Kuulumisia (Tidings, Ways of Belonging)
Kuulumisia (Tidings, Ways of Belonging)
Six artists from Australia and Finland contemplate their personal relationship with place and time, through jewellery, objects and painings.
3.-25.8. 2025
Täky Galleria
Satamatie 10, Linnoitus
Lappeenranta, Finland
Opening celebration Tuesday 5.8. at 6pm, all welcome!
Kuulumisia (a Finnish word play translating to ‘Tidings’ and ‘Ways of belonging’) exhibition introduces six internationally renowned Australian and Finnish contemporary artists, contemplating their personal relationship with place and time through objects, jewellery and painting. The artists involved work in diverse media and techniques, each with an innovative formal language, yet are connected through a sensitive ongoing observation and interpretation of their environment.
The idea for Kuulumisia stems from the curator Inari Kiuru’s 2024 visit to her childhood hometown Lappeenranta. Returning after 40 years, and having migrated to Australia in 1996, Inari experienced a deep reconnection with her childhood landscape (external, as well as internal) and the South Karelian community. This joyful encounter sparked a desire to establish a wider, ongoing creative exchange and dialogue between Lappeenranta and Naarm/Melbourne, of which this exhibition opens.
About the artists:
MARCOS GUZMAN // I am drawn to the challenge of finding a way to distil the emotional and social matter of our lives to a visual form. The group of necklaces I present are stills from a bigger picture, of minor narratives that go unnoticed in my experience of daily life, in the surrounds of my home city Naarm/Melbourne where I create, work, socialise, observe and live. @guzman_artist
COURTNEY JACKSON // Snow Country Studies is a continuation of a project where artists were assigned discarded objects to be reimagined as functional or wearable artworks. I was given a retro plastic light, destroying and rebuilding it into a trio of brooches over a period of three months whilst living in a small ski resort in Japan. These pieces were shaped by the magical, icy landscapes surrounding me and preserved as wearable artificial landscapes. @courtneyjacksonjewellery
CARA JOHNSON // The materials I work with help me to narrate ideas around the ways land is lived upon, and used, while trying to comprehend my own relationship to place. I see making as a sort of reprocessing, and mending, using just my hands or very basic tools, reworking until I make the material my own. I like the honesty of simple ancient processes like making string and carving wood. www.carajohnson.com.au
INARI KIURU // I’ve lived in Australia for 25 years, but the core of my creative practice remains deeply Finnish: longing for a connection with nature. Collecting and processing discarded matter from city streets feels akin to picking berries, mushrooms or plants in the forest, providing a deep sense of belonging by connecting me with my ancestral heritage and seasonal ways of living. @ordinari_observer
MICHAELA PEGUM // These works explore the idea that being is a process of intimate responsiveness with the lives and entities around us we often consider to be ‘other’. They embody relationship and transformation, in the growth of their material and their intuitively evolved form. Created by electroforming copper into textiles, a hybrid substance emerges that hovers between the known and the unknown. www.michaelapegum.com
SHAUN TAN // I’ve been painting small landscapes, both as a routine studio practice – learning about light, shadow and colour – and as a way of connecting emotionally to my immediate surroundings, usually Australian suburban streets. These loose and unfussy paintings help me think about the particular experience of each time and place in a very intuitive way, as if constructing lasting memory from otherwise forgotten experiences. www.shauntan.net
