Heidi Katajamäki, Restless Ground Restless Ground, the exhibition by the winner of the Young Artist of the Year in Southern Ostrobothnia 2017 competition, Heidi Katajamäki is in a way a review of her previous work and installations. The exhibition features works completed after Katajamäki’s graduation. Besides individual works, the exhibition expands literally to the Nelimarkka museum space.

Katajamäki’s artistic work is based on her mind and feelings. By painting and drawing she describes what happens in her head and how she feels on the inside. “I chop my thoughts and feelings in pieces. Then I take a scoop and add one piece of feeling into one work, on one surface or canvas. My art is serial, and as a whole, the series reflects my inner period. From these compositions, I create site-specific installations for different spaces. The installation depicts the past through a single work and the present as I gather and install everything together in that particular space. Time moves on, ages evolve, feelings change. As follows, my installations disappear after an exhibition ends. Only pieces, the series of works and photographs of the whole installation remain.”

As a medium, Katajamäki mostly uses charcoal and gesso. Charcoal is versatile and gives many alternatives for expression. Together with white gesso, it provides possibilities for different shades of grey. The line is the language of the work. Sometimes the line is figurative and sometimes it purely expresses feelings through abstraction. The line even spans the canvas: “My mind does not fit into one locker or between strict boundaries, but it takes over the whole space in my mind or in the installation.”

Restless Ground is about being a young artist. “It is a story about me, how the life carries on, the always overflowing mind and time eternally going forward. Whatever life brings you, there will always, always be a better time.”

Heidi Katajamäki (1990) was born in Seinäjoki and is currently based in Lahti. She graduated from Lahti Art Institute in 2016. She has taken part in several solo and group exhibitions and has made work for public spaces.

Image: Heidi Katajamäki, Arkihiki ja hetken hilse, 2016.

Collection from the Cache The Art Collection of Ostrobothnian Artist Association at the Nelimarkka Museum 4.3. – 4.6.2017

One of the first regional artist associations, The Ostrobothnian Artist Association was founded in 1943. The Association has been supporting and promoting Ostrobothnian art ever since by arranging exhibitions, offering advisory services and maintaining an art collection.

In the beginning the membership fee was paid by donating an artwork to the collection. The collection has around 80 artworks with different techniques and materials. There are works, for example, from artists Matti Annala, Oscar Bengts, Eva Bremer, Yngve Bäck, Frans Hiivanainen, Iivari Honkola, Lea Ignatius, Einari Junttila, Kaarlo Lamminheimo, Aini Lähdesmäki, Tanu Manninen, Nandor Mikola, Arvi Mäenpää, Eero Nelimarkka, Oiva Polari, Tellervo Töyry, Einari Uusikylä, Pentti Uusikylä and Veikko Vionoja.

Over the course of time, the collection has been stored first in Vaasa, then in Seinäjoki and Lapua. In 2016, the collection was deposited at the Nelimarkka Museum, where the archives of the The Ostrobothnian Artist Association are also kept. Previously, the collection has been on display in Vaasa, Seinäjoki and Alajärvi but never in this magnitude. The exhibition has been curated by the vice president of the association, Markku-Tapani Hakala.

The Ostrobothnian Artist Association was founded in 1943. The first chairman of the board was Professor Eero Nelimarkka. Today, there are 111 members at the Association.

Image: Frans Hiivanainen, Istuva nainen, 1910's.

Katri Yli-Erkkilä – Young Artist of the Year in Southern Ostrobothnia 2016 Visual artist Katri Yli-Erkkilä works mainly with staged photography. Staging enables the combination of real and unreal. Temporary becomes permanent in Yli-Erkkilä’s photographs. Yli-Erkkilä assembles the setups by modifying everyday objects or constructing something completely new.

Yli-Erkkilä’s work is serial. Lately she has worked with two parallel series. Her subject matter is social alienation, separation from nature and the respect of all living, along with the restrictions and constrains that affect our minds.

Yli-Erkkilä’s work process is closely tied to collecting. She uses recycling material, dolls, garnishes, fur etc. The artist modifies her objects by sewing and painting or by creating a whole new setup with different pulps and craft material.

In the images examining alienation, the artist depicts urban dwelling, growth of cities, social indifference within communities, separation from nature and animals, as well as harshness of human nature. In her images people and animals present themselves in unexpected ways.

Apartment buildings can be compared to communities. Communities evolve into cities. Cities grow, borders relocate. Rootlessness is ever present. As cities grow, nature retreats. When people no longer consider themselves as part of nature, the nature is left distant and lifeless. A person estranged from nature lacks respect of it and, ultimately, does not respect life.

The second series depicts factors that influence and inhibit our minds, mental states. Yli-Erkkilä approaches the subject matter through a fashion doll. Dolls intrigue the artist not only as an object but also as depiction of a human. A doll is sufficiently close but yet far enough. With dolls Yli-Erkkilä mirrors the world around. She considers her works as portraits of the psyche. The plastic and artificial in the images interests the artist; there is liveliness in the still images.

The winner of the second Young Artist of the Year in Southern Ostrobothnia competition, Katri Yli-Erkkilä was born in Oravainen 1981. She lives and works in Seinäjoki.

Image: Katri Yli-Erkkilä, Keltainen lanka, 2014.

Mari Hallapuro: Underworld - exhibition After completing her Master’s in printmaking, visual artist Mari Hallapuro (b. 1985 in Alajärvi, Finland) returns to her roots with an exhibition of detailed prints. Hallapuro’s work is on display at the Exhibition Space for Prints and Drawings at the Nelimarkka Museum through the summer.

