Salla Tykkä: Cave & Zoo
Salla Tykkä: Cave & Zoo
12 May – 29 July 2007
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Finnish artist Salla Tykkä captured the hearts and minds of many when the first short film in her trilogy ‘Cave’, Lasso (2000), was seen as part of the Venice Biennale in 2001. Set to the orchestral strains of Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack to the Western film classic ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’, the work begins with a young girl in track pants coming to a window of a suburban Finnish house to watch undetected a young man performing elaborate and an exhausting lasso routine inside the lounge.
Simmering introspection and watchfulness building to a climax of revelation or confrontation features in each of the works in the trilogy. Thriller (2001) is set in remote woodland in autumn. A young woman locks herself in her bedroom and dreams dark thoughts. Cave (2003) features a woman in white who is drawn to investigate questionable drilling in a deep ice cave, where she is met by three malevolent miners.
The trilogy of Lasso, Thriller and Cave—known simply as ‘Cave’—will be shown alongside a new work called Zoo (2006). The protagonist of this recent work is a stylish woman who explores the animal enclosures at a zoo with a camera in hand. In this film, the relationship between subject and object is teased out and complicated. Through camera angles and the musical score, Tykkä suggests that while the woman observes the animals, she herself is being preyed upon. The film is punctuated by scenes of an underwater rugby game, creating moments of frenzied, violent activity.
A common thread of many of Tykkä’s work is the moment of emotional and physical transformation experienced by young women in a combination of natural (landscape) and constructed (suburban, urban) settings. The situations are intentionally ambiguous, highly charged emotionally and sexually, and utilise cinematic devices in order to heighten tension.
Tykkä is a leading young Finnish artist working in film and photography. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Lucid Dreams’, De Appel, Amsterdam and Museum Het Domein Sittard, the Netherlands (2006); ‘Salla Tykkä’, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland (2006); and ‘Salla Tykkä’, Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, Wales (2006). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany; Galician Center for Contemporary Art, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; and the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania. This is her first exhibition in New Zealand.
This exhibition, curated by City Gallery Wellington Curator Sarah Farrar, brings Salla Tykkä’s work to New Zealand audiences for the first time.
Exhibition initiated and toured by City Gallery Wellington, with the support of FRAME Finnish Fund for Art Exchange. Salla Tykkä: Cave and Zoo will be exhibited at Dunedin Public Art Gallery from 19 May until 15 July 2007.
City Gallery Wellington has published an exhibition brochure to accompany the show which features colour stills from the works on display, an introductory essay by exhibition curator Sarah Farrar and brief biographical details about the artist.