Calendar
Calendar
The HUM calendar features exhibitions & events by New Zealand arts practitioners working or living abroad.
Matthew Cowan: para field notes
Hippolyte Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
06 April —
22 April 2018
For some time in his artistic work, Matthew Cowan has explored the somewhat strangely misplaced presence of ancient customs and superstition in contemporary life. Looking into folklore and local history while staying at the Saari residence in Mynämäki he discovered what seemed to be images of devils on the walls of a church in Kalanti, painted by Petrus Henriksson in the late 15th century.
His exhibition at Hippolyte serves as a kind of notebook of artistic research into aspects of the historical customs and traditions of the countryside. From the vantage point of a gallery in central Helsinki, it produces and responds to an imagined threshold between the rural and the urban. The exhibition contains installations of hay and other familiar materials from the countryside—coupled with photographs and videos of flora, fauna and objects referring to folklore.
Matthew Cowan (b. New Zealand) is a visual artist, based in Berlin and Helsinki, working in the realm of traditional European folk customs. His works take the form of photographs, videos, installations and performances, which play with the strangeness of the continued popularity of long-established folk customs within a contemporary world.
For some time in his artistic work, Matthew Cowan has explored the somewhat strangely misplaced presence of ancient customs and superstition in contemporary life. Looking into folklore and local history while staying at the Saari residence in Mynämäki he discovered what seemed to be images of devils on the walls of a church in Kalanti, painted by Petrus Henriksson in the late 15th century.
His exhibition at Hippolyte serves as a kind of notebook of artistic research into aspects of the historical customs and traditions of the countryside. From the vantage point of a gallery in central Helsinki, it produces and responds to an imagined threshold between the rural and the urban. The exhibition contains installations of hay and other familiar materials from the countryside—coupled with photographs and videos of flora, fauna and objects referring to folklore.
Matthew Cowan (b. New Zealand) is a visual artist, based in Berlin and Helsinki, working in the realm of traditional European folk customs. His works take the form of photographs, videos, installations and performances, which play with the strangeness of the continued popularity of long-established folk customs within a contemporary world.