Ulla Leppävuori

MOVING IN AN ENVIRONMENT AND ITS OBSERVATION THROUGH COLOR – photography with a focus on colour, collecting ingredients for making colours and mapping out different applications for an environment characterized by pigments

Landscapes and nature inspire the use of all of the senses. This comprehensiveness is at its most powerful when there is time to make yourself aware of it all. In encountering an environment defined by man, the connection to what is happening around you becomes restricted – I feel a sense of longing for an unmediated relationship with my surroundings.

What can I bring from a natural landscape to a man-made environment to fix this flaw?

How can I move what happens in nature, its independence and distinct functional logic, to exist as part of a man-made environment? Simultaneously on terms dictated by the man-made environment, yet sustaining the nature and freedom of the landscape?

The spark for my challenge is both personal and general at the same time.

During my residency, I’ll be in a November and December landscape. I will move from place to place by foot and by bicycle. The cultural landscape of the past has been moulded by the interaction between man, animal and nature. Now a field, what used to be the bottom of the sea has slowly risen from underwater, though the timeline of the actual event is very long. The materials and events now in nature are visible as colours and rhythms.

I am working from two different starting points. I will document and observe the seasonal environment through photography.

I will be collecting earth materials.

My time at the Saari Residence allows me to spend time in an environment from a primarily artistic point-of-view. The experiences of active participation in a landscape are resources that are now being side-lined in favour of artistic work. The length and tranquillity of the residency ensure that the work can move along at its own pace and on its own terms, moving forward according to its own rhythm. There is also opportunity for questioning previous discoveries and therefore, for conceptualizing new approaches.

I will be utilizing:

– geology
– information concerning man’s relationship with nature in different historical time periods
– spatial experience sof the region’s medieval stone churches