Design & Crafts and MACA Anthropocene Themed Joint Exhibition

The joint exhibition by the Design and Crafts MA and MACA students Staying in the Compost: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene.

Opening Thursday, 26.01, 18.00, at Kanuti Gildi SAAL Cellar Hall (Pühavaimu 5). 

Exhibited are the works by the Design and Crafts MA and MACA students, accomplished within the frameworks of the Autumn semester course “Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene” led by Taavi Hallimäe and Sandra Kosorotova. The course kick-started with a short residency at MASSIA (Massiaru, Pärnumaa) and workshops by Sepideh Ardalani and Pire Sova, continued with seminars and individual work and is concluded with this public presentation at Kanuti Gildi SAAL. In addition to the six individual projects by each of the artists there will be presented a work communally produced by the artists and compost microorganisms — the outcome of the workshop by Pire Sova. 

Artists: Siew Ching Ang, Y. Derya Balkan, Zody Burke, Katarina Kruus, Viktor Kudriashov, Elle Kannike

Graphic designer: Agnes Isabelle Veevo

Alcoholic beverages for the opening are kindly offered by Sveta Bar. There will also be a non-alcoholic option in the form of kombucha tea brewed by the exhibition artist Elle Kannike.

The exhibition reading group will take place on Friday, 27.01, 17.00–19.00, led by the exhibition artist Siew Ching Ang.
Please get in touch with Siew if you would like to take part in this event: siew.ang@artun.ee

Opening hours:
27.–29.01, 13.00–19.00

Maria Erikson’s solo exhibition Soft Touch on the Deckle opens in Draakoni Gallery. 

At her present exhibition Soft Touch on the Deckle, the artist observes her relationship
with the process of graphic art involving the body of the artist and the lithographic limestone. Seeking parallels and contradictions between them a comparison is made between a body and its surface to the one of the stone. While attributing limestone with human skin-like ability to memorize, Erikson explores her personal artwork as a dialogue between the two bodies – the one of the artist and the one of the stone. Through material interactions and contact events new forms of co-existence and non-hierarchical ways of communication between them emerge. 

The surface of lithographic stone is smooth and porous. Similarly to skin it records the touch that stratifies over time. Lithographic liquid tusche is commonly used in Erikson’s artistic practice. Its dried coatings on the surface of the litho stone result in reticulation that can be seen as an abstract landscape. In this way the touch between the artist and the material as well as the stone´s geological strata are intertwined. 

Soft Touch on the Deckle is a three-part exhibition project – the first part is being
exhibited here in Draakoni gallery, the second one will be displayed in Ratamo gallery,
Jyväskylä in March 2023 and the third part will be held in the Museum of Lithography in Sweden in April 2023. 

Engagement and contact are central in Maria Erikson’s artistic practice. With the focus on materiality and materials as sets of relationships, she investigates visible and non-visible relations that are produced by the gestures between them. In new structural arrangements she investigates their jointness and indifferences, bodiliness and ability to
inhabit shared space. Maria Erikson has completed two-year studies as a collaborative lithography printer and holds a Master Printer certificate from Tamarind Institute (USA), obtained MA degree in the printmaking study area at the Academy of Fine Arts/Uniarts Helsinki (Finland). In 2019, Maria Erikson received the Eduard Wiiralt grant and in 2021
she was awarded with Ann-Margret Lindell Grant for Printmaking (Sweden). Among her recent exhibitions are Notes from Borderspace (ARS Project Space, 2022); Taidegrafiikan tapa olla – materiality, collaboration and agency (Exhibition Laboratory, Helsinki, 2021); Grafik (Gallery Sander, Norrköping, Sweden, 2021). 

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The artist expresses her gratitude to: Liina Siib, Paul Rannik, Mart Saarepuu, department of Graphic Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. 

Exhibitions in Draakoni gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

Welcome to the presentation of two newly released Rooftop Press artists’ books with Jessie Bullivant and James Prevett. Please join us at the Estonian Academy of Arts, room A-501, on Tuesday 17.1. at 5-6.30pm for a conversation with the artists and publisher, Tuukka Kaila about the books and the processes behind them. The discussion will be in English, followed by a reading.