Hallapuro describes her work: “Drawing has always been important to me. Being preoccupied with my own intimate, withdrawn activities has always been a good break for me, and still is. Printmaking adds slowness and indirectness to the process, which grants me a space for further contemplation. The serial aspect of printmaking, implemented by the printing process, molds and regenerates the original pictorial motifs further. The series becomes like an animation in too slow motion.”

In her work, Hallapuro contemplates time – its continuum and temporality. Her prints depict what is seen and experienced. One of the central starting points for Hallapuro is perception: “Sometimes I like that, in my thoughts, I can take a dip in the darker and deeper waters and make pictures of it.” Ordinary notions and playful jokes lighten up the tone: in Hallapuro’s work humor and melancholia usually go hand in hand.

Mari Hallapuro lives and works in Kerava. She graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2012 with a Master's Degree in printmaking. Hallapuro has taken part in several solo and group exhibitions in Finland. Her works are featured in, for example, the collections of the Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki Art Museum and EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art.

The Landscape of Ruovesi - exhibition The Landscape of Ruovesi exhibition illustrates the art history of Ruovesi region through three artists and their work: Sigrid Aminoff (1904–1994), Elga Seseman (1922–2007) and Aira Niemi-Pynttäri (1926–2011).

NBesides the three, the exhibition features six contemporary artists: Simone Braitinger (1966), Elina Försti (1971), Tiina Lamminen (1963), Anna Makovecz (1962), Kathrina Rudolph (1961) and Angela Stauber (1977). They have all participated in The Landscape of Ruovesi painting symposium in Pekkala mansion in 2014 and 2015. The artists are from Finland, Germany and Hungary. The German artists are members of the Gedok München artist association and while working in Finland, they experienced a residency period at the Nelimarkka Residency.
Photographer: Jari Kuusenaho, Tampere art museum.

Nina Nahkala – exhibition Nina G. Nahkala’s artistic vision is an amalgamation of the influences of her multi-cultural upbringing; she visually devoured her surroundings and assimilated them into her own unique way of portraying life and the mysterious magic of eternal beauty. Nina G. Nahkala paints the inevitable transformation of all matter into the abstract, through the use of figurative subject matter.

Etienne Hacquin – exhibition The exhibition “Ordinary and Extraordinary run of things” is a selection of the art produced by French artist Etienne Hacquin during his residency at the Nelimarkka Museum in August 2015. In continuity with its previous works, Etienne Hacquin wonders about the commonness of our everyday life – its repetitions, its constraints. The observation and the discovery of the Finnish lifestyle, the architecture, the nature, the legends, also inspired the exhibition.

Mille Guldbeck – exhibition Visual artist, professor, Mille Guldbeck stayed at Villa Nelimarkka in July 2015. Over the month-long artist-in-residency, Guldebeck began to notice not only the natural surroundings, but the house of Eero Nelimarkka as well. She started to speculate about what he might have seen at the time he lived there and what things may have remained the same. Guldbeck created single portraits of birch trees that are located at 8 points around the house. She recorded 25 colors observed in the tree itself and the ground below it.

Jan-Erik Andersson – exhibition The title of the invitational exhibition refers to an essay by philosopher Martin Heidegger. The essay studies the essence of place and space as well as the human will to be at a specific place. The exhibition presents works that take a stand on more playful architectural design and offer an artistic view of urban planning.

The central work of the exhibition, a multi-channel video installation Life on a Leaf Video Kiosk, presents the building process of Anderssons’s Life on a Leaf house, and the life inside this total work of art. The roof and walls of the kiosk are made of leftover material from the construction.

Picture: Jan-Erik Andersson: Life on a Leaf Video Kiosk. Video-installation, 2010-2012

Varaston aarreaitta – exhibition The regional art museum of Southern Ostrobothnia, Nelimarkka Museum has a solid year of interesting exhibitions ahead, after a lenghty series of renovations. In 2013, the restoraton of Villa Nelimarkka, Eero Nelimarkka’s summer home, built in 1933, was completed, and the Villa was opened to the public. During the same year, the building of a new art storage with the latest technology was finished, offering the museum a safe and up-to-date place to store the artworks. In 2014, the museum got a new heating system, and an elevator that enables a wheelchair access to all floors of the museum.

The upgradings have brought a prominent value to the premises. Nelimarkka Museum will start its year with an art collection exhibition, titled Varaston aarteita, treasures from the storage. In the process of relocating the artworks to the new storage unit, some previously unseen works were found. These substantial oil paintings by Eero Nelimarkka had been rolled up for decades. The exhibition concentrates around four of them: a sketch for an altarpiece implemented in Skibotni, Norway; a big cabin interior with many variations; a beautiful winter landscape, and a sizeable self-portrait as a painter. The exhibition opens up a new perspective to the work methods and subject matters of Eero Nelimarkka.

Additionally, the exhibition introduces donations to the museum in 2014: four paintings by Eero Nelimarkka and five kinetic sculptures by Antti Maasalo, owned by Nelimarkka-Rahasto säätiö Foundation.

Petra Korte - exhibition Petra Korte, a former Artist-in-Residence at Villa Nelimarkka will show her work, produced during the residency, at the ground floor of the Museum from January 10 to February 15, 2015. Korte’s works are inspired by the culture and landscape of Finland.

The artist is inspired by traces of daily life, such as the simple but important Finnish coffee culture, as well as Kalevala and Kanteletar.