set the installation on Sunday noon and it lasted until the next morning.
The artwork discusses the pet culture and pet shops. The canaries and budgerigars have long history as companion birds. The canaries are popular pets because of their delightful singing. The bird may end spending its whole life in a pet shop in a too small cage and the room can be very restless during the business hours. The defective care and living circumstances can lead to abnormalities and stress symptoms like obsessive-compulsive disorders.
Western Circle
Western Circle, 2016. Espoo. Unfired porcelain.
The Western Circle consists of 100 unfired clay vases. The temporal artwork was situated in Aalto University’s Alvar Aalto campus park in Espoo. The intervention created a space dividing element into the open park and it enclosed the hub, the crossing of all the pedestrian ways. The bypassers and the other actors of the place were inevitably in dialogue with the intervention. It asked them to react to a change in mundane and interference on their daily route. I intended to provoke people’s thinking about the unpredictable: Is this an obstacle or an opportunity?
The circle shape is reminds of the places genius loci, the nature sciences spirit in the campus. A circle indicates to the spirituality and religious systems. A circle encloses things in and out, and it can be a circle of insiders. I build my public interventions from unfired clay, which is fragile but also unharmful for the environment. In Western Circle I produced the vases by using slip casting which is a technique for the mass-production of pottery.