NB! Both books are available for purchase at the presentation (“Attached” 18 eur ja “Things for Homes/Homes for Things” 27 eur – cash only).

Attached by Jessie Bullivant

Attached is a collection of texts that document a diverse range of artworks made by Jessie Bullivant (AU/FI) over the past decade. By replacing the default photographic documentation with written accounts, the artist raises questions about how immaterial artworks are preserved, accessed and ultimately remembered, allowing space for nuances often lost in photographic documentation. As an incomplete survey of the artists’ work, the book blurs the boundaries between art and its documentation, between a conventional monograph and an experimental artist’s book. It gives an exciting glimpse into a committed artistic practice tackling a variety of issues from representation, power and access to subtle social interactions.

Contributing writers: Brendan Barnett, Yvonne Billimore, David Bullivant, Freja Bäckman, Christo Crocker, Mitchel Cumming, Eric Demetriou, Paul Doornbusch, Beau Emmet, Mark Friedlander, Max Hannus, Tim Holmes, Lou Hubbard, Anthony Johnson, Mikko Kuorinki, Katie Lenanton, Minna Miettilä, Even Minn, Paul Moses, Anna Parlane, James Prevett, Georgia Robenstone, Geoff Robinson, Ainslie Templeton.

Things for Homes / Homes for Things by James Prevett, co-published with TACO!

Can a sculpture survive in the home without being domesticated into just another object—a door stop or something you hang your hat on? What are the civic duties we assign to sculpture today, in comparison to the post-war nation-building and reassertion of civilisation? At the heart of Things for Homes / Homes for Things are conversations about our social relationship to objects and the spatial relations these depend on. Prevett’s enquiry is intimate and gentle, occurring as it does on a domestic scale in the homes of people who don’t own art, and perhaps have never cared for it that much before. Without the expectations and politics that grand publicness entails, it embraces instead the potential for social connection through making and giving of sculpture to strangers.

Contributors: Annie May Demozay, Mat Jenner, Jennifer Powell, Vidha Saumya, Eetu Viren, Vilma Pimenoff, Henni Alava, Sven Claes, Deborah Frimpong, Michael Pleasance, Paul Seymour, Dani Tagen, Riordan Tyson, Karstein Volle, Leena Ylä-Lyly

Jessie Bullivant (they/them) is a Helsinki-based artist, writer and cultural worker originally from so-called Australia. They make work with and about institutions and relationships. They completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 2020, where their Master’s thesis work was a durational series of 26 emails, sent from their mother, excusing Jessie from presenting work in their graduate exhibition that day. Their current artistic research is funded by the Kone Foundation (2022-25).

Tuukka Kaila is a Helsinki-based artist operating in the expanded fields of photography and publishing. He is a co-founder of the artist-run publishing initiative Rooftop Press and founder of the nomadic artist’s book gathering Bookies. His works have been exhibited in museums and galleries across Europe, USA and China and belong to the public collections of the Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art (Kiasma), the National Libraries of Finland and Estonia and the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM) among others.

James Prevett makes things to gather around – objects, events, text, video, often combined together as sculpture. He is interested in sculpture as a means to explore the limits of minds and bodies, both personal and collective. He has exhibited widely, including in the UK, Finland, Thailand, USA, Austria and Brazil, and was part of a team that represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2006. In 2021 he was awarded the inaugural Linnamo Prize, by the Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation. His works are in the Kiasma Finnish National Gallery collection as well as numerous private collections. James lives and works in Helsinki, Finland, where he is a Sculpture Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki.

Aleyna Canpolat, Andrea Gudiño, Alp Eren Özalp “Inside Me, Unveiling Us” at EKA Gallery on 17.01—09.02.2023

Opening: 17.01 at 4 pm

According to Andy Goldsworthy, we often forget, that we are nature. When we lose our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves. The authors of the exhibition Aleyna Canpolat, Andrea Gudiño, and Alp Eren Özalp come together from different sides of the world Turkey and Mexico and study at EKA in the Urban and Animation departments. In the exhibition “Inside Me, Unveiling Us” they are asking how do we perceive a place, where we feel belonging, that embraces us as who we truly are. Nature tends to create a common roof for foreigners and locals. There are no various borders, languages, or countries. Nature is the only entity, that seems to be embracing us fully.

