The art on exhibit at the Kaapelitehdas gallery makes the opposing forces of the theme visible. Four different artists have been invited to create their own worlds. In addition to the exhibition the gallery offers a small taste of another art form with the short trailer of a forthcoming Finnish sf movie. The art exhibition has been set up with support from Painotalo Miktor Oy.
In the exhibit itself the toys of childhood are captured in photographs, transformed from chilly plastic into tales and timeless moments. The pen draws out worlds, characters and events on paper, and stories are born that grow outside the borders and boundaries of the pictures themself. Hannele Kivilahti’s pictures of collected toys sparkle with humor, while Vesa Lehtimäki was swept away willy-nilly when recording childhood toys. Petra Nordlund lives with pen, paper, pictures and stories, and Miljenko Horvatić writes stories for others to illustrate.
Hannele Kivilahti lives in Kissamaa, Tampere, with her husband amidst a flock of monkeys and trolls. She collects toys and takes daily photographs of them in wildly varying and surprising situations. Her quirky and warm-humored pictures can be found on the page www.flickr.com/hannhell .
Petra Nordlund aka LEPPU has studied graphic design at the University of Lapland and 3D animation at Metropolia school. At the moment she is studying in the movie and tv program at the art academy of Turku, with a focus on traditional animation and scriptwriting. More of her works are to be found at flavors.me/leppu
The graphic designer Vesa Lehtimäki aka Avanaut started documenting his child’s toys in 2009. He intended to record that part of his son’s childhood before the toys were forgotten or passed on as the boy outgrew them – but in the process he himself became more involved and engaged with the experiment than he had planned. The new hobby offers a chance to have fun, take risks, experiment and occasionally fail. Curiosity drives Avanaut forward and the setting of Star Wars provides a backdrop for the pictures and the small stories included with them. Avanaut’s pictures can be found on a number of sites:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/avanaut/
https://twitter.com/TheAvanaut
https://www.facebook.com/Avanaut
The Croatian Miljenko Horvatić (b.1966) has a background as a comics artist for German publishers and as a maker of animated films with Zagreb film. Gradually he moved on from drawing comics into scripting them, and found new opportunities to work with Marvel and on Spider Man. Currently Horvatić works for the British publishing house Print Media, and collaborates with a number of different artists. Some samples of his work are found at:
http://s1085.photobucket.com/user/Mikihekler/library/?sort=3&page=1
http://www.mikihorvatic.blogspot.fi/
Jukka Eronen (b.1981) is involved in making different kinds of art, music and movies. Sielunkehrääjä [the Soul Spinner] is a poetic and epic sf movie set in Southern Finland 500 to 1000 years into the future. Animals and new species have emerged from the ruins and the ashes as the rulers of Earth. The world of Sielunkehrääjä comes vividly alive in photographs, music and soundscapes, illustrations, poems and short stories, maps and exhibitions – in addition to the forthcoming movie itself. The forests, ruins and mythical places of Sielunkehrääjä are based on very real (and explorable!) locations in Southern Finland. For more on the movie and its setting: http://www.jukkaeronen.com/sielunkehraaja