Welcome to the exhibition opening on Thursday, Sept 4th, 6-8 pm!
Artist meeting on Turku Day, Sunday Sept 21st at 3 pm. Free admission!
The exhibition gets its theme from fables, the classic animal stories with a moral lesson. Fables are one of the most long-standing, most widely-spread traditions in the European culture. Everyone knows, for example, the story of the fox and the bitter grapes. Although sometimes seen as children’s tales nowadays, originally they were not meant for children. Fables were read at universities, convents, and bacchanals, and they weren’t edited suitable for children until the 18th century. It’s been suggested that fables were first collected and written down by the Greek author Aesop (ca. 620–564 BCE). However, it’s not certain if Aesop even was a real historical person. Later on, there have been and still are repeated variations of these stories.
“In addition to Aesop, the sources of my works include the Greek-Roman fabulist Phaedrus (ca. 18 BCE – 56–68 ACE), the French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine (1621 –1695) and the Russian fabulist Ivan Krylov (1769–1844). My works are not intended as illustrations for the fables. Fables, by nature, transform over time, and my aspiration is to look at them from different angles and add my own interpretation to them. For this exhibition, I’ve expanded my understanding of the concept of fable to include also animal-themed moral stories that are not based on the fables of the Ancient Greece. For two of my pieces, the process started from the animal characters of the German Brothers Grimm from the 18th and 19th century.”
Anna Ellmén (1981) is a sculptor from Turku. Her sculptures stem from cultural history, literature, mythical tales, and folklore stories, and they often discuss the relationship between man and nature. Ellmén’s main material is bronze. She has been casting bronze for 15 years, and casts all her bronze sculptures herself at Jöötti ry’s foundry in Pääskyvuori, Turku. Typically, her works consist of parts that are cast separately and then pieced together. Ellmén molds her works with wax she then casts in bronze. Her works sometimes contain also parts of plants and objects cast into bronze. Ellmén graduated as a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Turku Arts Academy in 2014, and finished her Master of Arts with a major in cultural history at the University of Turku the same year.
Ellen’s work has been supported by TOP Foundation, City of Turku, and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
