Teamwork

Architect Viljo Revel's exhibition 'It was team work, you see' at Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki exhibits architect's life work in a proper setting, in a building designed by him. Worth a visit if you are nearby before mid May 2010...

Our visit was a quick one on Easter Monday morning, before cooking a lamb feast with a few Yorkshire puddings... I know I know - not a usual combination - but because of a great demand the chef had to live up to his audience. I guess the word 'his' gave up the BIG secret (?) who cooks the fantastic feasts in this house :)

Culture corner

Tapio Wirkkala: Utima Thule, 1967. via.

I suppose we are overdue an Architecture Corner - but not much going on that front so we'll have to cast our net a bit wider. Although only as far as Espoo it seems...

This week we visited EMMA (Espoo Museum of Modern Art) at WeeGee for an exhibition of the work of Finnish sculptor and product designer Tapio Wirkkala (1915-1985). He trod a strange path between sometimes figurative, sometimes abstract works and apparently unwilling to differentiate between his product work and sculptures. Much of his work - certainly his best known pieces - are in carved plywood (for which he used extremely high-quality birch plywood to his own specifications). 'Ultima Thule' (pictured above) which shares it's name with the Iittala glassware he also designed, is one of the centrepieces of the exhibition, although I actually liked the roughness of his studio doors more made from simple pieces of standard timber (unfortunately I couldn't find a picture on the web and we couldn't take photos). You can read more about him here and here.

Also in Espoo last night were RinneRadio (a jazz via hip-hop, electronica, straight fusion, dark dub, ambient, and Saami yoik singing experience since the late eighties) and Circo Aereo performing 'Ruostetta iholla' (rust on the skin). Featuring a RR backed choreographed acrobatic act with scaffolding, posture balls, planks, tyres, a trampoline and a suspended hoop... you can find video of their other shows on YouTube, but here is Ommatidi from RinneRadio.

Hot water bottle

Plasticiens Volants at Taiteiden Yö (Night of the arts) 21.8.09 in Helsinki

It was advertised in the papers that during the arts' night on Friday the fairy tales become true... and they did - in the form of the hot water bottles. Perhaps I should explain...

A few years ago we were driving around the country side with Emmdee and I happened to see a group of colourful hot air balloons in the sky - and I scared the driver by yelling loudly (as I often do): 'Look - lots of hot water bottles over there!' Of course the driver couldn't see them immediately, but wondered probably in his mind that now she has lost it big time.

He might have rubbed his eyes twice on friday too, if he saw the hot water bottles, which were shaped differently; there was a whale, a helpful lobster who let the pearl out from its shell (& eventually put it back where it belongs), an evil octopus & small sea horses & crabs - but he didn't as he was sleeping home...

That brings to my mind that I was supposed to book a hot water bottle ride for this September - yes the one we were suppose to take already a year ago :0 Perhaps we are lucky with the weather this time around?

I don't think I quite got that...

actually I didn't: from Kiasma swag

If you're going to be late in Finland, it is good to have a good reason as lateness is, to put it mildly, somewhat frowned upon - and as excuses go 'I had to wait for Tarja Halonen to get out of my way' is not bad when being (almost) late for something. That's Finland's President Halonen if you didn't realise.

You might have read my post last month about me being one of the winners in the Ola Kolehmainen / Kiasma / Nokia Ovi valokuvakilpailu (photography competition).  As their site says, Ola chose 14 photos by 11 people (3 of which were mine - Zinc Slash Tree, Finlandia and Curves) from the 96 entrants.  Well on Friday I got my prize (luckily I wasn't too held up by a certain important person in reception) - a workshop with Ola on our efforts and tour of the show with him, which was also photographed for posterity.

 

Ola explains all... do I look like I get it?

If you look carefully at this picture you can see Ola commenting on some of my photographs. (He was interested in how these pictures went from 'documentary' to 'half documentary/half abstract' (crop out the sky...), to totally abstract; the difficulty on using a culturally, and meaning loaded building like the Berlin Jewish museum as a subject for 'abstract' photography; and also why I had chosen those pictures/subjects).  He also was extremely conversant with the buildings and architects themselves, which was interesting to me (as the only architect in the room) but perhaps over the heads of some of the others.  

Or perhaps not... Unfortunately the ten minutes while we discussed them was the only time spent speaking English for almost three hours - so it was hard to tell.  While what little I followed seemed interesting, you'll understand why I'm looking a bit blank in the photos.  I think he was discussing how naming the pictures changed them (eg. the picture of the reflection of Mies' Barcelona Pavillion 'Less Less Is Is More More' becomes a discourse on minimalism), and also how chance and accidents in the darkroom can totally change a picture even when carefully pre-planned and considered (a white building becomes vivid yellow; a magpie lands on a window ledge; a tiny weed grows unseen from behind a metal disc...), amongst other things, but... He was however kind enough to say he hoped I got something out of it at the end - probably noticing my glazed look!

We did also get a swag-bag from Kiasma (contents pictured below for authentic anal-retentive micro-blogging) - including a very apt t-shirt and pad of post-it notes considering my struggles... but my foolish dreams of shiny Nokia kit or photography books were dashed. Never mind - a fascinating day in any case.

This is Not Architecture

Zinc Slash Tree: From this is not architecture

At Helsinki's Kiasma art gallery until 24th April is an exhibition of Finnish photographer Ola Kolemainen's abstracted pictures of buildings, entitled 'A Building is Not A Building' - perhaps in a nod to the surrealist Magritte's famous 'The Treachery of Images' caption 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe'. Then again the title is also literally true as, in the case of his carefully cropped and oversized works, none of the pictures are really of the buildings featured as such but of effects encountered when looking at them.

