Salla Laurinolli
Paintings
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari, Jätkä 2
14 April – 1 May 2016
Gallery is open also on Mondays 12-17 until first of May!
The exhibition is open also on 30 April and 1 May.
Artist meeting 1 May from 3 until 5 pm
My artistic work is based on an observation and experience and reflecting on them during the painting process. An essential part of the process is the place of observation, the concrete starting point for my works. In the summer of 2015, in the Tornio River Valley, I began a project with its starting points related to the points of the Struve Geodetic Arc.
Where am I and what kind of world do I live in?
Thanks to the development of arc measurement, people have been able to answer these questions more and more concretely and accurately every century. In the satellite era, people check their smartphone map to see where the dot is blinking and those who have left their home can see where their life currently is. In this same world, yet in a different reality, a painter has her eyes fixed on the screen. She is following in the footsteps of Struve’s expedition, walking and climbing, exploring and working. Here I am and that’s what I am looking at, concretely. But where am I and what kind of world do I live in?
The way I analyze the world by painting, on the basis of meaningful experiences, now follows pre-determined coordinates. History gives meaning to an observation and those observations are already dots on the map. Reaching a place is essential, movement and stopping.
After stopping I continue the movement in the work process, moving away. The observation becomes more distant, moving towards an experience and the painter’s movement moves onto the canvas. This is where I am in the world, between you and your observations.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, a German-born astronomer, decided to use triangulation to determine the exact shape and size of the Earth. It had been established in the 16th century that the Earth was round, but as early as the 17th century Isaac Newton suggested it might be slightly flattened at the poles. The expeditions sent to Lapland (Maupertuis) and Peru in the 18th century proved this theory correct. Thanks to the French mathematician and astronomer Maupertuis’ travel stories, fairies, gnomes, Pello region names and the Tornio valley rose also appeared in the 18th and 19th century European poetry.
Measurement of the triangulation chain known as the Struve Geodetic Arc took place between 1816 and 1855. It comprises of 258 main triangles and 265 station points. The northernmost point is located near Hammerfest in Norway and the southernmost point near the Black Sea in the Ukraine.
http://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/activities/organisation/history/struve-geodetic-arc-tour-de-force-land-surveying-satellite-era, http://www.maupertuis.fi
I wish to thank:
Häme Regional Fund
Arts Promotion Centre Finland / Arts Council of Häme
Salla Laurinolli (b. 1976) is a painter who lives and works in Hämeenlinna.
salla.laurinolli(a)gmail.com
www.sallalaurinolli.com
