Zabludowicz Collection at Taidehalli Helsinki

This exhibition at Helsinki Taidehalli offers a chance for the public to view works of art from the Zabludowicz Collection, many of them produced by artists that have spent time in Sarvisalo as part of our residency programme on the island.

Exhibiting Artists: Ed Atkins, Sarah Braman, David Brooks, Laura Buckley, Corin Hewitt, Sam Falls, Antti Laitinen, Erin Shirreff, Josh Tonsfeldt.

The works share a relationship to the environment and utilise the process of observing in various ways, allowing us to look again at familar forms. Films by Erin Shirreff and Corin Hewitt seem to animate and capture the inner life of earth formations and a small house respectively whilst Fall’s photograms expose to us the inversion inherent in our vision. Sculpture, and the ideas that form it are also evident in many of the works – from the performative actions and films of Antti Laitinen to the language of Atkins many of the works on show probe at the problem of sculpture and our contemporary understanding of the medium. The idea of the body moving through space is also at large in the exhibition, whether implicated by modes of transport such as caravans or boats or caught in the light of a projection or the lens of a camera.

Sam Falls and Laura Buckley have re-imagined and installed existing works for this exhibition, both artists were invited by the Zabludowicz Collection to make site specific works for Sarvisalo responded to existing buildings in need of renovation. Both made interventions that highlighted and accentuated the vernacular architecture they found. Laura Buckley’s installation Shields, 2012, was produced for a small traditional two storey building housing a vaulted ceilinged stone celler and a small yellow 'playhouse‘ on top. Her two part installation has been reworked for the Taidehalli’s Kuvanveistosali to become a monumental wall of projected light and sound. Images that were produced on a flatbed scanner are edited together with iphone and digital camera footage of plants, trees and nature creating a tension between the elements. American artist Sam Falls also presents an adapted installation featuring half of a site-specific installation including a stained glass window and set of photograms. Alongside the photograms a huge wallpaper of the exterior of the building in Sarvisalo allows the visitor to see the stained glass to which the photograms correspond.