Title

Finlandisation – Juha Tolonen.

Venues

Art Gallery of Western Australia. (3 September 2016 – 21 November 2016)

Date

(2016)

Summary

Single-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (WA). Photographs.

Curator

Jenepher Duncan, Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

Finlandisation is a series of landscape photographs that focus on the seemingly disparate landscapes of the Swan River hinterland and Lapland. While contrasts exist, Juha Tolonen's new work also displays a surprising continuity. Drawing from his adopted and ancestral homes of Australia and Finland his photographs reveal lands that are both alien and familiar. Arranged in diptychs and triptychs, multiple viewpoints are used to contrast or to expand a scene. Tolonen never quite settles on an iconic view, but instead surveys the land inviting us to seek out recognisable elements through content, composition and arrangement. Home is, after all, a place where we are surrounded by the familiar. But, due to forces both internal and external our picture of home is never quite complete. It's this shifting view of what and where we call home that runs across Juha's work. [Gallery media].