Finland Represented by Four Artists at The 2010 Liverpool Biennial

Image: Antti Laitinen - It's My Island (stillikuva videoteoksesta)

Liverpool Biennial is UK’s biggest and one of the most important art events, bi-annually bringing together international and UK talent for celebration of contemporary art. This year’s Liverpool Biennial exhibits works from four different Finnish artists; Antti Laitinen, Kaarina Kaikkonen, Jani Ruscica and Johanna Lecklin.


Antti Laitinen works across idioms of performance, video and photography. His work has been described as innocent yet bound in his own type of realism and celebrating the absurd. For A Foundation Laitinen presents a survey of key works from the last decade of his performances, including the It’s My Island trilogy, Bare Necessities, Untitled and Walk the Line, as well as a new commission for Touched, The Bark. For his commission Laitinen built a vessel in the gallery of A Foundation. See Laitinen's inaugural voyage across the Mersey on Youtube.

Kaarina Kaikkonen creates site-specific installations in both interior and exterior spaces using old pieces of clothing or shoes collected from local donors. In her new project for the Biennial, Kaikkonen collects second-hand clothing from individuals of all ages from around the Liverpool city region, and installs them in FACT’s public atrium. The maternal act of doing laundry can be understood as a basic symbol of healing, care and unconditional love – the tender care a mother devotes to washing dirty clothes for her family.

Johanna Lecklin is one of the eight artists chosen for NICE’s Nordic Pavilion to find inspiration from urban landscapes, social environments, identities, rhythms in movement and fetishised commodities. Lecklin is setting up her The Story Café project at the Nordic Pavilion. Story Cafe has travelled and been delivered in 11 locations and seven countries to date. Visitors are able to record their own stories, which are archived and presented in the café, but are also able to view past participants’ stories that have been dramatised by Johanna to create new narratives.

Jani Ruscica presents his work Parallel Acts as part of the international Touched exhibition curated by NLE, Asher Remy-Toledo and Berta Sichel.Parallel Acts exhibition consists of a film Beginning an Ending, where seven persons reveal their thoughts about the future.

More information: Liverpool Biennial 2010