The exhibition invites the participants to explore connection points between their own identity and nature through physical and audiovisual elements. Each element is a different mixture of textures, animated territories, and anonymous silhouettes. The exhibition provides a periphery for visitors to reflect on their own emotions through different organic elements, words of unpredictable wishes, and shadows of daydreams and ambiance.

Aleyna Canpolat (b.1998) is an architect and designer who is currently studying in the Estonian Academy of Arts in the Urban studies department. She graduated with a MA level in architecture from Yıldız Technical University in 2021. In her creative practice, she is focused on biophilic and sustainable design. Throughout her education, she has curated many exhibitions and group discussions with ‘Mimarlık Bunun Neresinde?’. She has won different awards in several competitions, that she has participated in. 

Andrea Gudiño (b.1993) is a Mexican director, animator, and photographer. Her work is based on the experimentation of mixed media animation techniques such as stop-motion, cut-out, rotoscope, and 2D. She is currently studying in the Estonian Academy of Arts animation MA program. 

Alp Eren Özalp (b.1997) is a Turkish architect and designer who is currently studying at the Estonian Academy of Arts in the urban studies department. He graduated from the architecture department at Yıldız Technical University in 2020. He has worked professionally on urban planning and architecture and was awarded for creating a smart village project, which was then built in Azerbaijan. For this, he developed a design and a way to use wooden products using wood carving techniques. 

Maria-Kristiina Ulas will open her personal exhibition Clue Whizzing from the Left in Hobusepea gallery at 18:00 on Wednesday, January 11th, 2023. Exhibition will stay open until February 6th, 2023. 

“Contingency can be enlightening, a quiet nudging towards the bright side. A fresh opportunity to understand despite the fact that the remains of memory are floating in the void. The vigor of comprehension vividly explodes, clues assist us to take a turn and not to stop, to move on, to change direction, your manner will change with ease and screech, way of life becomes alive, world view will be readjusted. Direct awakening within the flow of clues – a clue from the left, a clue from the right, from the top of one’s head and under the soles of one’s feet. Fresh allusions choose the vibrations of freedom, ripples of light, murmurs of water. Purposeless destiny is constantly being weighed again and again. Why does the devilish suspicion of criminal offence undermine the hollow skulls? Where does the wary fear come from?

Disgusting proliferating foul intolerable reek is belligerently tapping in the left ventricle of one’s mind but the implacable clue is whizzing by from the left and takes you to the awakened fields. Outside political efforts, above, beneath machinations, higher, deeper, there is a silent warm sea rippling inside, and will remain the keeper of all mornings. Clues take us to understandings and every understanding must be confirmed by a trace, otherwise it will disappear into thin air, will be lost in non-existence, will be forgotten and one cannot reach it any more. A human being – an alert beast.”

Maria-Kristiina Ulas

Maria-Kristiina Ulas graduated from the department of graphic art at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 1991 while following the footprints of both of her parents – her mother Concordia Klar (1938–2004) and father Peeter Ulas (1934–2008) were well-known Estonian graphic artists.

Already during her academic studies Maria-Kristiina Ulas excelled at her extraordinarily unique drawing – this diverse medium has remained Ulas’s main expressive means until the present day. Maria-Kristiina Ulas’s emergence in Estonian art life in 1990s coincided with the pivotal era of changing paradigms. On one side, her artistic nature fitted well with the mythologicalness and neoexpressionistic powerful figurativeness of the second half of 1980s; on the other side, the borders of art were broadening and new freedom arrived both in formats and techniques. Ulas expanded the borders of drawing as an attribute of expression while powerfully bringing the medium to the fore among big art and giving common sketching, pre-work or study a wider dimension. Maria-Kristiina Ulas’ drawing manner, based on classical drawing, has been always free and improvisational, reminding of the style of Ado Vabbe. Her gigantic and colourful drawings, balancing on the verge of figurativeness and abstraction, immediately caught attention and received acknowledgement. Later, Ulas’s figurative world, charged with playfulness and unconcealed eroticism, has increasingly acquired mysticism and surreal elements. With theatrical downrightness, the artist has developed her unique style of self-mythology while creating startling characters and enchanting loaded compositions where the expressiveness of line prevails over colourful surface.

