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Anu Hietala Extrovert romanticism the Kotka way In one picture a crane hoists a crate containing the Art Stevedores into a ship leaving for foreign shores. The image in many ways serves as a signature for the group. In the crate, the rising Art Stevedores wave a smiling goodbye to a restrictive and small-minded cultural policy. Breaking boundaries while having fun The trio met in 1992 and decided to test if it was possible to make art as a group. Beside the Art Stevedores project, each member of the trio also continued making art as individuals. Today the Art Stevedores get together only on demand. The Stevedores’ performances are meticulously planned, both regarding the basic ideas of the performances, as well as the documenting photographs. In these projects every one of the trio work as script writer, director, actor and as master of the many techniques needed for the end result. Everyone looks through the camera lens in turn. The Art Stevedores have also spoilt the public with their musical prowess. At the opening of their exhibition at the TM Gallery, they gave a performance as a “wood-playing trio”. One of the three has been especially educated in society behaviour, and he is able to spread thoughtful politeness and cheek-kisses all around. Mythical versus mundane The images the Art Stevedores produce tackle different kinds of mythical lore and fantasies. The spirit is put on a collision course with concrete substance. The Art Stevedores want to know how it really feels to sit out an extra punishment hour after all the nice kids have gone home at the end of a school day, and what happens at the legendary seamen’s restaurant Kairo in Kotka when the mythical “Rose Of Kotka” steps out of a painting on the wall and becomes flesh. In one of their later works shown at the Borealis 8 exhibition, Fucking Karaoke, the Stevedores have attacked their own myths and turned some of their still images into moving-picture videos. Here the trio pops up camouflaged to comment on the goings-on ( = themselves) from one image to the next. The visuals are peppered with slogans from cultural and historical contexts, like comments by Julia Kristeva or Joseph Beus, aswell as Finnish proverbs. Karaoke texts run along the bottom of the TV screen, and microphones on stands allow the public to take part in the karaoke. Humour fit for the art salons The comical subjects and the self irony are a form of intended relaxedness, and the aim is to break down the language- and attitude walls which make human communication difficult. From the start, the Art Stevedores have broken down the fence between the everyday and the artistic. One way to do this was presented by the local Kymen Sanomat daily paper in Kotka. It published a series by the Stevedores in 1992, the purpose of which was to give a new meaning to the fixed view of what a daily newspaper can be. During ten different mornings there was an art gallery on the breakfast table of every family. The inhabitants of Kotka grew curious of the Art Stevedores, even outside the established art public. The managing director of a local food-selling Super-Market ordered a big environmental-art piece from the Art Stevedores, to be put up in the Market’s underground public garage, where it still is shown today. The Stevedores themselves assure they feel as much at home in a parking garage as at the Art Biennale of Venice. The Art Stevedores have held many individual exhibitions, and also taken part in group exhibitions. They have been shown for instance in Kotka at the Port Of Art exhibition in 1995, at the TM Gallery in Helsinki in 1993, and at the second Triennale of Finnish Photo Art held at Taidehalli (Art House) in Helsinki in 1995. The Art Stevedores were also part of the main exhibition of the Jubilee Year of Nordic visual arts in 1996 and -97, the exhibition Borealis 8 itself being shown at the Museum of Modern Art Arken in Ishoj, Denmark. |
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