Alice in Wonderland

Kerava Art Museum’s autumn exhibition has borrowed its title from the children’s literary classic by Lewis Carroll. Its topsy-turvy world has retained its power from one decade to the next. It has birthed numerous versions through theatrical productions, radio plays and films. Surrealists that fled down the rabbit hole include: André Breton, René Magritte and Max Ernst. Salvador Dalì created his own illustrations for the book, as did Tove Jansson, the creator of the Moomins, decades later.

The artworks on show at the Art and Museum Centre Sinkka are not based on the book by Lewis Carroll, although it is referred to in some of the artworks. The artists look at the world like Alice; with a child-like curiosity and an amazed countenance. Taking the lead are small boys with big heads, girls growing into womanhood, mysteriously transformed forest creatures, survivors covered in moss, as well as princesses who decide their own fate.

Alice in Wonderland transports the viewer from the safe and familiar space of reality to the other side of perception. To a place, which we know exists, but which is sometimes hard to grasp. Fundamental questions of humanity are intertwined in this childhood dream world. They refer to physicality and the formation of a sense of self, the shared fate of humanity and nature, as well as limited time and the power of fantasy.

Kim Simonsson, Tommi Toija, the Rauma based Kerttu Horila and Tampere based Merja Haapala create ceramic sculptures that are both fragile and also hard on the surface. Mia Hamari combines ceramic elements with teeth, seal flippers and elk hooves. Her female figures made of birch bark and creatures sculpted from wood are hybrid entities that fall between the opposites. Hamari describes her work, “This is a family from my other reality, a world where humans and animals are part of the same universe. A world where a cat is a person. A person is made of wood, bone and wings. The wings take us to the past and the future, time gets stuck in the teeth of time and in the whiskers of a cat.”

As in fairy tales and fantasy literature, this exhibition brings forth archetypal images, which help us to understand ourselves and the society we live in. The paintings of Ilona Cutts, currently residing in Atlanta, and Emma Ainala are revelatory visions of the familiar, but still an odd scene through the looking glass, where the viewer has been able to peek. Themes of maturing into womanhood sieved through the lens of popular culture can be seen in Ainala’s work. Bubbling, beneath the enchanted surfaces of Cutt’s work is a query about the fate of the white rhinoceros and the boundaries of our perception.

It also appears that in the family of Saara Salmi, known for her New Victorian photographs, an old sketchbook from the 1800’s depicting long-eared creatures from Wonderland was preserved. Or that is at least what the artist tells. This sketchbook made its way to Finland with the help of a relative who worked as a kitchen assistant to the Dodgson family in Oxford. What makes this discovery interesting, is that that surname belonged to a certain mathematician, better known as Lewis Carroll.

This exhibition has been compiled by Curator Veikko Halmetoja and the Director of the Kerava Art Museum Arja Elovirta.

Over the course of this exhibition, a communal artwork will be created in the Museum project space. The artwork is created together with clients of the Kerava Job Centre and is directed and innovated by the artist Eliisa Sorvali.