Tamara Piilola HIDDEN GARDEN

Gallery Pirkko-Liisa Topelius, Helsinki, June 28 through August 14, 2005

My inspiration came from the religious beliefs of paradise and how well garden represents it. I was interested in alchemy and mysticism, and also little bit of symbols. The first gardens were constructed by the monks. They wanted to recreate paradise which once existed all over the world but was lost in the falling of man. The concept of paradise is full of contradiction. It is ironic that garden needs so much care and still in it's original meaning symbolizes carefree heaven.

I followed my intuitions and did not care how the works differed from each other. This way I was able to decorate the paintings and make them as feminine as possible, have photographs displayed in lightboxes and have the living garden to tie it all together.

Installation of living flora in the gallery space was ideal artwork cause it could never be "ready". Realizing this was very cathartic in relation of finishing artworks and overall having the effort of exhibiting artworks in a gallery space for certain amount of time.

I moved from the garden-theme towards innocence, which gave the whole exhibition more human than religious or esoteric feeling. As conclusion the exhibition gave some idea how to behave to be able to get to your own garden.

 

 

Tamara Piilola WANDERLUST

Gallery Rajatila, Tampere, 2004

For this particular exhibition I wanted to work with western art history. This show is filled with feature landskapes and pastoral scenes, battles and seaskapes, still lifes and portraits. These works are rife with images from another paintings and sculptures, used both celebratory and ironic ways.

I think that every painting derives from another painting. In a way, painting seems forever doomed to address its own history and formal issues. On another way, the ancient medium may be regarded as nothing but a technique of fragmented quotations, a collage of citations. Allthough all this and more I wanted to keep alive the possibility of painting as a viable art form, allthough it exists in the outskirts of the art world.

I used images of sculptures and paintings of the old European masters. My inspiration came from childhood, at that age you have a little choise but to consume the Old Masters through illustrated books. At that time I thougt that was the only "Fine Art" in the world that existed.

Painted on MDF, they have a somewhat nonchalant character, their surfaces and finish deliberately precarious, the brushstrokes exhibiting carelessness that gives them an expressionistic painterly quality. I wished to assert a certain disregard concerning the grand narratives of the European Masters, which, nevertheless I obviously adore.