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Erkki Pirtola STEVEDORES, a Finnish alternative elixir: Licquor, sauna and tar The Art Stevedores have accepted the challenge of creating traditional Finnish contemporary art in a serious manner. Their aim is a situation where the “export” of our contemporary art wouldn’t just be an imitation of the “import” from different centers to the provinces. Art is connected to the construction of language. Finnish contemporary art has penetrated Europe, and it has started to speak a universal art language, forgetting its roots. In their pictures, the Art Stevedores speak Finnish, and more than that, they speak Kotka. Above all, though, the pictures convey Juha Metso, Heimo Suntio and Timo Mahonen, of which every one speaks his own language; Metso as a photographer, Mahonen as painter and Suntio as a conceptual artist and painter. Their languages come together in performances where the group takes a sauna bath on the roof of a car, or runs away from a bear on the marsh. They also agree with each other in a socio-political sense. In a time, when the widening gap in the monthly income of different classes is deliberately hidden, and when artists generally concentrate on an aesthetic which will be accepted by a society versed in consensus, the Art Stevedores bring themselves forth as losers in the middle of a burnt and chopped down forest clearing. Above all the Art Stevedores is a regressive group who’ll comment on everything. They question the role of the successful artist by incorporating his figures into a picture where the group appear in a class of Rembrandt’s “Doctor Tulp”. The hard hitting picture could be called “Autopsy on Art History”. Or they make a joke combining Andy Warhol with Kotka, creating celebrity performances with local stars like the nationally known singer Veikko Lavi. From image to image the Stevedores jump over obstacles powered by their fantasy camera, and are pleased at displaying their work in unorthodox places like on the pages of newspapers, in a public swimming facility or down in a submerged parking space under a Super Market. In another pair of images the Stevedores work their way towards the word Context. What else could it be than a Don-Quixote-like attack against the vacuum-packed art language of today? The brilliant magic of the Art Stevedores is to appear as hidden stow-aways in the cargo-room of contemporary art without metamorphosing into a part of its deathly embrace, but by embracing their ruggishness and smell, changing themselves into its most vital future. The Art Stevedores are thus one with Kotkan Ruusu, the Rose of Kotka, around whom they gather in one of their most famous images taken in the restaurant Kairo close to the harbour in Kotka. The picture is accompanied by the text “Luck will embrace the brave one”. |