finland - a-n The Artists Information Company

Helsinki – On the morning of my first full day in Helsinki I visited the Temppeliaukio Church – walking distance from where I was stopping on Iso Roobertinkatu, Helsinki’s oldest pedestrian street and situated on the edge on the Design […]

Oulu – Flying from Helsinki airport (Vantaa) – en route to Oulu, the capital of Northern Finland, and notably the home of the World Air Guitar Championships – it is possible to see how the country earned its reputation as […]

Rovaniemi – Around 9pm my train entered into Rovaniemi station where I had arranged accommodation close by. Although it was night-time it was still very much light, and as I was soon to discover being this close to the arctic […]

Helsinki – Flying back from Rovaniemi, I returned to Helsinki for the final day of my research trip. It was the first Friday of a new month, and this permitted me free entry to Kiasma Gallery, Helsinki’s flagship contemporary arts […]

Our group meets up with some Tampere based artists, including Tiitu Takalo and Ville Pirinen. An opportunity to compare approaches, discuss techniques and find out about opportunities for Finnish comic artists. KUTIKUTI is a non-profit contemporary comics association; they publish […]

I arrive in Helsinki, to more snow than anticipated. Spring is running late this year, Finns tell me, as I travel northwards to Arteles and even more snow. Before heading out on my first foray I use a combination of […]

I am spending April 2018 at Arteles Creative Centre on their ‘Comic Blast’ specialist residency program, alongside 10 artists working under the broad heading of comics and illustration. Arteles is based (in what used to be a school) in the rural Pirkanmaa […]

I arrived in Ristiina which is very close to the town of Mikkeli in the south-east of Finland on the 12th of August with a loose itinerary for the next 4 weeks. I was going to attend dances at five […]

As a kid I became obsessed with the accordion, I’d seen street performers in Helsinki and Mikkeli in both summer and winter, and more often than not the sound was distinctly melancholic. This is due in part to the central and […]

Finland is well known for its vast stretches of forest and farmland broken up by some 187,888 lakes, the navigation of water through the land has over the year’s determined suitable areas for settlement and coincided with the development of […]

The project I undertook with help from an A-N travel bursary, allowed me firstly to explore parts of Finland I had not yet been to, this was one of the main reasons for its undertaking. I secondly wanted to put myself […]

As a family we have been getting re-acquainted with our surroundings and making a mental note of the places that will be of interest to the following artists’ in resident. I had plans of hand making a map although I […]

I had hoped to start this blog really positively although I have to share my reality of flying with a two year old who did not want to wear his seat belt for the last part of our flight from […]

For the past few weeks I have been focusing on writing the person specification for the upcoming residency in Tampere, Finland that is taking longer to pull together than expected. To research how to structure the residency call out I […]

Listed below are the comments written by the passing public in Tampere and artists at the residency studios of how to twin the cities together. What I found was that ‘Art’ wasn’t much of a priority in the general publics […]

I gave an artist talk in my studio with a little performative twist by changing my title t-shirts during each section. For example I started wearing my ‘Artist’ t, followed by ‘Tour Guide’ when talking about Manchester as a city […]

I have been prepping for my artist talk researching images of past work and the Manchester art scene. I always find that I need to start a fresh when putting together a new presentation. Selecting the right pieces to talk […]