News

Saari Residence

22.09.2017

Welcome, new Saari Fellows!

With autumn, a new group of Saari Fellows has arrived at the Saari Residence.






Nine artists began a two-month residency at the beginning of September: sound designer, composer Miki Brunou, circus artist Rauli Dahlberg, artist duo Dorota Gawęda (Poland) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (Lithuania), painter Eveliina Hämäläinen, artist David Muth (Germany/Austria), photographic artist Viivi Nieminen and visual artist Petri Saarikko. Finnish translator Kristiina Drews started as the new Saari Invited Artist.

During his residency, sound designer and composer Miki Brunou will work on an album with sound material from interactive New Weave concerts. The main idea behind the New Weave concert events implemented together with sound artist Sébastien Piquemal was to break and challenge the structures of performing electronic music, as well as to open up the conventions associated with performing live music to a more participatory direction where hierarchical thinking is avoided.

At the Residence, circus artist Rauli Dahlberg will work on his contemporary circus solo O’DD. The performance creates thoughts about space, questions about purpose, hopes and perditions in the never-ending continuum of life. It seeks answers to the questions through unspoken movement, futuristic costumes and searing lights.

During her residency period, painter Eveliina Hämäläinen, MFA, will focus on developing a live painting technique that shows the works at the time of their creation. Through intuitive imagery and observation, she addresses the themes of viewing, remembering and existing. Her works can be seen at the Old Town Hall Gallery in Turku on 17 November–30 December 2017.

The joint project by Dorota Kawęda (Poland) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (Lithuania) titled Agatha Valkyrie Ice: EPISODE X / CHAPTER 4: FREEPORTS combines sculptures, scents and text. The project focuses on free ports, such as the free ports of Geneva, Luxembourg and Singapore, and also the history of ports, as well as art travelling from one country to the next and the art trade.

During her time at the Saari Residence, photographic artist Viivi Nieminen will start the production of a series utilising waste photographs. She will use her own test prints that she has saved over the years, and that would otherwise have ended up in the recycling bin. With the extra prints, she plans to create unique works, for example, by cutting, folding, polishing and merging.

In his video works, artist David Muth (Germany/Austria) uses CGI technology to approach the “aeroplane” through a philosophical and theoretical construct.

At the Residence, visual artist Petri Saarikko will study and develop a communal space art form that he has already been working on in the form of the Kallio Kunsthalle gallery for the past five years. The symbiotic approach of Kallio Kunsthalle activates and evaluates the residential area without excluding especially the most disadvantaged.

Finnish translator Kristiina Drews started as the Saari Residence’s fifth Saari Invited Artist at the beginning of September. During the next eight months, she plans to continue her translation work with, for example, short stories by Lucia Berlin, a novel by Kamila Shamsie, and poems by Willy Kyrklund.

Read more detailed introductions about our visiting artists

Read more about Kristiina Drews