Galleria Huuto is closed on Good Friday 30th of March.
On Saturday 31st of March and on Easter Sunday 1st of April the gallery is open.
On Easter Monday the gallery is closed as usual.
Sirkku Ketola
FABULA feat. A Body Called Paula
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari – Jätkä 2
10.3. – 1.4.2018
What is and why?
The definitions of “fabula” include a situation, story, dilemma, poem, myth, matter, legend, folktale, fairy tale, play, concern and problem.
Sirkku Ketola’s exhibition FABULA feat. A Body Called Paula consists of visual poems and situations. Separate word and image elements are placed side by side to repeat each other. Logic and intuition play with familiar symbols and are abstracted into parallel twists. A squirrel, wood, paper, bird, human, hand, foot, mark. The seeming disconnection between the works underlines the connection because everything is the same – living and dying. The universe is an ornament repeating itself.
What is a human’s size in the universe? What about that of an artwork? The most important question in the field of contemporary art, “Who’s the curator?”, has been carved into wood. The question itself is meaningless because art has no frameworks. There are only birds that grew in squirrel skins, flying alongside death while singing about life.
The largest piece in the exhibition, A Body Called Paula, is an installation based on repetition and a meditative performance in which Ketola, taking the role of Paula, works on a large ornament on fragile paper during weekends. The name Paula is derived from the Greek word “paulus” which means small. Paula is an allegory of a human as part of the universe and as a builder of technology. With the help of serigraphy, her hands and the space form a human printer, a sensual machine. Paula is enchanted with the ribbons, trapped in the activity, intoxicated by beauty and fettered by the body and matter. Tension is always present in the seemingly calm performance as the characteristics of the matter are in danger of being revealed when the fragile paper gets stuck. The ethereal soundscape of the performance has been created by Ketola.
A Body Called Paula grows during the exhibition and also reflects on time. Galleria Huuto will feature the fourth part of the ten-year process. Last year the project was seen in Toronto, Turku and New York. Every year three to four ornament ribbons are created in different parts of the world and the characteristics of the previous place can always be seen in the patterns of the following work. Huuto’s performances have been influenced by New York, while Helsinki in springtime can be seen in Belgium in the autumn. The performance is physically demanding and the endurance of the artist’s hands and body will determine the rhythm of the ten-year project. Who knows what will happen with the ribbons once all the works have been completed. Time will tell in which direction this large installation is going. Until then, each part works as an independent installation and performance. You can find the performance schedule for Huuto below.
A Body Called Paula performances on weekends at 1 pm (duration approx. 2 hours):
Sat 10 March – Light
Sun 11 March – Passion
Sat 17 March – Knowledge
Sun 18 March – Reality
Sat 24 March – Depth
Sun 25 March – Darkness
Sat 31 March – Work complete, no performance
Sun 1 April – Work complete, no performance
Welcome!
Sirkku Ketola is a contemporary printmaker who combines serigraphy with different materials. She is a civilized savage who slows down the digital image stream through handicraft methods, trying to understand the relationship between human rhythm and matter. Ketola earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and she has taken part in numerous Finnish and international projects and exhibitions. She lives and works in Turku and occasionally in Brussels.
The artist’s exhibition has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and A Body Called Paula project by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Thank you for your support!
Further information:
Sirkku Ketola
tel. +358 40 564 5016
sirkkuketola(at)gmail.com
www.sirkkuketola.com
About A Body Called Paula:
Performance soundscape: Sirkku Ketola
http://sirkkuketola.com/projects
http://www.la-bas.fi/ketola.html
http://openstudio.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/sirkku-ketola-brochure.pdf
http://openstudio.ca/exhibition/sirkku-ketola-a-body-called-paula/