Maria-Kristiina Ulas’ artwork were first publicly displayed in 1988. Since then, she has held around twenty personal exhibitions as well as participated in several group exhibitions both in Estonia and abroad. For many years, Ulas has been worked as a lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts and led several courses outside the institution as well as held drawing actions at the exhibition openings. She is a member of the Estonian Artists’ Association (since 1991) and the Association of Estonian Printmakers (since 1992). In 1989–1993 Ulas was a member of Uue Graafika Grupp. She received Kristjan Raud Art Award in 1992 and G Galerii Art Award in 2002. In 2006, Ulas was entitled with the Award of Noted Artist at the 12th Asian Art Biennial. In 2022, she was selected the Graphic Artist of the Year. Maria-Kristiina Ulas’ artwork are part of the collections of the Art Museum of Estonia and Tartu Art Museum.

Reeli Kõiv

Exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Vunder Skizze.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

EKA Contemporary Art MA program invites prospective students to join the Online Open House on Monday, January 30, 2023 at 18.00 EET (local Estonian time). This will be an opportunity to hear more about the program, to meet and ask questions directly from the faculty. 

The Online Open House will be hosted on Zoom, the link will be e-mailed to all registrants 2 hours before the start of the event.

Register HERE

‘One never sees the sun in a dream’ is the solo exhibition of artist Loora Kaubi.

It presents a selection of older sculptural works and paintings, new materials and video work, transformed in two spatial installations. The exhibition opens 12 January 2023 at 7 p.m. in the gallery of the historical sculpture building in Raja.

Kaubi brings together a body of work that deals with a continuous sensation of in-betweenness. At the core lies the practice of lingering: to last for a long time, or the delicate action of slowing down towards an end. When the artist pauses before the end, (and takes this final point out of the picture), her work stands still by tactics to escape the everyday, morbid habits and the impossible, yet intriguing attempt of an eternal sleep. She compares the body with a substance that will decompose as well as compose, actively dissolve, gather and shed the same things off again. What sensations are brought up during a persistent ‘not-doing’, and how can one feed and admire such a process?

The exhibition contains a performance of contemporary dancer Elle Viies. It is curated by Belgian, Tallinn-based curator Laura De Jaeger. The graphic design and visual identity is created by Taylor “Tex” Tehan.

Loora Kaubi (1998) is an artist working in Tallinn. He has acquired her bachelor’s degree in painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts and furthered his education in the sculpture department of the Vienna Academy of Arts. Kaubi’s practice revolves around the (female) body and the societal and social relations related to it. Wandering between the real and the fictional, in his works he approaches life as a spectacle and focuses on creating a scene through which to perform intense emotion. Kaubi has received the weekly prize of the Union of Estonian Young Contemporary Artists and has participated in exhibitions and performances in Tallinn, Narva, Haapsalu, Valga, Vienna and Põlva.

EKA Doctoral School is hosting an online info session about doctoral studies at EKA on February 8, 2023, at 15:00 EET (local Estonian time) . 

Info session provides a good opportunity to hear more about doctoral studies at EKA, available programmes, admission requirements and procedure, etc; also meet and ask questions directly from people behind the Doctoral School and the programmes. The info session will be hosted online over Zoom.

RECORDING OF THE INFO SESSION HERE

The Estonian Academy of Arts offers following PhD level programmes for international applicants:

• Architecture and Urban Planning
• Art and Design
• Art History and Visual Culture
• Cultural Heritage and Conservation

Admission period for international PhD applicants for 2023/2024 starts on February 1st, 2023. Deadline for submitting application is March 31st, 2023.

Admission requirements for PhD programmes can be found HERE.

More information:
Irene Hütsi
Doctoral School coordinator
irene.hutsi@artun.ee

EKA Interaction Design MA programme invites prospective Master’s students to join the online info session on Friday, February 3, 2023 at 16:00 EET (local Estonian time).

Register HERE.

More information about the Interaction Design MA (IxD.ma) programme:

• https://www.ixd.ma
• https://www.artun.ee/ixd
• https://www.facebook.com/IxD.ma

Admissions period starts on the 1st of February 2023 and application deadline is 6th of March 2023.

https://artun.ee/admissions