Now as you may know by now this is just my sort of thing - combining architecture with finding details and patterns from architecture and nature with my camera - so when I found out there was a photograph competition (sponsored by Nokia's Ovi picture sharing service) to get a tour of the exhibition with the photographer I thought 'why not?' (or to be exact Konna said 'you should enter that') and picked out a few of my old pics, cropped them as needed to give them a more abstracted look, and - voila!

      

red arcs, grooves, jupiter, light wave, finlandia - but can anyone identify the six buildings featured on this page?

There were apparently about 100 entrants, so I was quite pleased to hear today I was selected as one of the winners... although it's not clear which of my pictures I was selected for - I think 'red arcs' is most like his work, although 'zinc slash tree' is my favourite. I'll give the architects in the room a few days to work out which buildings (some quite famous) are featured.

I think that is probably the first thing I have won since getting second place in the javelin competition on a school sports day many moons ago so this is quite a novelty.  I just hope that it's not all explained in Finnish! (And wouldn't it be nice if it turned out there was a Nokia goodie bag...)

WeeGee

WeeGee Cafe terrace

WeeGee-talo (WG House) in Tapiola, Espoo is a fantastic set of art galleries and museums, brought together in the equally fantastic converted former Welin & Göös printing works. The original structure is for me the star of the show - in the main wing each of eight hollow concrete pylons support an independent 27 x 27 metre square of roof, like giant parasols over huge concrete table, and give huge areas of column free space on the upper floor.

Originally designed by Professor Aarno Ruusuvuori, the printing works was completed in the 1960s, and was heavily influenced by the 'serial approach, duplication and geometry typical of Constructivism'. As well as the structure, such innovations such as a ventilated double skinned, double glazed facade (with ingenious sliding inner skin to give access), and the glass washrooms (cue joke on glass ceilings...) led to the building being 'protected' (in effect listed) when production stopped in 1990. The €24m conversion, completed 2006, was carried out by Airas Architects, and respects the original features whilst integrating the huge volume of services, and varying needs of the 5 museums, art gallery and art school. 

We were lucky enough to be shown around by the project architect Henna Helander as part of the MFA 06/07 series of tours, and got to see the EMMA (Espoo Museum of Modern Art) staff and conservation areas; the huge basement plant room (and stand in the main air duct); and find out why they went to the effort of excavating the basement for the main cloakroom area when there is nothing on that level (answer: because the black box auditorium that should have been there was omitted during the project).

From Arts Night to Dark Knight

even the statues get into the spirit of Taiteiden Yö

You would think that with all this time on our hands there would be lots of time for writing blog posts, but there seems to be so much going on at the moment I hardly know where to start.  I haven't written about Sibelious concert hall, Koli hiking or some incidents at Kesälahti; or our tour around WeeGee centre in Espoo; and already we are going off again to Kotka next week. Obviously getting distracted by Facebook has nothing to do with it.

Last night in Helsinki was Artist's Night (or Art Night or Night of Arts: Taiteiden Yö in Finnish anyway), basically a bunch of free, loosely 'arts' related events in the city. This ranged from a concert for 30,000 in Senate Square, free entry to museums and galleries, book signings and poetry readings, supposedly themed around 1968. And (for some) an excuse for a Friday night piss up. We took in the Anton Corbijn photography exhibition at the Taidemuseo Tennispalatsi (Tennis Palace Art Gallery) - probably best know for his work with musicans such as U2 and Depeche Mode, and says himself that he started photography as a way into the music world to meet his heroes back in the 70's.  We then headed over to the Finlandia concert hall, taking a peek at the huge hole in the ground that will be the new Musiikitalo (music house) on the way past. This is coincidently another famous product of the 70's, for a free (although shortened) backstage tour around Alvar Aalto's masterpiece (without any of the Carrera marble cladding dropping off and hitting anyone). This is in effect a listed building, which causes some problems for the management dealing with imperfect acoustics (the ceiling of the main concert hall being replaced, leaking roofs and the aforementioned marble cladding (replaced a few years ago) as well as the entrance being moved from the original front some years ago - which is due to be rectified in the next few years. In fact this will all sound eerily familiar to those familiar with the travails and renovation of the Royal Festival Hall (south bank centre) in London.

Finlandia talo

After our daily architecture fix, and a quick lohikeito (salmon soup) on the terrace, we walked through the busy streets, glimpsing various musicians, performers, dancers (in shop windows) to the Akateeminen Kirjakauppa (Academic Bookshop) - part of the Stockmanns department store, reputedly Europe's largest (in terms of number of titles at least, with over 450000) and, as it happens, another white marble Aalto design, with it's atrium and inverted, crystalline, roof light.  Here were various book signings, readings, and 15% discount on paperbacks until midnight. So while Bore & Pikka had Fingerpori books signed I picked up Bad Monkeys (Matrix meets Silence of the Lambs according to the blurb); and considering a paperback might cost €14 (about £11) any discount is well worth it!

Skirting the packed Senate Square we ended the night with a beer/cider by the harbour.

Back while we were in Tennispalatsi (and I was surfing facebook on the free wireless connection there) we picked up tickets for Dark Knight, so we'll find out tonight if Heath Ledger's final performance is as good as everyone says.