9 young artists from European art academies took part in the Odd Bird -exhibition, co-organized by Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and Checkpoint Helsinki in 2014.
Esther Brakenhoff (b. 1974) lives in Amsterdam. Her work focuses on the perception of place and space. With different mediums, like drawing, sculpture and photography, she explores the way we relate with the world around us through our senses.
Besides perception, Brakenhoff is interested in the way we interact with, inhabit and map space and place. Construction manuals, floor plans, roadmaps, Google maps and Google glass show an abstracted image of the world, but also manipulate this image and our interaction with the world. She reuses these mappings and representations to create a new awareness of place and scale in my work. Abstraction and visual distance is counterbalanced by a concentration on the material, tactility and the work process.
Victoria Durnak (b. 1989) is an artist and writer living in Oslo.
Enigmatic commingling of past and future encounters, trigger the artist’s introduction of narrative structure into the mishmash of lived experience. Durnak’s narratives can be personal, detached, informed by others, nonetheless directed and arranged by the artist. Personal mythologies unfold through her performances, not just by turning life into art, but also by placing herself in odd situations where any task might become art.
Victoria's performance Architecture in Helsinki was held on the opening of Odd Bird exhibition on 15th of August 2014.
Chris Fielder (b. 1980) lives and works in the north of England. He studied Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University, graduating 2014.
Chris presented Helsinki Island Work installation as a part of Odd Bird collective exhibition in 2014.
"For Odd Bird I dared myself to take away the end point, to foreground the process with autonomous plans. These are falsely grounded on speculations and remote misimaginings; unlanding approaches to an unknown place. Now I walk through Helsinki a foreigner, a turist, and looking from the rocks, say - there's my island, there's my monster."
Harrie Liveart (Meri Linna and Saija Kassinen) is a collaborative duo created in 2010 and based in Helsinki. Liveart's installations and performances are usually related to time, duration, location and material. The performative aspect seldom has a clear ending or beginning therefore the artist duo prefers to look at their work method as live art.
The duo's work is based on the creation of common ideas rather than adaptation of singular interests as they both have their individual art practice as well.
See also: www.harrieliveart.com
Maria Malmberg (b. 1981) was born in Eckernförde in the northern Germany. She studies at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in Kiel. In Odd Bird she exhibited an installation titled Every Single Day There Is Another Spider Waiting for Me in My Towel.
Ronja Kim Pedersen was born in Malmö in 1989. She grew up in Copenhagen with her mother, and in her teens moved to Ängleholm, Sweden to live with her father and his wife. Pedersen studies at the Royal institute of art in Stockholm.
Pedersen's work revolves around the personal, the dirty and the forbidden self. She makes an effort to tell a story about the things we experience but would rather not talk about. To do this she uses several different means to express herself. Video and sculpting being the more prominent methods.
Annamaria Tatu (b. 1981) was born in Romania. She studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
"Architecture as a container of narrative. Architecture as memory. The found space and the found object as absorbents of past events. The projection of personal memories onto an unknown space. How we remember spaces. How spaces remember."
Tatu exhibited her installation Absent Recollections (The Bathroom) as a part of Odd Bird exhibition in 2014.
Berkay Tezcan (b. 1990) was born in İstanbul where he currently studies at the Fine Arts Faculty of Istanbul Marmara University.
The theme of his art is based on the political atmosphere in Turkey and the determination of political and social effects on civilisation.
Kristin Wiking (b. 1987) was born in Hedesunda, Sweden. She studies at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts.
Kristin presented Hau hau vov vov woof woof installation as a part of Odd Bird exhibition.