Tiilipuutarhat / Brick Gardens 1-3, Kuopio-Helsinki 2013

Brick Garden 1, Mylly's end wall, Kuopio
Brick Garden 2, Taidetori / Art Market, Kallamarina Magazine, Kuopio
Brick Garden 3, Art Fair Suomi '13, Kaapelitehdas / Cable Factory, Helsinki

Brick Garden 1, Centre for Creative Arts MYLLY, Kuopio, from 18 May 2013

I have constructed the works of the Tiilipuutarha / Brick Garden series from demolition bricks, found objects and plants that I have collected. Red bricks have enthralled me for long, their deep colour and connection with earth. Maybe it has an effect that my Helsinki grandpa was a bricklayer and my Carelian grandpa made bricks and tiled stoves with his own hands. And that my studio is in a red-brick forge building, in the erstwhile premises of the State Railways in Kuopio.

In Cable Factory's Brick Garden 3 I have used also the Factory's old red bricks. Bricks go on patinating and the edible plants their circulating along with weather, time and events. The artworks are in interaction with their environment and thus in a continuous process of change.

The images in the Brick Gardens, named Piece of Tania's Wall 1-7, I photographed from the sculptor Egon Tania's artwork Brick Fountain in Cape Town in spring (= southern autumn) 2013. In my works meet south and north, spring and autumn. The project continues in Cape Town and Kuopio in 2013-2014.

Brick Garden 3, 2013. Demolition bricks, herbs, photographs of Egon Tania's brick wall in Cape Town.
Art Fair Suomi '13, International Contemporary Art Festival, Cable Factory, Helsinki, October 2013

Thanks: City of Kuopio, Jätekukko, Mylly, Taidetori, Woodstock Foundry (Cape Town), Egon Tania, Erkki Pellikka, Matti Mattsson, Maijariitta Karhulahti, Kaapelitehdas / Cable Factory and MUU ry.